joecomposer

I had to see Latkes and Applesauce on DVD, having been unable to attend either performance. But the video recording is clean and not at all TV’d-up; it’s a single camera affair made for archival purposes, and I’m glad to have seen it finally.

It’s a Hanukkah revue, written by many of my colleagues (and me!), and as with any multi-writer revue, the style and tone changes with every scene, every song. But you know what? It all holds together. If the deck is somewhat stacked toward the Jews who know more about Christmas than the Christians do about the festival of lights in Buck and Acquisto’s “No Matter How You Spell It,” I can live with that. If Hartley and Davis’s “A Hanukkah Hymn” seems disproportionately long to the rest of the material, I’m okay with that too. Is the opening number a little too reminiscent for my taste of Barry Manilow’s “It’s a Miracle”? (Maybe it would have been better to license that song and write new lyrics for it than to write a new song that sounds a lot like the old one – or maybe I’m the only one who cares.)

The “Hanukkah Idol” sketches are WILDLY funny. The “Postcards to Grandpa” monologues are funny, and touching. Hubbard and Oler’s “One Little Hanukkah Candle” is lovely and simple, and my own “Ballad of Thomas the Shammus” holds up very well in such company as my talented writer colleagues. The five adult actors and music-director Jihwan Kim show amazing range. The Kaufman Kids children’s chorus are sweet as can be.

Were I to draw some comparison between this family show and Shrek, all I’d want to say is that Latkes is funny to kids and grown-ups without ever making adults uncomfortable. Latkes is done on a shoestring budget, with a cast of five and a band of one. And you know what? It feels like more. Its oil never runs out.

It’ll be back next year. Take your friends.

Man, I hope I’ve missed something along the way. Getting to the theatre less than once a week – when one is, ostensibly, in the business of the theatre – is shameful.

I said I’d say more about Shrek: the Musical and never did.

Shrek is going to make it whether or not it got good reviews. I’ve only read the Times’s, and I was thoroughly befuddled by it: Brantley liked best in the show the first thing I’d’ve cut: the tap-dancing rat number might as well have a show-curtain that reads, “This number exists because Sutton can tap dance.” I mean, Sutton Foster is one of the seven marvels of the world, but this number is thoroughly unnecessary.

The show’s too long – or, at least, it takes too long getting started. I don’t feel the need for as much backstory as we get about Fiona’s and Shrek’s childhoods. The score is a little of this, a little of that – Celtic-pop-rock-soul-showtune (and I’m sure I’m leaving something out). Either the lyrics strain against the musical form or the composer uses the music to rein in formless lyrics, but my ear kept getting slapped around by rhyme schemes. The book and lyrics are chock full of in-jokes and lines that would bump the piece out of a G rating, lines that made me pray, over and over, “Please don’t let my 7-year-old niece ask me why the grown-ups are laughing.”

That said, wow. You see every penny you spend: the entire design team scores. The cast is terrifically talented. You hear every penny you spend. It’s a big orchestra, and it sounds great.

Would I go again, at full price? Hell, no.

Was it a really good first Broadway experience for my 14- and 7-year-old nieces? Ay-yup.

I thought How to Cook a Wolf would be full of interesting post-hunting recipes. Not that I had any intention of hunting, dressing, or cooking a wolf, but what the heck: M. F. K. Fisher has entertained me so far, I thought I’d press on.

The more accurate but far less interesting title would be How to Cook When the Wolf is at Your Door. Written in response to wartime rationing (after WWI, and revised – in the edition I’ve read – after WWII, this is a book on food for those in severe need of economizing. There are rather more references to canned mushroom soup than I’d’ve expected, and the admission that home-baked bread may cost more than store-bought loaves (but that the difference in flavor and healthiness is vastly worth the few pennies difference). As with all the books of Fisher’s I’ve seen, there’s much more narrative and description than recipe-as-set-of-instructions. This is as it should be. What a cook needs is inspiration and confidence.

This is definitely of interest to the frugalistas among us, – for the chapter titles alone.