The New York Times - 30.07.2019

C2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019

Theater

festival inaugurated a program of musical

theater, usually with a distinctly classical or

operetta tilt. Starting in the 1980s, shows

from Broadway’s Golden Age joined the

repertoire; now most seasons feature two

ambitious musicals.

That makes sense: Musicals are the

works that, in our time, most often ap-

proach the scale and complexity of the ca-

nonical histories and comedies. Songs are

often like soliloquies and call on some of the

same performance techniques. And Strat-

ford, with its superb costume and wig de-

partments, is especially well suited to the

kinds of transformation this repertoire re-

quires.

Which is why I didn’t recognize Mr.

Chameroy. In miner’s drag and a thatchy

hairpiece, he looked 25 years older as Jackie

Elliot than he had as Frank N. Furter; the

bravado and joy of that “sweet transvestite

from Transsexual, Transylvania” were re-

placed by Jackie’s sense of loss (his wife has

died) and anger (his industry is dying).

When his 11-year-old son, Billy (Nolen

Dubuc), reveals a talent for ballet, a third

element complicates the others: bewilder-

ment.

I was moved by “Billy Elliot” on Broad-

way; there are certainly some things that

the director Stephen Daldry was able to do

in that production that Donna Feore, the di-

rector and choreographer of this one, can-

not. On the festival’s deep-thrust stage, the

aerial scene in which Billy is partnered by a

future vision of himself comes off a bit flat.

The social class satire of Billy’s audition for

the Royal Ballet is way overplayed, as if try-

ing to bank cheap laughs in a family show.

Perhaps for the same reason, the treatment

of Billy’s nascent sexuality, and especially

that of his cross-dressing best friend, seems

hasty and avoidant.

But in most other ways, Ms. Feore’s

thrilling version finds new doors into the

material and strides confidently through

them. The political story is especially rich

here, perhaps because the catastrophic job

loss facing Easington in “Billy Elliot” as

Margaret Thatcher privatizes the coal

mines closely resembles what the city of

Stratford faced in the early 1950s when the

collapse of steam power destroyed its rail-

road industry. The festival was devised to

promote economic recovery; out of hard

times came theater.

Ms. Feore introduces this idea in a bril-

liant, low-tech gesture, having Billy “fly”

about the stage the way all children do, run-

ning with his head forward and arms out-

stretched. The image is made larger than

life when it is projected gloriously onto the

set by another boy, playing with the light on

a miner’s helmet.

In that moment, we see two of the show’s

stories joined, and we also spy the origins of

Billy’s self-expression through movement.

But another theme the Stratford produc-

tion draws out, often in angry, bravura

dancing, is how the heritage of toxic mascu-

linity works against Billy — and everyone

else. It robs boys, women and men alike of

the means of expression, a calamity drama-

tized with great pathos in the otherwise

jolly second-act opener set at the town

Christmas pageant. When Jackie, drunk

enough to sing one of Elton John and Lee

Hall’s lovely faux-folk songs for the crowd,

gets to the verse that begins, “Oh, once I

loved a woman,” Mr. Chameroy stops dead.

For what seems like an eternity, he cannot

go on.

The opportunity not just to celebrate but

also to reinvestigate classic musicals with-

out shrinking them into dollhouse replicas

is Ms. Feore’s calling card. “Billy Elliot” is

full-size, yet different from the original.

Likewise, last year, her version of “The Mu-

sic Man” brought out the class disparities

inherent in the story without skimping on

its exhilarating portrait of American flim-

flam.

This season’s smaller musical, like

“Rocky Horror” last year, may not benefit

as much from rethinking; “Little Shop” is

what it is. There’s not much you can add

without hubris to the nearly perfect B-mov-

ie tale of a nebbishy florist’s assistant, Sey-

mour Krelborn, who accidentally discovers

a plant that grows gargantuan when fed hu-

man blood. Hoping to impress Audrey, the

fellow worker he’s hopelessly in love with,

Seymour names the plant Audrey II and

tries to keep the blood supply going. But in

the manner of such morality tales in any

genre, his ambition leads to disaster.

Though this is all set to marvelously

campy dialogue (by Howard Ashman) and

a delicious pseudo-1950s score (by Mr. Ash-

man and Alan Menken), it’s not merely a

spoof. Or at least — with a subplot about

Audrey’s being viciously abused by her

dentist boyfriend — it can’t be anymore. Ms.

Feore delicately turns up the dial on that

story, which Mr. Chameroy and Gabi Ep-

stein (as Audrey) are able to sustain with-

out losing laughs.

I began to discern in this “Little Shop” a

thread I’d noticed in so many Stratford pro-

ductions this season, which consider the

root of evil (and centuries of drama) in

men’s sexual paranoia. At first I thought I’d

gone mad from too much theater. But no, it’s

all there, and not even Seymour (André

Morin) is innocent: Having saved Audrey

from the dentist, he cannot save her from

Audrey II, the fruit of his own ambition.

In a way, “Little Shop” thus provides a

tagline for the entire festival, a warning true

to Shakespeare no less than Ashman:

“Don’t feed the plant.”

JESSE GREEN CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CYLLA VON TIEDEMANN

Ballet and Bloodlust

(And Shakespeare)

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1
Top, the cast of “Billy Elliot,”
with Nolen Dubuc, center, as
the title character. Right,
Dan Chameroy as the
sadistic dentist in “Little
Shop of Horrors.”

Billy Elliot
Through Nov. 10 at the
Stratford Festival, Stratford,
Ontario; 800-567-1600,
stratfordfestival.ca. Running
time: 2 hours 44 minutes.

Little Shop of Horrors
Through Nov. 2 at the Stratford
Festival. Running time: 2 hours
6 minutes.

Follow Jesse Green on Twitter: @JesseKGreen.

Sam Rudy was an 11-year-old farm boy
when he first marveled at New York City.
He came to the city as a trombonist in a
school band representing Pennsylvania in a
Lions Club parade, and he knew right then
that one day he would make the city his
home.
And he did. He moved here in 1979, into an
illegal apartment in Midtown West and a
low-level job at a theater publicity office.
In the years that followed, he built his
own business. He did it old school — he had
a small staff, but never had his own office, or
even a website. But he represented hun-
dreds of shows, including “Hamilton” and
“Avenue Q,” and forged close relationships
with two Pulitzer-winning playwrights, Ed-
ward Albee and Paula Vogel.
He also saw a production overstay its
welcome often enough to know when it was
time to lower the curtain. So on Wednesday,
he’s retiring after 40 years as a theater pub-
licist and moving back to Pennsylvania,
where he has a house in the Delaware Wa-
ter Gap. He is 66 years old.
“It feels right,” he said. “I know a lot of
people think this is a great place to be an old
person because there’s a Duane Reade on
every corner, but I truly believe in full cir-
cle.”
In an interview at the cluttered cubicle in
a Midtown work space he shares with sev-
eral other publicists, he talked about his
decades in the theater business. These are
edited excerpts from the conversation.

Why now?

I’d been talking a lot about retiring on my
65th birthday, but then I had a heart attack,
and I didn’t want to go out on a heart attack.
When you leave this town, and leave this
business, you’re essentially dead anyway,
but if you leave after a major health event,
they assume you’re actually dead.

Then things were really heating up for

“Hamilton” in Puerto Rico, and I wanted to

be part of that. But after we got through the

opening of the “Hamilton” exhibition in Chi-

cago, I thought this was a good time to go.

You grew up on a farm?

My parents had a 100-acre dairy farm in Re-

bersburg. We’d get up at 5:30 in the morn-

ing and milk the cows, go to school, come

back home and milk the cows again. On a

recent spring day, as I was walking through

Times Square, it occurred to me that while I

can’t grow crops, what I have learned to do

these past 40 years is to help grow art.

How did you discover theater?

My junior year in college I got involved with

the Penn State Thespians. Some friends of

mine were involved, and the next thing you

know, you’re painting sets, and then you’re

the assistant stage manager, and then

you’re the president.

You started in New York as an assistant to

the publicist Shirley Herz.

I was answering phones and doing typing

and opening the mail and mimeographing

press releases, and I never left. She was one

of the most influential people in my life, and

until she died [in 2013], we worked in tan-

dem.

What’s the most exciting project you worked

on?

“Hamilton” is in a class by itself, and class is

the operative word. I went to see it again a

few weeks ago, and it was a very emotional

experience — it’s a masterpiece, and every-

thing about it is so compelling and so beauti-

ful.

And the biggest flop?

“Shogun” seemed like a good idea for a mu-

sical, but when we got to the point where the

ship wrecks on the rocky coast of Japan,

and emerging from under the ship was

dancing seaweed, we thought, “This is not

good.” Not to mention the fact that on a

press night, the set fell and hit the lead actor

— by the time Shirley and I got there, one or

two press people had climbed up onstage,

and the crew had put the actor in an ambu-

lance. And that was the most positive cover-

age that show got — poor Philip Casnoff get-

ting beaned by the set.

You worked with Edward Albee for a long

time.

In 1980, Shirley got hired to do press for

“The Lady From Dubuque.” That was dur-

ing Edward’s bad-boy days, when he was

drinking and acting out and being rude. He

had two Pulitzers, but he was definitely fall-

ing out of favor, and he was going overseas

to get his plays done. But then his personal

assistant called and said he had a new play,

at Vienna’s English Theater, and that was

“Three Tall Women” — his third Pulitzer,

and a big success. And then “The Goat, or

Who Is Sylvia?” became my play.

That must have been a tough one.

It was not an easy sell. The first audiences

were screaming with laughter — you would

have thought it was a farce — and the actors

were really freaked out. The critics were

ambivalent. At one point the actors came to

us and said: “We need help. There’s a lot of

hostility coming across the footlights, be-

cause people don’t understand the play.”

And we knew it was true.

I’d run into colleagues, and people would

say, “I really like ‘The Goat,’ ” and I’d think,

“Why are you whispering?” I realized they

hadn’t been given the license to say that.

So what did you do?

We needed to send people home with some-

thing more than the Playbill. So I said,

“Why don’t we put together “The Goat Ga-

zette,” a four-page newsletter with reviews

and lists of celebrities coming and articles

from psychologists. We ended up doing it

once a week, and it was flying out of the the-

ater — it was fun and it was thrilling and it

was working. And one thing that was re-

markable: the number of people who would

stay in their seats, talking about what they

had seen. It underscored one of Edward’s

favorite sayings — it’s the theater’s respon-

sibility to send the audience home in a con-

dition different from the condition in which

they arrived. And “The Goat” did that in

spades.

Your other great relationship was with Paula

Vogel.

Paula is, simply put, one of life’s really good

people. She’s an exceptional human being

with tremendous compassion who knows

how to show that.

You spent a long time representing “Avenue

Q.”

I learned so much from those puppets. Peo-

ple wanted to believe in them so much — we

would go out in public and I would see how

people were drawn to the puppets and

wanted to talk to them.

Do you still like theater?

I still love that moment — if it’s going to hap-

pen, it’s usually in the first three minutes —

where you think, ‘Oh, wow, this is going to

be something magical.” The thrill of that is

very intoxicating.

EXIT INTERVIEW

SAM RUDY

Recalling ‘Hamilton,’ but ‘Shogun’ as Well

REBECCA SMEYNE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A publicist lowers the curtain

on his 40-year career.

By MICHAEL PAULSON

Sam Rudy, center, during

his retirement

celebration at Rosie’s

Theater Kids.