{"id":8041,"date":"2019-06-24T06:56:17","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T10:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8041"},"modified":"2019-07-02T19:46:58","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T23:46:58","slug":"falsettos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8041","title":{"rendered":"Falsettos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Princeton Summer Theater<\/a> begins its 2019 season with an ambitious production of the Tony award-winning musical Falsettos<\/em>, book by James Lapine and William Finn, who also wrote the music and lyrics. Directed by PST artistic director Daniel Krane, the production opened June 20 and runs Thursdays through Sunday until June 30<\/strong>. The show\u2019s nonstop music is provided by a \u201ctiny little band,\u201d of four musicians led by Amber Lin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Falsettos<\/em> is a story about\nall kinds of love\u2014gay, straight, marital, parental, between friends. Its\nnonstop songs work hard to capture the evanescence of feeling, perhaps best in\na moving song near the end: \u201cWho would I be if I had not loved you? How would I\nknow what love is?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the story, Marvin (played by\nMichael Rosas) leaves his wife Trina (Bridget McNiff) for the carefree young\nman, Whizzer (Dylan Blau Edelstein). Trina, left with their 10-year-old son Jason\n(Hannah Chomiczewski) is bitter about this, and baffled by Marvin\u2019s insistence\nthat what he wants is \u201cA Tight-Knit Family\u201d involving them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marvin suggests Trina straighten\nherself out by seeing his psychiatrist, Mendel (Justin Ramos), who immediately\nfalls for her. Complications ensue, and Trina\u2019s state of mind is\nperfectly\u2014hilariously\u2014reflected in her star turn, \u201cI\u2019m Breaking Down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This first act of Falsettos, <\/em>which\nis set in 1979, is based on a one-act play, March of the Falsettos<\/em>\nthat premiered in 1981. The second act is based on another one-act, Falsettoland<\/em>,\nset in 1981, which premiered in 1990. The two were merged to create Falsettos<\/em>\nin 1992. A lot changed for gay men in that intervening decade. The authors had\nto acknowledge AIDS (actually barely a blip in 1981), highlighted by Dr.\nCharlotte\u2019s (Chamari White-Mink) prophetic song, \u201cSomething Bad is Happening.\u201d\nAnd, in act two, the play takes a sharp turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The growing realization of the\nseriousness of Whizzer\u2019s illness is a painful backdrop to disagreements between\nTrina and Marvin about Jason\u2019s impending bar mitzvah, to be catered by Cordelia\n(Michelle Navis) who specializes in Jewish nouvelle cuisine. The comedy is\nstill there, but it\u2019s bittersweet. One of the show\u2019s most beautifully rendered\nnumbers is the quartet, \u201cUnlikely Lovers,\u201d sung around Whizzer\u2019s hospital bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cast (and crew) for PST\u2019s\ncollege summer stock productions are primarily Princeton students and recent\ngraduates. For the principal roles, as played by Rosas, McNiff, Edelstein, and\nRamos, this constraint was inconsequential, but a bit of a handicap in casting\nthe role of Jason. The set was well designed (Jeffrey Van Velsor) to be\nadaptable and interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Princeton Summer Theater\nproductions are staged in Hamilton Murray Theater on the university campus,\neasily reached from New York by car or train. Take New Jersey Transit to the\nPrinceton Junction station, then the shuttle train into Princeton. The shuttle\nends a short walk from the theater, which is walking distance from numerous\nrestaurants.\n\nFor tickets, call the box office at 732-997-0205\nor visit the ticket\noffice online<\/a>.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Princeton Summer Theater begins its 2019 season with an ambitious production of the Tony award-winning musical Falsettos, book by James Lapine and William Finn, who also wrote the music and lyrics. Directed by PST artistic director Daniel Krane, the production … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Falsettos - so impressive that a college summer stock company would put on such a difficult, all-sung musical so successfully. A timely story about love.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[272,366,207,104,147,1],"tags":[1586,1587],"class_list":["post-8041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedy","category-drama","category-music","category-the-morgue","category-theater","category-uncategorized","tag-falsettos","tag-princeton-summer-theater"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/falsettos29.jpg?fit=1642%2C768&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-25H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8044,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions\/8044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}