Jake Gyllenhaal (left) in “Sunday in the Park with George” —MATTHEW MURPHY
There’s something about a live performance in theater productions that enables a Hollywood actor to assess his skills and overturn misconceptions about him as a studio-manufactured performer.
The bottom line: Theater is a platform that lets thespians “stretch their thespic wings” in an intimate—and, for the most part, independent—world away from Hollywood’s glossy excesses and generic challenges.
Take Daniel Radcliffe, who wowed critics with his titillating performances in “Equus” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” He makes it a point to do theater in between screen roles because it allows him to step out of his comfort zone. “Theater sharpens you up,” he explained to Variety. “Sure, you can deliver a great performance—but, can you sustain it night after night?”
For Julia Stiles (“The Vagina Monologues,” “Twelfth Night”), performing in theater is “like going to the gym for actors. It reduces performance anxiety.” She told Origin Magazine, “It makes working in the movies or TV seem like cakewalk.”
One of the current theater season’s most significant achievers is the “continually evolving” Jake Gyllenhaal, who sings the titular character (opposite Annaleigh Ashford, as his wife Dot) in “Sunday in the Park with George”—Stephen Sondheim’s musical adaptation of Georges Seurat’s painting, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”
As they say, a picture tells a thousand stories—and, in “Sunday’s” case, gorgeous show tunes, as well, which linger with viewers long after the curtains close.
Under Sarna Lapine’s direction, the musical inventively reimagines the stories behind the images captured by Seurat’s artwork, astutely strung together by a 22-actor ensemble performing a 17-song musical showcase with panache.
Sally Field
If you expect Jake to sing as gloriously as Mandy Patinkin did in the play’s 1984 version, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment, because the 36-year-old actor’s baritone isn’t “wired” for soaring and sustained high notes.
That really isn’t such a bad thing because Jake manages to sing the circuitous notes of “Putting It Together” and “Finishing the Hat” without a hitch.
With a rich vibrato backed up by his formidable acting chops, Jake more than holds his own alongside the seasoned musical-theater thespians he shares the stage with.
The show isn’t that much of a visual spectacle and, for the most part, relies on its actors to tell a fascinating story—about the indispensability of art in society, and how important it is “to see the bigger picture.” But a well-told tale doesn’t really need gimmicks to sustain its “viewability” and crowd-drawing appeal.
“Insecure” performers tend to “push” their psychological actions and motivations because of the specialized genre’s heightened reality. If you like “showy,” scene-stealing performances, you won’t find it in the musical’s latest incarnation.
But the songs are nevertheless skillfully rendered—from Annaleigh’s version of “Children and Art” and Robert Sean Leonard’s “No Life,” to the ensemble’s cracklingly hilarious “It’s Hot Up Here.”
And, if you prefer well-limned and lived-in characterizations that simmer and throb with palpable life and sustained frisson, the show doesn’t disappoint—and neither does Jake.
Other stellar screen-to-stage shifts that we have duly noted through the years: We’ve long known that there was more to Daniel Craig than his scorching presence, because we’ve seen him share the stage with Michael Gambon in “A Number,” Caryl Churchill’s spellbinding nature-versus-nurture, play about human cloning.
For his part, Ralph Fiennes was his usual brooding but eloquent self in the National Theater’s three-hour-and-40-minute 2015 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s existentialist drama, “Man and Superman.”
But, seven years earlier, the 54-year-old theater-honed actor turned on the charm by gamely demonstrating his little-seen comic flair in the original staging of Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage.”
In Peter Barnes’ “The Ruling Class,” James McAvoy often broke the fourth wall as the unhinged character he was tasked to breathe life into vacillated between lucidity and insanity.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Last month, we saw a polarizing performance of Tennessee Williams’ autobiographical memory play, “The Glass Menagerie,” starring the lovely and lissome Sally Field who, at age 70, is portraying the dream role she’s long wanted to essay.
The story revolves around shoemaker cum aspiring poet Tom Wingfield (Joe Mantello) and his recollections about his hard-driving but cash-strapped mother Amanda (Field), his crippled sister Laura (Madison Ferris), and the polarizing Gentleman Caller who comes to dinner.
Despite an impressively staged rain effect, there isn’t much to “see” in the Belasco Theatre production because the stage is almost bare for much of its running time. Moreover, the play is long and languorous.
Thank goodness Sally and Joe are nothing short of electrifying in their roles as they examine the lives of the beleaguered Wingfields. When the duo manages to “connect” with their audience, they make the production’s flaws forgivable and almost inconsequential.
Sparks also flew when Judi Dench went mano-a-mano against Maggie Smith in “The Breath of Life,” David Hare’s provocative 2002 drama about a woman who is confronted by the wife of her lover.
Glenn Close is back on Broadway as delusional has-been Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard.” But we knew that the 69-year-old actress has always been partial to similar challenges: In 2002, we saw her portray Blanche DuBois, a Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty, in the grand Royal National Theatre revival of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
Bette Midler is gearing up to return to the Broadway stage by way of Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s “Hello Dolly!,” which begins its previews on March 13.
But we were in the audience when she portrayed Hollywood super-agent Sue Mengers in 2013’s one-woman play, “I’ll Eat You Last.”
As expected, Bette unleashed a charm offensive that fueled her breezy 90-minute performance, but what made the Divine Miss M’s hilarious soliloquy harder to forget was the fact that she forgot her lines twice—and asked the stage manager (who was offstage) to feed her the pesky lines—a huge no-no in theater!
She seemed unperturbed about her flubs, though—and so was the audience, who conspiratorially chose to look the other way!
That same theater season, we were also impressed by how brave Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen in “Game of Thrones”) was when she was cast as Holly Golightly in the recent Broadway adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
Yes, Emilia was “thespically slight” and underwhelming in the iconic role immortalized by Audrey Hepburn on the big screen, but can you blame her for trying to fill in those huge shoes?