Critics Reviews of Applause at Encores!
Applause
There is something altogether fitting that
one of the most famous of all backstage musicals,
Applause has arrived at City Center for a
four-day run with a backstage story of its own. As Encores!
producer Jack Viertel explained to the opening night audience, star
Christine Ebersole has been suffering with the flu for days and
missing the past few rehearsals, but insisted on going on with the
show despite "not being at full speed." (Plus, there are no actual
understudies).
Ironically, this unfortunate situation managed to prove two truths. First, Ebersole at any speed -- and I would guess she was going 45 mph -- is a marvel, and her firecracker performance as the great stage diva Margo Channing is reason enough to pay this rare revival of the 1970 tuner a visit. Second, it's obvious that Ebersole at any speed -- or any other star -- would not be enough to warrant a full-scale revival of this decidedly mediocre show.
Granted, a more inventive director than Kathleen Marshall -- who provides some energetic choreography and a reasonably polished gloss -- might be able to make a little more out of the raw material. But let's face the facts: four of the theater's great talents, the librettists Betty Comden and Adolph Green and the consistently inconsistent songwriting team of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, managed to do little but create a pale imitation of the legendary movie All About Eve. The characterizations here are mostly two-dimensional, the tunes are mostly forgettable (and in the case of "Fasten Your Seat Belts," slightly bizarre), and the plotting mostly rudimentary.
Still, it's a nifty star vehicle -- it won Lauren Bacall her first Tony Award -- and Ebersole was alternately sympathetic, fierce, maddening, madly attractive, and thoroughly charismatic as Margo. If her voice was at times less than optimal, she nevertheless did full justice to her act-one closer "Welcome to the Theatre," and was remarkably moving on "Hurry Back."
Of course, for Applause to work at all, Margo needs to meet her match in Eve Harrington, the seemingly super-sweet fan who eventually takes over Margo's life, friends, and career. But Erin Davie -- who played Ebersole's daughter in Grey Gardens -- made this a lopsided battle, being not sweet enough at the beginning nor sour enough at the end, and primarily bland in the middle. Her rendition of Eve's big second-act number "One Hallowe'en" (in which we are, rather oddly, supposed to understand or even forgive Eve's horrid behavior because her dad called her a whore at age 9) failed to register much emotional power, and Davie's singing was a bit flat as well.
Marshall fared somewhat better in choosing the rest of the cast, notably a very funny Mario Cantone as Duane, Margo's hairdresser and confidant; a properly hard-edged Tom Hewitt as producer Howard Benedict, and a zesty Megan Sikora as head gypsy Bonnie, who leads the famed title number (here, strangely interpolated with snippets of songs, many from shows after 1970). Michael Park was a solid, handsome Bill Sampson, Margo's director and lover. Chip Zien and Kate Burton enlivened the proceedings as best friends Buzz and Karen Richards, even if Burton -- who deserves an Encores! show of her own -- ultimately seems way too smart for the role of a naive housewife.
You may not clap that loudly through much of Applause, but you'll want to rest your hands for Ebersole's final bow anyway.
A CurtainUp Review
Encores! Applause
By Elyse Sommer
The
original Broadway production of Applause played for 896
performances. There's no record of how many times that
production's star, Lauren Bacall, was too under the weather to
go on. However, if she had a bad cold, the flu or a toothache,
she had someone standing by to take over (Gretchen Wyler is the
only understudy I could track down). Not so Christine Ebersole
the Margot Channing of the Encore! revival of Applause.
Limited to just five performances, these popular concert
revivals of Broadway's golden oldies, are mounted without the
safety net of understudies for anyone. Thus, despite a de
habilitating flu, Ebersole once more proved the validity of that
oldest of show biz myths: the show must go on! And so, applause!
applause,
Christine (the double applause was
actually originally considered as the show's title) for being a
trooper to beat all troopers. And more applause for being
terrific even when singing with a voice less than fully
operational.
Applause may not be quite as golden an oldie as some of
the musicals incorporated into the satirical title song and
major production number, despite its stellar creative
collaborators: song writer Charles Strouse , lyricist Lee Adams
(the first inevitably linked to Annie and the latter to
Bye-Bye Birdie) and prolific book writers Betty Comden
and Adolph Greene. Yet, the musical adaptation of the
Oscar-winning All About Eve was as much a major star turn
for Lauren Bacall on stage as it had been for Bette Davis on
screen.
However, even though still showing occasional signs of her
illness at the penultimate performance I attended, Ebersole was
yet another memorable Margo-- less of a theatrical virago than
Davis and more vocally suited to the role than Bacall, but
nevertheless at once tough and charming. Her own unanticipated
back stage story lent a special poignancy and smokiness to her
standout solos, "But Alive," "Hurry Back" and "Welcome to the
Theatre."
While no song can match Davis' forever quotable "Fasten Your
Seatbelts," Kathleen Mashall brought a nice seatbelt-fastening
edge to the as usual semi-staged revival and her choreography is
eyecatchingly lively. The mostly black and white costumes were
fine, and so was the red gown in which Ebersole first appeared.
However Martin Pakledinaz, who's credited as costume consultant,
should have consulted more with whoever was responsible for two
of Ebersole's truly unflattering gowns. Ms. E. had enough to
contend with without someone trying to undermine her natural
good looks and perfectly nice figure.
Erin Davie, who was last on stage with Ebersole in Grey
Gardens, belted out a fine "One Hallowe'en" but she fell a
bit short in terms of being either persuasively mousy or
ruthlessly scheming. Michael Park was perfect enough as Bill
Sampson, the romantic lead, to make one look forward to seeing
more of him on Broadway. Mario Cantone was wonderfully acerbic
as Duane Fox, Margo's loyal hair dresser—happily without his
more usual overcooked gay shtick. Chip Zien and Kate Burton made
the most of Margo's temporarily disloyal friends playwright Buzz
Richards and his wife Karen, including the weak songs that were
written for them.
By the time you read this, this Encores! Applause will
have come and gone. It's unlikely to join the list of Encores!
productions to transfer to Broadway so hopefully you had a
chance to have rare second look at it and see that while it was
a hit but not a true musical classic, it nevertheless influenced
quite a few musicals that followed. Hopefully too, its game star
will be enjoying a well earned rest and full recovery.
An Indomitable Diva Played by, Well, an ...
Published: February 9, 2008Having the flu in February is the stuff that circles in hell are made of, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Still, those who attended the Thursday night opening of the Encores! concert production of “Applause,” the less-than-classic backstage musical from 1970 based on the classic backstage movie “All About Eve” (1950), had reason to be grateful that its star, the remarkable Christine Ebersole, was seriously flu-ridden. If she hadn’t been, the evening would have forfeited its only excitement.
In the indomitable style of the never-miss-a-performance Broadway diva she was portraying, Ms. Ebersole, who won a Tony earlier this year for her astonishing work in the musical “Grey Gardens,” insisted on going on that night. And from the moment she set foot on the stage at City Center, feverishly aglow in red sequins, the suspense was sharp. Her voice was not inaudible, but you could tell it hurt her to talk.
Would she succumb to laryngitis before the evening’s end? What would she do about the notes that were sure to elude her? Could she convey the fiery love of performing that was her character’s — and for that matter, the whole show’s — reason to be?
Before I respond to these urgent questions (oh, all right, she was great), let me add that this production, which runs through Sunday, almost instantly answered the usual big question posed by the Encores! series of vintage American musicals: Is this a show that is more than a period piece, a work destined to outlast the era of its birth? I say, regretfully but emphatically, no.
I saw “Applause” on my first trip to New York in 1971, and even to this green 16-year-old, it was clear that this show, which won the Tony for best musical in a lean year, was all about Lauren Bacall, who played the volcanic actress Margo Channing with such overwhelming presence that her froglike singing voice passed for a nightingale’s. Without the blinding center that was Ms. Bacall at full wattage, it would have been obvious that the show was only a rhinestone imitation of its diamond-hard prototype.
That’s “All About Eve,” of course, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Bette Davis as Margo and Anne Baxter as her scheming, fame-hungry assistant, Eve Harrington. The film is a triumphantly mannered edifice of jeweled epigrams and actorly hauteur, a gratifying fantasy portrait of the way sophisticated theater folk are supposed to talk and act.
Though its creative team included fabled pros like Betty Comden and Adolph Green and the composer Charles Strouse (“Bye Bye Birdie”), “Applause” suffered from being transported to 1970, a time when Broadway was nobody’s idea of a hip place to be. Though some of Mankiewicz’s stiletto-tipped zingers were retained, Comden and Green threw in a number of softer, matinee-crowd jokes. Mr. Strouse’s melodies were inflected with a perishable disco beat, and Lee Adams’s lyrics were littered with aspiringly groovy slang. (“You’re one of a kind, a fabulous bird, you’re out of your mind, and way out of sight.”)
Directed by Kathleen Marshall, not at the top of her game, the Encores! performers largely seemed perplexed as to how to play this material and mostly wound up looking disengaged. The post-hippie urban style of 1970 comes across as so leadenly soggy that it’s beyond sending up.
For the big ensemble piece — the title song, performed by a group of showbiz gypsies at Joe Allen’s, the theater watering hole — Ms. Marshall was reduced to interpolating a scrapbook homage to previous Encores! productions, like “Chicago” and “The Boys From Syracuse.” A mistake, since you should never remind people of what they’re missing.
Erin Davie, the young actress who was Ms. Ebersole’s co-star in “Grey Gardens,” plays the perfidious Eve with a glowering intensity more appropriate to Lady Macbeth. Michael Park, as Margo’s director/lover, and Tom Hewitt, as her producer, are handsome ciphers.
Chip Zien (as a playwright) and Kate Burton (as Margo’s best friend) did what they could with lines that often arrived stillborn. And the droll Mario Cantone, as Margo’s loyal hairdresser, reminded us that gay-is-cute characters did not begin with “Will and Grace.”
Then there was Ms. Ebersole, who in addition to being ill had to overcome the handicap of being less than perfectly cast. Davis and Ms. Bacall had become cast-in-marble sacred monsters by the time they played Margo. Ms. Ebersole is a protean performer of radiant affability.
Yet her performance on Thursday demonstrated that, even ailing, she can keep an audience not just on her side but in her lap. I’m not sure that the warm, nigh-maternal charm that Ms. Ebersole turned on here is Margo’s charm. But charming she was, and often very funny.
And how touching — and illuminating — to hear her navigate songs with only a fraction of her vast natural vocal range. If she couldn’t quite muster the energy to sell “But Alive,” the big number in which Margo visits a gay bar, she brought a bluesy, cabaret-style softness and soulfulness to the pedestrian love ballads “Hurry Back” and the unfortunate “Something Greater” (in which Margo finally realizes the value of “being to your man what a woman should be”).
But it was with “Welcome to the Theater,” an ambivalent anthem to show business, that Ms. Ebersole demonstrated the toughness and resourcefulness of the bona fide star. Rasping, whispering, barking and even occasionally singing her way through a number that promises, among other things, “a life of laryngitis,” she gave the song a shivery conviction I’d never heard in it before.
Here was someone living out before you some of the penalties exacted by a life in the theater — and since she drew rapturous, showstopping applause, some of its unmatchable pleasures as well.
APPLAUSE
Book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green; music by Charles Strouse; lyrics by Lee Adams; based on the film “All About Eve” and the original story by Mary Orr; directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall; scenic consultant, John Lee Beatty; costumes by Martin Pakledinaz; lighting by Kenneth Posner; sound by Peter Hylenski; concert adaptation by David Ives; music coordinator, Seymour Red Press. Presented by New York City Center Encores! At City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan; (212) 581-1212. Through Sunday. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.
WITH: Christine Ebersole (Margo Channing), Kate Burton (Karen Richards), Mario Cantone (Duane Fox), Tom Hewitt (Howard Benedict), Michael Park (Bill Sampson), Megan Sikora (Bonnie), Chip Zien (Buzz Richards) and Erin Davie (Eve Harrington).
Ebersole Rises to Win `Applause'
By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Critic
February 8, 2008
"Applause," the 1970 musical based on the classic show-biz saga "All About Eve," is what used to be called "a star vehicle" — a show written to play to the strengths of its lead performer, in this case film legend Lauren Bacall.
That Bacall couldn't really sing (and dance only passably) didn't matter. The woman has presence, the ability to command the stage, and the production, thanks to her box-office appeal, was a big hit, even winning the Tony Award for best musical..
Now well into middle age, "Applause" has been brought back for another look at "Encores!" — that invaluable concert series that dusts off old shows, streamlines the books and usually casts them with impeccable care.
Well, "Applause" does feel nearly 40 years old — with its hybrid score a mixture of vaguely pre-disco, pop-oriented melodies and more traditional musical-theater numbers by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams. And the book by such experienced hands as Betty Comden and Adolph Green now seems pretty thin, particularly its abrupt ending that brings the story to an unsatisfactory close.
For this production, director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall has turned to Christine Ebersole for the unenviable task of following Bacall in the role of theater diva Margo Channing. Ebersole may not have the iconic status of a Bacall, but she's a savvy stage performer (and a Tony winner last June for "Grey Gardens. Plus she can sing.
There was an added layer of drama at Thursday's opening when "Encores!" artistic director Jack Viertel announced in a pre-show curtain speech that Ebersole was still recovering from the flu and had missed several rehearsals but would still go on. Not only did she go on, the actress triumphed, even though her considerable star wattage was operating at less than full strength.
Trouper that she is, Ebersole managed to make it through even the more strenuous dance numbers put together by Marshall, including a big scene in a gay bar where the patrons look as if they are a cross between the Village People and models for Abercrombie & Fitch.
The other part of the dramatic equation in "Applause" is Eve Harrington, the cunning understudy who plots to move in not only on Margo's stage roles but her man as well.
As Eve, Erin Davie lacks the steely
sweetness that the conniving Eve should
display. She's also saddled with the show's worst songs,
particularly a number that seeks to explain the genesis of her
treacherous behavior.
Since "Applause" was essentially built around Bacall, the other supporting roles are just that. Yet Marshall has made sure these actors all get their moments, particularly the very funny Mario Cantone as Margo's acerbic dresser. The man knows how to snare a laugh.
Michael Park, as Margo's love interest, handles his songs with manly grace, while Chip Zien, Kate Burton and Tom Hewitt make the most of what are almost non-singing roles.
The big title song is sung — and superbly danced — by Megan Sikora as an aspiring chorus cutie waiting for her big break. Marshall demonstrates her affection for old-style Broadway razzmatazz in this number, which celebrates why performers do what they do. For applause, of course. Ebersole certainly deserves all the clapping.
Review: 'Applause' at New York City Center
BY LINDA WINER linda.winer@newsday.com
February 9, 2008
Christine bersole has been around the
sky too many times to play the star-is-born scenario. But
there she was Thursday, moments after her flu was announced
to the plugged-in opening-night crowd at the first of five
weekend performances as Margo Channing - a creature seared
into movie history by
Talk about your backstage drama. Ebersole, who won every
award the theater can give as dotty Edie Beale in "Grey
Gardens" two years ago, had to be the galvanizing center of
the Encores! exhumation of "Applause." This is the first
look at the adaptation of "All About Eve" since the show and
Bacall won Tony Awards back in 1970 - considered a black
hole of an era between the Golden Age of musical theater and
"A Chorus Line" in '75.
But Ebersole had been sick since last Saturday and wasn't
onstage until a dress rehearsal Wednesday that was buzzed
about on the Internet as catastrophic.
n corniest show-biz tradition, Ebersole
was terrific - dramatically and vocally - as the aging
actress overshadowed by the ambitious young Eve Harrington
(Erin Davie). Almost as newsworthy is the show, which turns
out to have been more sophisticated than its
middle-of-the-road star-vehicle reputation and surprisingly
ahead of its time.
The rhythmically astute melodies by Charles Strouse and
knowing lyrics by Lee Adams never joined the circuit with
their "Bye Bye Birdie" or, especially, Strouse's inescapable
"Annie." Nor is the book listed among the best by
Ebersole is naturally more adorable than Davis or Bacall as
Margo, the dragon lady who clings to stardom at her own and
everyone else's expense. And, even when her voice got raspy
toward the finale, Ebersole is a virtuosic singer who, as
pointed out by Encores! artistic director Jack Viertel in
his precurtain warning, doesn't need the songs transposed
down to Bacall's basso-speak.
For all her saucy double-takes, she doesn't soften the
brutality in the drunken breakdown, "Welcome to the
Theatre," and her bittersweet sorrow in other songs connects
the dots from this to Stephen Sondheim's "Follies."
Davie is a bit bland as the scheming Eve. But Kate Burton
has a snappy candor as the playwright's wife and Mario
Cantone doesn't overdo the mannerisms of the gay
hairdresser. Chip Zien, as the playwright, foreshadows the
disillusioned artists in Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along."
Marshall updates the references in the Broadway-gypsy satire
to include "Chorus Line" and "
Joe Dziemianowicz
Not much 'Applause' for 'Applause'
Friday, February 8th 2008, 6:41 PM
A scene from 'Applause'
Applause. Through Sunday at City Center, 131 W. 55th St. Tickets: $25-$95 (212) 581-1212
Before the curtain rose on the Encores! production of "Applause" on Thursday night, artistic director Jack Viertel announced that its star Christine Ebersole had been ill, missed several rehearsals, but was determined to go on.
Such drama. He might have lifted a line from "All About Eve," the pitch-perfect classic film the show is based on: "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."
And it was. The production is a wobbly work in progress of a 1970 musical that's shaky to begin with.
Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the book and Charles Strouse and Lee Adams wrote the songs. Between the four of them they came up with a handful of memorable scenes and songs - not a lot to work with.
Ebersole, even running on half a tank, manages to radiate star wattage as the maddening and mercurial actress Margo Channing, a role that won Lauren Bacall her first Tony.
Erin Davie (who gets an "introducing" credit even though she co-starred as Ebersole's daughter on Broadway in "Grey Gardens") plays Eve Harrington, the schemer who back-stabs Margo. She still hasn't given Eve the sweetness and venom the role needs. Her big number, "One Hallowe'en," failed to deliver much of a punch.
Michael Park, as Margo's lover Bill, fills the optimistic "Think How It's Gonna Be" with the right smoothness and swing, while Mario Cantone adds much-needed laughs as Margo's confidant and hairdresser - though he never comes within 10 ft of her mane. Kate Burton and Chip Zien, as Margo's pals, and Tom Hewitt, as a tough producer lend fine support.
Director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall's attempt to freshen the show backfired. She padded out the title number with anachronistic melodies from other musicals, and made a showstopper into something I wanted to just stop.
One moment I hated to see end was the song "Hurry Back." Bacall croaked her way through it decades ago. Ebersole mastered its tricky melody and made the song spill over with a bluesy ache. I loved it - but I still won't be hurrying back to see it again.
Encores! Applause
Theatre Review by Matthew Murray
The
healing and transformative powers of the theatre are well
documented, but a refresher course is always welcome - even
in what seems the least likely of places. One arrives not
long after the start of the City Center Encores! production
of Applause, which is running through Sunday evening.
Christine Ebersole, who last year won a Tony Award for her double-header performance in Grey Gardens, launches into one of the bouncier Charles Strouse-Lee Adams songs comprising the score. “I feel groggy and weary / And tragic,” she sings, “Punchy and bleary / And fresh out of magic, / But alive.” Boy, do you believe her.
The grog, the wear, the punch, and the blear come courtesy of the flu, which struck Ebersole last week and as of Thursday night had not yet fully released its grip. So severe was the illness that it forced her to miss several days of rehearsal, and proceed with performances only under strict orders from her doctor.
Watching and hearing her plow through the proto-disco inspirational “But Alive” while conquering a Village gay bar and its worshipful inhabitants, you’d never guess Ebersole was operating at less than full strength. If her typical brushed-golden vocals were slightly tarnished and she appeared more tentative on many sustained notes, she didn’t want at all for the decadent energy that defines her character as Margo Channing, Broadway Star.
Channeling her diminished voice into smoky speech patterns recalling both the role’s originator, Lauren Bacall, and Marilyn Monroe (nicely matched by Ebersole’s own slightly faded sexiness), Ebersole proved nothing less than a vivifying presence even in these most adverse of circumstances. And for the song’s few jaunty minutes, it seemed that this famously flat show would become the fully three-dimensional entertainment Ebersole is apparently convinced she’s starring in.
Alas, not quite. Even with Ebersole’s dynamism, an impressively credentialed cast, and director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall helming it all with a keener-than-usual application of her blaring Broadway flash, the rest of Applause still exhibits few signs of discernible life. Despite being based on the classic-of-classic backstage film All About Eve and the original story by Mary Orr, this is one of those rare shows that has a pulse but no sign of any blood.
Betty
Comden and Adolph Green’s book is a well-meaning but
paint-by-numbers treatment of the pungent relationship that
often exists between ambition and aging. Margo, for all her
success, has not adjusted to her age, and is finding her
career as difficult to manage as her affair with her
much-younger director boyfriend Bill Sampson (Michael Park).
Their relationship, built on mutual take-and-give and
misplaced distrust that dissipates in the glow of the
footlights, is just unreal enough to be threatened by the
arrival of a doting, dewy-eyed newcomer named Eve Harrington
(Erin Davie), who has her eyes on Margo in more ways than
one.
Eve is as charming as she is young and pretty, making it easy for her to play on Margo’s insecurities and insinuate herself into hand-me-down stardom. All she needs to do is roll over everyone involved in Margo’s current stage triumph: the producer (Tom Hewitt), the playwright (Chip Zien) and his wife (Kate Burton), and finally the audience. But one thing at a time.
The film, however, spared neither the claws nor the acid, presenting an unforgiving portrait of Eve and Margo as seen through both sides of the same looking glass and resulting in a barrage of bitchy badinage that became the stuff of Hollywood legend. In Applause, this is softened by a songstack that presents both women in uncharacteristically sympathetic terms: Margo as dependent as a schoolgirl on riding love’s roller coaster, and Eve as an unstable interloper barely held together by thrill of the masquerade.
Problems are also exacerbated by too many ensemble set pieces, which are led by a show gypsy (Megan Sikora) who charts Eve’s rise and explains the psychology of the show person (“You’ve had a taste of / The sound that says love / Applause”). While these numbers, the title song (which includes a wildly out of place, yet oddly entertaining, tribute to Encores! past) and “She’s No Longer a Gypsy,” helping the show temporarily freebase fun, they give the insider’s Broadway perspective on events the story simple doesn’t require.
What Applause needs are songs that better plumb the depths of the yearnings that drive all these people to their bad behavior. It doesn’t have them. The closest is Margo’s first-act closer, “Welcome to the Theatre,” an ironic anthem about the art that fulfills and destroys the soul in equal measure. Just about everything else, especially in the arid second act, seems to be filling time until the next backstabbing plot twist.
Marshall and her company make all this nothing pleasurable enough to watch, and the show - despite its most valiant attempts - is never boring. It even allows for some respectively restrained comedy from Mario Cantone has Margo’s flamboyant hairdresser, and elegant bit-part portrayals from everyone else, especially Park and Davie, who have enough chemistry with Ebersole to charge their zero-watt scenes to nearly perceptible brightness.
At least Ebersole burns brightly throughout, ragged voice or no, and is a sufficiently glimmering excuse for most of this. She’s a testament to the can-do spirit that’s too often missing in today’s absence-heavy Broadway, and she beautifully demonstrates how to turn a liability into an asset. One can’t have too much of that in Applause, a show too often demonstrates how to turn assets into liabilities.
MUSICAL SEDATION INSTEAD OF OVATION
By CLIVE BARNES
February 9, 2008 --
THE 1970 musical "Applause," though based on "All About Eve," was really all about Lauren Bacall, playing, as it were, Bette Davis.
At City Center Thursday night, for the first of the show's four-night run, it was all about Christine Ebersole.
There was a difference. Bacall, a superstar in film, was an unknown factor onstage, particularly as that smoke-wreathed voice was going to have to sing. But her name and image were iconic, before we even knew the word, and interest was as high as helium.
Ebersole is a star in a different orbit - we know she can sing, act and generally take the stage as her playground. And while we hardly needed a curtain announcement to warn us that she was under the weather, she was gallant and fine - which is more than I can say for the show itself.
In 1970, I wrote that Charles Strouse's music was "second-rate." I guess I was being kind, or perhaps I was still bewitched by the raspy brass (or was it a brassy rasp?) of Bacall's uniquely weird singing voice.
Lee Adams' lyrics are fractionally better than the music, and the book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green is probably better than either, although not a patch on Joseph L. Mankiewicz's original screenplay.
The musical's story of an aging star, Margo Channing (Ebersole), being pushed aside by a nasty, scheming fan/secretary/understudy, Eve Harrington (a sadly unimpressive Erin Davie), hews fairly close to the film - although that paradigm of critics, Addison DeWitt (played so silkily in the movie by George Sanders), is unfortunately excised, or rather morphed into a producer.
As staged by Kathleen Marshall, there were some nice turns on view from Kate Burton, Chip Zien, Michael Park and, particularly, Mario Cantone and Tom Hewitt. But frankly, without La Bacall, there isn't much about "Applause" to applaud.
