The Blue Flower
Opening Night: November 9, 2011
Closing: November 27, 2011
Theater: Second Stage Theatre
Spanning two continents and half a century, The Blue Flower explores the romantic and tumultuous relationships between four young friends – three artists and a scientist – as they create a world of art, revolution and passion amidst the turbulence and destruction of the World Wars.
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November 10, 2011
Portraying an eccentric Austrian artist in the new musical “The Blue Flower” at Second Stage Theater, Marc Kudisch performs the challenging feat of singing several snatches of song in a made-up language created by his character, Max. It’s called Maxperanto, and it’s incomprehensible, naturally, although the talented Mr. Kudisch sings it with the same expressive gusto he brings to the rest of his performance. Unfortunately these moments of sweetly sung gibberish are not the only ones in this high-minded muddle of a musical that may leave you scratching your head.
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November 9, 2011
"The Blue Flower” takes place in the first third of the 20th century, mostly in Germany, against a backdrop of WWI, Weimar and the rise of Nazism. Three of the main characters are visual artists involved in the avant-garde. And the score is . . . gentle country music.
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November 10, 2011
The catchphrase "a new musical" is hardly descriptive of "The Blue Flower," the work by Jim Bauer and Ruth Bauer at Second Stage: There are songs, story, actors and an eight-piece band, but none of them are used in a traditional manner. This is an adventurous, one-of-a-kind and perhaps unforgettable affair; as such, it is likely to thrill a specialized audience while baffling patrons who wander in unsuspectingly. Piece is quite as startling as "The Adding Machine" or "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," although it might better be described along the lines of Tom Stoppard’s "Travesties" or Woody Allen’s "Zelig."
READ THE REVIEWNovember 9, 2011
As the first act of the strangely captivating "The Blue Flower" continued to unfold, part of my brain started searching for a way to characterize its unusual form. Suddenly, I had an odd thought: It’s as if Hans Richter made a musical. Richter was an avant-garde German filmmaker with Dada roots who made the first full-length surrealist film, "Dreams That Money Can Buy" in 1947. So when in Act 2 the characters attend a licentious party at which the host screens Richter’s 1928 abstract animated short "Vormittagsspuk" ("Ghosts Before Breakfast"), I figured that perhaps I wasn’t too far off the mark. But to properly enjoy this insinuating, intensely creative show, you need to put aside intellectual questions and simply take the ride. Exotic and playful, suffused with empathy, this "Flower" blooms with a haunting beauty.
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November 9, 2011
If you had told me seven years ago, when I first encountered The Blue Flower in the inaugural season of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, that it would ever be playing at a mainstream Manhattan nonprofit, I probably would have laughed at you. Scratch that: definitely laughed at you. After all, this is a show that fuses country music with Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Dada, the rampant excesses of the Weimar Republic, and a completely invented language — none of which alone remotely guarantees success, and all of which together would seem to actively repel it. Yet Jim and Ruth Bauer’s indisputable masterpiece has somehow burst open at Second Stage, and though it’s receiving a somewhat less-than-masterful rendition, it automatically qualifies as one of the season’s most electrifying and unmissable musicals.
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