Monday, June 01, 2009

New York: "Everyday Rapture"

"Sherie Rene Scott—'one of Broadway’s biggest, brightest semi-stars,' she smiles with cold teeth—has co-written, with Dick Scanlan, the excellent, well-titled 'Everyday Rapture' (at Second Stage). Scott expertly conveys the internal spiritual drama of an attractive, talented Midwestern Mennonite ('They’re nonjudgmental, if you don’t mind the shunning thing') struggling to reconcile her upbringing with Broadway’s Destiny of Me. As she says in a droll, self-deprecating way that’s rare in this genre of showing off, 'I was searching . . . for a way to be one with God while a lot of other people clapped.' Scott has a good voice, backed by a pair of jazzy singers called the Mennonettes, and the show is exceptional for the expertise of its collaborators: Tom Kitt’s elegant orchestrations; Christine Jones’s zany, eye-catching set; Michele Lynch’s clever choreography. Michael Mayer has directed the raffish proceedings to a T. The show won’t make Scott a star, but it goes one better: it makes you feel the miraculous in the everyday."

John Lahr, The New Yorker, June 1, 2009

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