Anyone with half a slice of ham in his DNA who's watched Al Pacino tearing it up in the 1975 Dog Day Afternoon has to have thought to himself, Man, that looks exciting. I'd love to have done that! That probably accounts for the current reincarnation of Dog Day Afternoon as a stage play performed by New York's Barefoot Theater Company. The production was written and directed by its star, Francisco Solorzano, who takes on the role of Sonny, the desperate but not dishonorable man who, with his dull-witted sidekick Sal (John Cazale in the movie, Jeremy Brena here), walks into a bank in Brooklyn on a sweltering August day in 1972, looking to stage a robbery to raise the money for his male lover's sex change operation and winds up at the center of a hostage drama that involves platoons of cops and cheering, jeering crowds getting off on the chaos and energy. (At times, as when--in a scene not duplicated in the play--Pacino's Sonny marches in front of the bank, pumping his arm and screaming "Attica! Attica!" while the crowd, looking for any reason to knock the police, roars its approval, he was practically the event's emcee.) In a half-hearted attempt to turn this into a real play instead of a chance to live the dream of starring in a beloved classic, Solorzano tinkers with the time frame and assigning the characters monologues to fill in some of the back story. The result is both more heartfelt and a lot less ingenious than the last big restaging of a movie on a New York stage, the four-member-cast high-camp version of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. Dog Day Afternoon, which runs through August 15, is basically an actor's fantasy and a curiosity, but it may not be a bad way to kill a hot summer evening, especially for people who already have the movie well-memorized. But memories of Pacino, Cazle, Charles Durning, and Christopher Sarandon in the original continue to loom large.
In a glitzier section of the theater news department, auditions began this week for the Spider-Man musical that's planned for a fall 2009 opening. Nell Gluckman reports that the biggest news about the show so far is that it seems to be "attempting to bridge the gap between flashy musical theater and the firmly rooted New York rock scene. With music by Bono and The Edge of U2, the production's interest in a rock edge isn't a secret. But the producers and directors also seem to be cultivating a downtown vibe. Today's casting call is at the Knitting Factory, a venue with a history of performances of alternative music, booking bands such as Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo in their early years." It sounds as if Spider-Man is looking to be the bridge between two emerging trends, the musical-based-on-a-movie (Legally Blonde) and the stage-musical-drawing-on-indie-rock--or at least, music that's closer to "real" rock than what you got with something like Hair--as typified by Spring Awakening and the Obie-Award-winning Passing Strange by the great, weird singer-songwriter Stew. One of the show's casting directors told Gluckman that, by making its presence felt at the Knitting Factory, the show hopes to attract some "people who haven't thought they should go out for a Broadway show." It remains to be seen whether their efforts will result in something that will attract people--as in, ticket buyers--who hadn't thought they'd be caught dead going out to a Broadway musical. But if there has to be a Spider-Man musical, it's sort of nice to know that the people mounting it have actually put some thought into anything besides getting the web-swinging effects to work.