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November 26, 2010
A thrilling look at a boro haul
NY Post
by Frank Scheck
Even by the daunting standards they've set for themselves, the Civilians' latest effort is a stretch. "In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards" is the musical-theater equivalent of years' worth of news about the Brooklyn development. In documentary-theater style, the show details the uproar caused by Bruce Ratner's plan to develop 22 acres of downtown Brooklyn for high-rise housing and a sport arena.
It's complicated, but the show, written and staged by Steven Cosson, makes it go down easy, helped along by Michael Friedman's jaunty score.
...Performed just several blocks away from the project site itself, "Footprint" is as entertaining as it is enlightening. Clearly impassioned, it never stoops to polemics.
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Ukulele Ike is my favorite symbol of the era when the point of a musical was the star, not the story, and I thought of him last week when the ultimate opposite of those shows opened at a theater in Brooklyn. In the Footprint dramatizes the long community fight over a plan to develop a 22-acre tract, called Atlantic Yards, into a complex of tall buildings that would tower over Brooklyn’s nearby residential neighborhoods.
Its songs and monologues are drawn from hundreds of interviews with residents, businessmen, politicians, legislators, lawyers, state and city officials, activists, and bloggers who have been involved for much of the past decade in a textbook case of urban land use. Public agencies mentioned in the show’s songs include the New York State Urban Development Corporation, and one song explains the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, concluding with the phrase “And that’s how eminent domain works.” Definitely not a ukulele act.
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"We laughed, we cried, we sang about ULURP." (That's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, for the uninitiate.)
That seems to be the general consensus about a new theatrical production, indeed a musical, that tries to tell the story of the Atlantic Yards controversy, going back to 2004. That's when Bruce Ratner bought the Nets and announced he was moving them to Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.
In general, reviews of "In the Footprint," are positive, with the New York Times' Charles Isherwood offering what must be considered a rave, calling it "fresh, inventive and frankly as entertaining as any new work of musical theater to open this fall."
Posted by eric at November 26, 2010 11:45 AM