Cartoonishness

But while Katy Perry similarly threw herself into the spirit of the event – crowdsurfing, dancing with a security guard, charming the audience – her peculiar combination of newfound political conscience and longstanding predisposition to DayGlo cartoonishness was simultaneously intriguing and baffling, as a woman delivering between-song speeches about the necessity of taking back power surrounded by dancers dressed as flowers and giant pom-poms covered in fluorescent fur was perhaps wont to be.

Peggy Cosgrave, under the direction of Penguin’s artistic director, Joe Brancato, gives Clara a genial, down-to-earth kindness that keeps her simplicity from crossing over into cartoonishness — a real risk given the jokey facility of Mr. Dudzick’s writing.