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Don’t be late, the best stuff in this light
and frilly star vehicle for Kristin Chenoweth comes at the beginning.
Indeed, once intermission has arrived, most of the really enjoyable material
has already passed. Chenoweth is as Chenowethy as her many fans hope and
expect, and she’s backed by a charming Brian D’Arcy James and the strong
stage presence of Marc Kudisch. Things get off to a fun start with the story
of Adam and Eve with James a delightfully naïve but macho Adam and Chenoweth
a shapely, take charge Eve. The show begins to turn strident and a bit too
earnest with the following story of a lover forced to choose between unknown
alternatives. (Think “door number one or door number two?” in a Persian
version of Lets Make a Deal.) It doesn’t completely recover when the
scene shifts to the 1960s in a tale of the wish for celebrity. Through it
all, however, there is the distinctive pleasure of watching Chenoweth and
the welcome opportunity to discover or re-discover a seventeen-song score
from the "golden age" of Broadway. (Well, OK, many experts cite the "golden
age" as running from 1944's Oklahoma! through 1964's Fiddler on
the Roof, and this show didn't open until 1966. But the score is by the
men who wrote the score for Fiddler and it was still running when this
follow-up opened. We'll stretch to include their later work.)
Storyline:
Three one-act musicals
based on (1) Mark Twain’s The Diary of Adam and Eve, (2) Frank R.
Stockton’s The Lady or the Tiger? And (3) Jules Feiffer’s
Passionella, A Romance of the ‘60s. The common thread is the battle of
the sexes. It forms a star vehicle for the lady in particular and, in
Kristin Chenoweth, this limited run revival has a star of sufficient
magnitude to succeed. Chenoweth, James and
Kudisch have some delightful songs to sing. They were written by Jerry Bock
and Sheldon Harnick following such landmark successes as Fiorello!
(Pulitzer) Fiddler on the Roof (Tony) and She Loves Me. Unlike
those landmark musicals, however, Bock and Harnick were also responsible for
the book for these three musicals and there they couldn’t quite reach the
level achieved by their book writing colleagues from the other hits. They
had included Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, Joseph Stein (with a little
help from Arnold Perl) or Joe Masteroff (and Miklos Laslo). in the original,
Alan Alda was Adam/Captain/Prince and it is a nice touch that his voice
booms through this theater as God in this revival forty years later.
Chenoweth delivers the
clear, crisp and clean vocal performance expected of her (you don’t need to
know the score to get every syllable of every word in every song). She is as
chipper, personable and lovely as can be. It is her show and she’s a delight
in the Adam and Eve first act, but she seems almost a self-parody in the
second. Brian D’Arcy James is charming, funny and in fine voice all night
long, rising above the material’s limitations in the second half, but Marc Kudisch never seems to be as engaging or ingratiating as is necessary to win
the audience over with some of his material. Since most of that material is
in the second act, he is at something of a disadvantage. He only has a
single scene in the first half. He appears as the snake. Still, he gets
kudos for his reptilian moves in that role. The only other member of the
fourteen-member cast that makes much of an impression is the woefully
underutilized, highly talented Walter Charles.
The other elements of
the production may come off better or worse at different points in the show,
but there is one that starts off spectacularly good and stays at that level all
evening long. That is the orchestra under the musical direction of Rob
Fisher and conducted by Rob Berman as they perform the charts orchestrated
by Jonathan Tunick. The original had been orchestrated by the great Eddie
Sauter but Tunick’s treatment for this fifteen member orchestra sound sharp,
lush, powerful and lovely from overture to exit music. Half of the orchestra
(mostly the strings) are in a box to the audience’s left while the other
half (mostly brass and woodwinds) are in the matching box on the right. The
last time we reviewed a show that used this setup here at Studio 54 was the
2004 revival of Pacific
Overtures, also orchestrated by Tunick. There it sounded thin,
uncoordinated and distracting. Here it sounds fabulous. Indeed, it’s the
best orchestral sound we’ve heard on Broadway since the last time Rob Fisher
was listed as Music Director and Rob Berman conducted – “Wonderful Town.”
Then, we said: “What a pleasure to listen to this big, bold, brassy score
played with such energy, precision and musicianship!” No reason to alter a
word of that judgment here.
Book, Music and Lyrics
by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. Additional book material by Jerome
Coopersmith. Based on stories by Jules Feiffer, Frank R. Stockton and Mark
Twain. Directed by Gary Griffin. Choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler. Music
direction and vocal arrangements by Rob Fisher. Orchestrations by Jonathan
Tunick. Conducted by Rob Berman. Design: John Lee Beatty (set) Jess
Goldstein (costumes) Charles LaPointe (hair and wigs) Dan Moses Schreier
(sound) Donald Holder (lights) Peter Hanson (stage manager). Principal cast:
Walter Charles, Kristin Chenoweth, Brian D’Arcy James, Marc Kudisch. |
