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September 26-October 2, 2002 art
Better Is BestA new revue, fiery Foxes, a pallid Blonde and lightweight Leonardo: Highs and lows in the theater season’s first big week.IT’S BETTER WITH A BAND Through Oct. 6, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215- 569-9700 Audiences and producers love musical revues. Producers love them because they’re generally easy to cast and stage, and they bring in the crowds. Audiences love them because they get to hear a portfolio of song hits without the longueur that can come with a book show. But critics get sniffy about revues. There’s no plot, no need for the songs to build an arc line, tell a story or delineate setting and character. The performers don’t usually function as “actors,” in a conventional sense. How much is there to say? In the case of It’s Better with a Band, there’s nothing to be sniffy about. This is an entirely captivating evening, elegantly compiled and directed, brilliantly performed. You won’t spend 90 more delightful minutes in a theater this season. Better’s organizing principle is to showcase the lyrics of David Zippel. The music is by 10 different composers (prominently Cy Coleman, Marvin Hamlisch and Alan Menken) and comes from a variety of sources. There is no writing nor concept credit given for the show, so I imagine it is director Joe Leonardo’s smart idea to omit spoken dialogue entirely, and let the songs speak for themselves. Speak they do. Zippel is well-established in theater circles, but might be a new name to some. He’s an extraordinarily protean lyricist, changing styles with ease -- perhaps because of this, he is popular with composers across a wide musical spectrum. He’s written wistful pop ballads, sardonic torch songs, grandstanding 11 o’clock numbers, snappy special material and everything in between. If Zippel has a specialty, it’s wry humor and cleverness, and it is amply displayed in the show. All of this helps Better, which takes advantage of songs familiar and unfamiliar (including a few world premieres from works in progress). By the strictest standards -- which is to say the likes of Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim -- Zippel isn’t quite first-rate (he’s a bit too glib, his imagery not sufficiently specific). Even that works for Better. We can feel frustrated with revues of the theater’s greatest material -- we want to hear these songs properly in context. But Zippel’s always engaging lyrics don’t suffer in a cabaret setting -- in fact, they take on a vivid new life. More than any of this, what the show has going for it is a cast of four performers, who -- individually and collectively -- couldn’t be, ahem, Bettered. Marva Hicks is a smoldering, wickedly entertaining personality who can detonate a satiric lyric in the blink of an eye, and whose voice is sultry, clarion and radiates personality. She gets the sassiest songs, and delivers them (“Camel’s Blues,” especially) consummately. Sally Mayes makes a specialty of playing the good-natured gal pal (what used to be known as the Eve Arden roles). She can project a wonderful vulnerability beneath even the sunniest exterior, and has a warm, limpid middle register. Mayes makes something deeply memorable of everything she does, especially “I’ll Be There For Him.” Judy Blazer is harder to characterize, but among even this elite company, hers might be the finest voice, running the gamut from theatrical belt to soprano sweetness. She’s also fabulous with a dry lyric -- try her in the kinky “The Measure of Love.” Next to these volcanic divas, John Barrowman’s lightweight baritone is more modest. But what sexy charm and physical grace he possesses! “You’re Living on an Elliott Garfield Grant” is an odd song to pull out of a show (The Goodbye Girl), but Barrowman’s show-stopping performance amply justifies the risk. An ensemble like this is a director’s dream come true, and Leonardo lets the evening unfold with a sense of utter confidence and energy. “Make Me a Star,” sings Marva Hicks, in a particularly delicious moment. If Better doesn’t do this for her -- hell, for everybody involved with the show -- there’s no justice in the theater. THE LITTLE FOXES Through Oct. 26, People’s Light & Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, 610-644-3500 “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.” That line from Ecclesiastes provided the title for Lillian Hellman’s classic American drama about a family of cunning spoilers. First performed in 1939, the play’s plot looks both backward to the deep South of 1900 in which it is set and forward in its prescience to contemporary America. It serves handsomely as an indictment of an entire century of American greed. As one of the characters tells us near the end of the play, “The century’s turning, the world is open… There are hundreds of Hubbards sitting in rooms like this throughout the country… and they will own this country some day.” This is one of those shows that makes you say, “They don’t write ’em like that anymore,” with characters who are both realistic and larger than life, with big curtain speeches and two intermissions, with both political passion and high theatricality, opulent sets (James F. Pyne Jr.) and gorgeous costumes (Marla J. Jurglanis). All you need is a cast of actors who can chew scenery and make it look not like excessive acting, but like a function of their excessive characters. Abigail Adams, director of this production, has found her cast.
The Hubbards have married decent people and crushed them: Oscar’s wife Birdie (Kathryn Petersen) is a “ninny,” at the mercy of her brutal husband and disgusted with her slimy son Leo (Edward C. Ellington). The plot turns on Regina’s husband Horace (Stephen Novelli), who is deathly sick -- in body and spirit. His attempt to reverse the Hubbards’ business deal fails -- as the good and weak always fail when the adversary is shrewd and immoral. Regina and Horace’s daughter Alexandra (Saige Thompson) is the slim hope for the future, innocent but not naive. Addie (CeCelia Ann Birt), the family’s devoted maid, says that there are those “who eat the earth and eat all the people on it, like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them do it.” Alexandra refuses to join either group. Her resolve recalls Hellman’s own refusal to conform. Not only Southern, but a leftist, the playwright famously replied to HUAC’s demand that she cooperate with them by writing, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” At the beginning of Act III, on a rainy afternoon, Alexandra is alone in the house with Addie, her wheelchair-bound father and her sweet Aunt Birdie, playing the piano and drinking elderberry wine. She bursts out with, “Just us. Be nice if it could always be this way.” And of course, The Little Foxes is about the impossibility of there being a world of only decent people, of “just us.” DIRTY BLONDE Through Oct.13, Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce sts., 215-546-7824 “Who cares about ‘nice’?” says a character in Dirty Blonde. “That’s a word for a piece of fish.” It’s also a word for the Wilma’s production of this play, which I recommended in last week’s “Critics’ Calendar” (Fall Guide, Sept. 19) as “a hilarious, moving, gorgeous fandango.” My recommendation was based on the version I’d seen in New York in which playwright Claudia Shear played the leading role, and Shear (Blown Sideways Through Life) is anything but “nice.” “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” Mae West famously said. And if ever anybody knew about the pleasures of excess and the bourgeois dreariness of niceness, it was West. A sexy comedian is a rare thing, and she built her iconic career on having her cake and eating it, too: being sexy and mocky at the same time. Dirty Blonde cleverly weaves together two stories. The frame play is about Jo and Charlie, two lonely New York misfits. She’s a tough girl from Brooklyn who has just about given up on herself, and Charlie is a video archivist, a plump librarian. They meet at Mae West’s tomb on her birthday and discover their mutual fandom -- and their friendship begins, based on the bizarre but utterly plausible premise that West represents everything they wish they were: free, sexy, stylish, clever. The second plot traces Mae West’s long life on the stage and off, her men, her shows, her arrests for shocking the public morality on stage, her undaunted spirit -- amused, pleasure-seeking, self-aware. The two threads are woven together by the same two actors playing the central characters in both stories, and the result should be more than merely a show-biz catalog, a series of party imitations of “Come up and see me sometime.” Jo and Charlie’s longings to be more than themselves, to grab some of the fun and happiness life seems to offer, to have the confidence of their own smarts, should be palpable. When Jo segues into Mae we should lose the dividing line, believing with her. Unhappily, neither of the actors -- Ryan Dunn as Jo/Mae and Kevin Carolan as Charlie/several of the men in Mae’s life -- is up to the task. Dunn seems to be doing a parodic, amateurish imitation of West when she’s in that costume, and misses Jo’s defensive toughness when she’s in that costume. (Nor does Dunn find the middle stage in the scenes where she’s Jo doing Mae; this role requires subtlety and shading, and none of it is here.) In fact, we never for a minute believe Dunn is not in costume -- she’s always “acting,” always a little uncomfortable in her skin, withheld and self-conscious. (The awful costumes by Michael Sharpe don’t help much either -- Jo’s clothes never look like clothes, but rather like costumes.) Neither Dunn nor Carolan can sing very well, so the show business scenes fall rather flat. When they do perk up it’s due to Albert Macklin, who plays a slew of characters from Mae’s past. Guest director Ethan McSweeny, making his Philadelphia debut, never finds the pace, and the energy drains out of the play, never to return. What is a lovely, very human comic drama full of surprises becomes superficial, going for easy laughs. It’s not a bad show, it’s just “nice” -- like a piece of fish. DAEDALUS Through Nov. 3., Arden Theatre Company, 40 N. Second St., 215-922-1122 Leonardo da Vinci explains the weather, invents the umbrella and changes careers from Italy’s greatest artist to her most imaginative scientist and military inventor. And that’s just the first 10 minutes. Ya gotta love that Renaissance! David Davalos’ Daedalus is grandly subtitled “A Fantasia of Leonardo da Vinci.” But that’s not enough for the playwright, who simultaneously wants to explore the web of political intrigue woven by Cesare Borgia and Niccolo Machiavelli. The concept is preposterous but intermittently clever. The script, however, is confusingly plotted, and freighted with a burdensome fusillade of jokes. An apter title would be Icarus -- over-confident and under-prepared, Davalos’ play ultimately crashes. The one-liners miss more often than they hit. Take, for example, Borgia’s description of his mistress, said with a leer: “I call her Primavera; I know she’s ready when I throw her ’gainst the wall and she sticks.” The first clause makes no sense because “primavera” is a pasta dish, not the pasta itself. (The literal meaning -- “spring” -- is also unrelated.) The second part is merely smutty, and (as Leonardo could tell you in a flash) anatomically confused. But even if the jokes were better and more precise, they cheapen the tone. Daedalus ultimately wants to be something highbrow -- think Stoppard-esque historical comedy. But a playwright who reduces the triumvirate of Borgia, Machiavelli and Vitellozzo Vitelli to a Florentine Larry, Moe and Curly Joe is more Adam Sandler than Stoppard. In Act II, when Davalos grasps at something bigger, he hasn’t earned sufficient respect that we will follow him. Aaron Posner’s fluid production is well-oiled but ultimately superficial (how could it be otherwise?). Among the cast, Scott Greer, Peter Pryor and Buck Schirner are treasurable comics who almost convince us that the material is stronger than it is. Greg Wood and Grace Gonglewski heroically substitute their personal charm when the play lets them down. Oddly (and perhaps tellingly), the actor with the smallest and most simply written part comes off best: Julie Czarnecki. It’s prettily packaged, and the opening-night audience laughed a lot. But the real message of Daedalus is that a man writing about the Renaissance and a Renaissance man are not at all the same thing. 
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