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Beautiful

nytheatre.com review by Julie Blumenthal
August 15, 2005

How do you represent a muddle? As clearly as possible. Unfortunately, the new musical Beautiful pretty much represents a muddle by presenting a muddle.While watching the show’s opening performance this weekend, I recalled growing up on Italian opera. I didn’t speak Italian—no one in my family does—but I understood opera because the music, the staging, and the emotion were so strong and clear that the words became, to an extent, incidental.Unfortunately, this occurred to me because of the frequent lighting errors, sound snafus, and generally uninspired staging I was witnessing. It was clear there were a lot of technical opening night bobbles, and perhaps if I’d been able to see or hear all the action, I might have had a more inspiring experience. But while any work would be impaired by this, I think a strong work holds up to the “opera test”, and Beautiful does not; there's an overall sameness to the music and direction, and a lack of strong arc to the text, which does not carry the show through.The story of a painter at a crossroads in his personal and professional lives, the “muddle” being represented is his own state of being, as he debates whether to “sell out” artistically in order to make a living, and whether to turn the page on memories of his ex-girlfriend, who was both lover and inspiration. David Anders (of Alias fame) turns in a credible, well-sung, but largely one-note performance. This is due not to him, but to the limits of the material he’s given. As his best friend, who’s mastered the sell-out and is reveling in the spotlight, Rodney Hicks steals the show vocally and energetically. However, the most appropriate performance comes from Nikka Lanzarone as the ex, who spends most of her time onstage looking out from a picture frame. (The set, metal frames and floating “canvas,” is clunky and distracting.) She’s playing a ghost, a memory, and for that reason her arc doesn’t need to follow a dynamic trajectory. But while it fulfills the purpose of her role, the entire show is mired at the same crossroads, and this renders Beautiful unclear and uncompelling.There are flashes of wit in Michael Arquilla’s text, and Stephen Barnett’s music is pleasant, if not memorable. JEM Productions has assembled a strong cast (though Elena Zazanis is simply too young, and her accent too unsteady, as Vivan, the British hot-shot artist’s agent). Certainly the story of an artist struggling with life, love, and commercialism will always be timely and watchable. But Beautiful has a ways to go in telling a story of confusion without confusion of its own. The piece was developed at Tisch, and I think these two young artists have their own trajectory to follow in building their craft before Beautiful becomes compelling theater. Director Al Sgro has a challenging venue in the Village Theater—a lovely space, but not ideal for staging a 14-person rock musical—but his direction, as with the book and music, has quite an arc yet to uncover.Talent, as Beautiful explores, requires devotion, discipline, and hard choices before it translates into art. I’m curious to see what this group comes up with further down that path.