FringeNYC 2013: HORSE PLAY The Musical

Review by Ron Cohen · August 9, 2013

There’s a lot of exuberant youthful energy expended on Horse Play the Musical, but this piece, with a promising premise and a few agreeable tunes in its rock score, isn’t yet ready to trot out of the stable. It tells of the romance that develops between Daniel, a Central Park horse carriage driver, and Gea, an animal activist, who wants the carriages banned as animal abuse. Daniel, a recent arrival in New York from Pennsylvania Amish country, is immediately smitten with the demonstrating Gea. But it takes the whole show for him to win over Gea. He argues that their mutual love for animals binds them together and that horses do indeed belong in Central Park as part of the heritage of both the city and the animals themselves. And finally, it’s Gea herself who tells a court room after a demonstration against the carriages winds up in a brawl, it’s not the horses that are the problem. The problem is the cars that are assaulting nature in the city.

If this sounds like propaganda for horse carriages, it’s because it is. Mitch Kess, a creator of the book, music and lyrics, was a carriage driver (he also plays bass in the four-man band), and Ariel Fintzi, who co-wrote the book and supplied additional lyrics as well as some additional music (along with V. Bergman), has for over 30 years, as his program bio notes, “owned and operated carriages in New York and has trained horses and drivers to work in the city.” And in case you miss the point, the program includes two pages of data telling how well the carriage horses are treated.

However, this obvious investment in message has not yet produced a persuasive musical. The show, directed by Christian Amato, boasts a scintillating opening number, “The Streets of New York,“ that raises expectations, as the 10 performers group together to create the illusion of a carriage riding through the park, helped by photos of Central Park projected on  the upstage backcloth. But little that follows matches it, despite a talented cast. The music tends to fall into a familiar rock groove, the lyrics have a tendency to keep repeating  portentous but ambiguous phrases, and the connection between songs and script often seems tenuous. The choreography by Jac-Louis Snyman and Beverly Jensen contributes some lively moments, but just as often resembles little more than synchronized calisthenics.

A big problem is the script’s switching back and forth between the humans and the horses, who prattle on and bicker among themselves at length. It defuses the forward motion of the story, as well as muddying it. The six performers portraying the horses -- Eric Fletcher, Elisa Winter, Dominic Sellers, Alex Nicholson, Carla Euphrates Kelly and Jaime Swartz -- each get a chance to show off some formidable vocal prowess, taking to the stage like established rock stars. Portraying horses, however, is not their strong suit, even though the women on occasion throw back their hair, as if tossing a mane. Things become more confused, when some of the horses don coats over their costumes to take on bit parts as humans. Amato’s unfocused direction doesn’t do much to clarify things.

As Daniel and Gea, Tyler A. Rebello and Anna Rose are modestly charming and both sing well, but their romance, like the show itself, is a fairly tepid affair that never breaks into a winning gallop.