nytheatre Archive
2000-01 Theatre Season Reviews

A Child's Garden has to be one of the gloomiest musicals I've ever seen.  For a show that presumably intends to celebrate the innocent joys of youth, the merriment quotient is alarmingly low. With its dirgelike score of too-similar art songs, its unvaryingly low-energy staging, and its generally maudlin ambience, this is a show that's tough to sit through, let alone enjoy.

The conceit of the show is that Robert Louis Stevenson, poor and alone and consumptive in San Francisco, is suffering from a bad case of writer's block and in danger of forfeiting the advance on his new book. Suddenly, he remembers the last happy summer of his youth, on his grandfather's estate in Scotland. The seeds of a new book idea are planted: Stevenson's reminiscences become A Child's Garden of Verse, and his career is saved.

It definitely seems like a good idea for a musical, but writers Louis Rosen, Arthur Perlman and Charlotte Maier have managed to craft one that tends to prove that supposition wrong. Apart from the overall lifelessness of the thing, the piece is littered with problems that make it not only dull but also confusing. Why does Stevenson interact with his childhood memories some of the time, while at other times he maintains a watchful distance? Why is the set representational some of the time and symbolic other times? Why has Lori Steinberg directed the company to perform every musical number the same way, facing the audience square-on with painted-on expressions of wonderment that remind us of Judy Garland telling Mickey Rooney how much she believes in him?

Why has robust, rosy-cheeked Aloysius Gigl been cast as the consumptive Stevenson? (Gigl sings beautifully, but he is never less than the picture of health.)

Why, most importantly, have the authors distorted the actual story of Stevenson's life (as we learn reading the informative lobby display about)? This show is singularly ineffective at bringing Stevenson's famous verse to life on the stage. If A Child's Garden isn't even remotely connected with the facts of Stevenson's life, then I wonder what its point can possibly be.

To begin their 85th season, Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre has had the inspired idea of performing An American Family, a Yiddish adaptation (by Miriam Kressyn) of Sylvia Regan's 1940 play Morning Glory. It tells the story of a family of Jewish immigrants living in New York City's Lower East Side, from 1910 until 1931, and the reason I call it inspired is that this is the way this play should be seen, I think: in the language of its immigrant characters, mostly Yiddish with a smattering of English (when dealing with outsiders) and a good deal more of whatever's in-between.

There's also a fair amount of impromptu singing, dancing, and piano playing; and a joyous bar mitzvah celebration capped by a fervent speech given by the bar mitzvah boy. It all adds up to a vivid portrait of the Feldermans and their extended family in a way that an English production of Morning Star could not: director Eleanor Reissa and her collaborators bring the immigrant experience to life in this compelling and entertaining work.

An American Family is as much panorama as straightforward narrative, using its prototypical Felderman clan to illustrate many of the pivotal events of the period. We watch Becky Felderman, the widowed head of the family, study for her American citizenship test; we witness the nearby fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where the three Felderman girls are employed; we see the storm clouds of World War I and the Russian Revolution gather, tearing the extended family apart. Becky's son-in-law Irving, a struggling songwriter, pooh-poohs Hollywood as a passing fad; meanwhile Becky's willful eldest daughter Sadie becomes a powerful garment manufacturer, eventually finding herself embroiled in a battle with labor unions at the height of the Great Depression.

It's a sweeping exploration of what America does to its newcomers, and though it's unfashionably jingoist it's far from the rosy depiction you might expect. An American Family is also a deeply sad play: the happy celebration of Becky's son's bar mitzvah is matched time and again by tragic events both public and personal.

Director Reissa has staged the piece with warmth, sensitivity, and simplicity. The cast is fine, with particularly good work by Steve Sterner as composer Irving Tashman, Spencer Chandler as Becky's other son-in-law Harry, Deana Barone as Becky's youngest daughter Esther, and Cary Woodworth as two generations of Felderman bar mitzvah boys. Sheila Rubell is quietly indomitable as the matriarch Becky; and the great Mina Bern is luminous in a heartfelt cameo as Harry's Aunt Malke (a role specially written into the show for this legendary actress).

Judith Jarosz, Producing Artistic Director of Theater Ten Ten, has conceived and created a musical revue that sprints through four well-known comic operas (H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, and The Mikado) with a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of creativity. The musical direction of Alan Greene is spirited and toe-tapping as he, on the keyboard, and his three instrumentalists, Juliana Boehm (violinist), Allen Hale (flutist), Deborah Stein (flutist) play with a verve not found in groups many times their size.

Deborah Stein puts down her flute to become Buttercup on the H.M.S. Pinafore. With a confident mezzo soprano voice and a twinkle in her eye she is soon joined by the other vocalists. The love songs and ballads are delivered by the mellow, sweet-voiced Jason Wynn and Leah Horowitz. Horowitz’s beautiful soprano voice is a joy to hear as she gracefully reaches the highest notes, holds them and then excites the audience with a perfect trill. Greg Horton delivers pomposity and wit with perfect articulation and feeling as both the Captain of the Pinafore and the Pirate King; but don’t miss him prancing about as one of the band of fairies in Iolanthe. The Mikado’s "I’ve Got a Little List" is always a showstopper and Steve Aron’s performance has the audience roaring as he presents his own updated version with great aplomb.

Occasionally--to round out a trio, dance and prance, or to sing four-part harmony--instrumentalists Allen Hale and Juliana Boehm also join the happy group. Lighting and a very simple set by Kari Martin add just the proper tone. Costumes are lighthearted and recognizable; each segment begins with an interlude by the instrumentalists as they don the appropriate headgear for the next scene (for example, three-cornered hats for The Pirates of Penzance). All in all, it's a seamless production by a group of hugely talented people. And, oh yes, be ready for the surprise appearance of a foursome of Kukla-ish hand puppets to sing "Poor Wandering One."

The spring musical at Theater Ten Ten is always an event to relish. An Evening With Gilbert and Sullivan carries on their great tradition. Talent, creativity and professionalism abound. And it’s terrific fun.

Poor Patrick Quinn.

He plays quintessentially silly-ass Englishman Lord Evelyn Oakleigh in the new Paper Mill Playhouse revival of Anything Goes. Lord Evelyn has a big second act number called "The Gypsy in Me," in which this heretofore stodgy and somewhat obscure supporting character gets to make a comic fool of himself over evangelist-chanteuse Reno Sweeney, abetted by a typically naughty Cole Porter lyric. But most Lord Evelyns don't have Chita Rivera as their Reno; as soon as the irresistibly czardas-y melody kicks up, so too do Rivera's legendary legs. Result: a delicious, galvanizing show stopper. But it's not Patrick Quinn--terrific as he is--whom we are looking at.

What can I say: Chita Rivera is a force of nature, a living theatrical treasure, the last of the great leading ladies of Broadway's Golden Age. It's a privilege--not to mention an incomparable pleasure--to see her on stage, ageless and commanding and as sexy as ever, even in a not-so-obvious vehicle like Anything Goes. She puts over the famous songs--"I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," "Friendship"--through sheer force of personality. When she takes center stage to dance a torrid solo in "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," she's breathtaking; and when she shows up, incongruously but fabulously in a spangled black costume that looks suspiciously like the one she wore as Anita in West Side Story some forty-odd years ago--for her sizzling accompaniment to Quinn's solo--she's unforgettably, thrillingly stellar.

Which is not to imply that this Anything Goes is a one-woman show. Far from it: Rivera's co-stars are terrific. Bruce Adler, so funny in Broadway's Crazy for You not so many years back, is hilarious as Public Enemy Number 13 Moonface Martin, playing him more like a third-rate Yiddish comic than an Edward G. Robinson-wannabe. The aforementioned Patrick Quinn similarly milks as many laughs as possible from silly Lord Evelyn. And Stacey Logan is convincingly spunky-yet-demure as good girl Hope Harcourt, Lord Evelyn's intended.

The revelation in the company, for me at least, is George Dvorsky, who proves himself a splendid song-and-dance man as Billy Crocker, the man Hope really loves. Dvorsky has a rich, pure voice that works magic with ballads like "Easy to Love" and "All Through the Night"; he's also a fine dancer and an assured comic: his easygoing, good-natured presence anchors the show.

Director Lee Roy Reams has staged the show with exactly the airy touch that a revival like this requires: heavy on gorgeous songs and foolish shtick but light on things like logic and common sense, Anything Goes, in Reams's capable hands, is gossamer. Yet there's also a palpable feeling of unbridled joy on the Paper Mill stage--a sense of unironic, unalloyed fun that's too often missing from the big-budget musical shows on Broadway these days.

There's also a wonderful, though brief, moment of near-historic import: in the long dance sequence that follows "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," some of Michael Litchfield's dancers burn up the stage with some stunning Fosse-esque moves. Rivera and Reams--both old Fosse hands themselves--have somehow passed on the raw energy of the master to their younger colleagues.

I haven't actually said yet what a delight it is to hear this grand old score again in a theatre, so I'll say that now. The timeless wit of lyrics like "You're the Top" and "Anything Goes" is a treat. And the irresistible melodies of songs like "Buddie, Beware" and "Easy to Love" linger long after the curtain comes down.

Just in case you still have doubts, I'll close by saying that Chita Rivera all by herself is worth at least ten forty-minute train rides from Manhattan to Millburn, New Jersey. So you have absolutely no excuse for letting Paper Mill's Anything Goes pass you by. It may be the most fun Broadway musical you see all year. 

Book of the Dead (Second Avenue) is, quite simply, brilliant. It's an intense and beautiful rumination on the way we live now: a vivid and provocative realization of the living death that is contemporary American popular culture. It's also an exploration of communication and connection and, more to the point, of the ways we fail to accomplish either; it's about seeing and observing, hearing and listening: paying attention. It's theatre at its most essential and most challenging.

John Moran, who is the author, director, composer, and set & slide designer of this remarkable work, has divided Book of the Dead into three "chapters." Chapter I is titled "The Ancient Egyptians" and I have to admit that, while visually and orally stunning, it struck me as being somewhat confusing. Then I realized, well into Chapter II, that Chapter I is a kind of instruction manual for Book of the Dead. Moran teaches us here how to see (and hear) his play; he sets forth, as it were, rules of engagement. Pay attention to them and you'll be well-rewarded.

Chapter II is called "The Field of Time." The time, specifically, is a single day--a particular but ordinary one, whose progress is magically charted in this segment, which takes up the bulk of Book of the Dead's running time. What happens in a day on Second Avenue? People grab breakfast at McDonald's; they watch TV; they stop at the corner store for a pack of cigarettes; they watch some more TV; they head into the local bar for a drink. 

No big deal; or it wouldn't be if Moran didn't deconstruct and then reassemble the moments of our day, placing them on stage as under a microscope, letting us really see what they look like. Snippets of random conversation and breakfast transactions conjoin to create a cacophony of disconnected triviality in the McDonald's scene. Similarly, tiny excerpts of bar chat combine with a deejay's pulsing bass and mirror ball to form--breathtakingly--a sad, chaotic, dissonant collage of loneliness: careful itemization of the transactions of our daily life morphs into a catalogue of our desperation.

Moran contrasts the missed connections of our days with the false ones of our collective fantasies. So he turns the spotlight, briefly but pointedly, on the talkative neighborhood busybody that everyone tries to avoid making eye contact with at the local grocery. And he replays--over and over--the banal images of community and fellowship that dominate so much television advertising these days.

What does it all mean? I think that one of the fundamental notions of Book of the Dead is that anything means whatever we make of it: it's the richness of Moran's imagery and the sharpness of his selections that make this particular work so potent and insightful. Chapter III, by the way, titled "The Wheel of Existence" and focused on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, provides some useful, if superficial answers. The real rewards of Book of the Dead, though, come from active engagement in the whole process of the show.

That process includes some remarkable theatrical wizardry, by the way. Book of the Dead, quite apart from its content, is a triumph of stagecraft. It doesn't resemble any other theatre piece that I'm aware of: it's a stunning amalgam of soundscape (recorded sounds, music, and dialogue) and stage pictures (spare, evocative sets framing ten agile performers) magically melding one into another with seamless precision. Each moment in Book of the Dead has been executed with astonishing fidelity: watch, for example, the succession of TV commercials that Moran peppers his show with: a faux-Calvin Klein perfume ad, for example, or--whimsically, wonderfully--a mindlessly banal "Day After Thanksgiving Sale" spot for "Lacy's" Department Store. The laughter of recognition that accompanies these pieces gives way first to honest appreciation for their artfulness; and then to a more thoughtful assessment of what these virtuosic little one-minute dramas really mean.

Book of the Dead isn't perfect, and even at just an hour in length it's a bit of a long haul. But if you're interested in theatre you owe it to yourself to see it: the profound truths it reveals--and the profound way it reveals them--will excite and challenge you mightily.

Despair's Book of Dreams and the Sometimes Radio is such a rich, dense work of theatre that one viewing is probably not enough to do it justice (nor is this review likely to, but I'll try my best). When we enter the theatre, we see a mass of clutter onstage--a pile of clothes in one corner, a filthy old toilet at the opposite end, assorted debris in between. Cleverly hidden (though not at all concealed) are three musicians--a cellist disguised as a potted plant, a guitarist who doubles as a hat rack, and a pianist with a lampshade on his head. The lights dim, and we hear the sound of approaching footsteps--lots of them, enough to get whoever it is up an awful lots of stairs. And then, the door opens.

Where are we? We're in the attic of a man's imagination, a man whose name is Connie. He's purposeful in a forced way; he's clearly at the end of his rope, the very essence of loneliness and despair. He quickly focuses on the huge object that dominates the room, which, once he pulls its drop cloth away, is revealed to be an enormous antique radio. He's fixing it, he tells us, and after some fitful fiddling with knobs and tubes it does indeed come to life, disembodied voices embodied by a quartet of actors who drift on and off stage.

The radio is a metaphor, of course: it's a repository for Connie's memories. The snippets we hear from it--poems, stories, and journal entries from long ago--are reminders of a past that's partly dreamed and partly remembered. Despair's Book of Dreams follows Connie through these remembrances, until at last the despair starts to fall away.

The show is spoken and sung by the four memory figures and Connie (an extraordinary performance by the show's creator Kirk Smith). The dialogue feels more like poetry than prose most of the time, and the score--an eclectic collection of songs variously influenced by blues, country, and rock 'n' roll esthetics--is evocative and quite lovely. It's beautifully played by Smith, Ken Burchenal (guitar), Alex Krigsfeld (piano), Michael Werst (cello), and Matthew Patterrson (drums). Text and music are fascinating and complex, and I know I didn't catch all of their nuances and subtleties on first hearing. What I'm certain of is how affecting they were, providing an honest sense of catharsis we don't often get in the theatre.

Bonnie Cullum has staged the show exquisitely, providing it with clarity and focus, despite its unusual form. Ann Marie Gordon's set is miraculous, its jumble of discarded fragments a stunning literalization of the show's themes. Kari Perkins's costume design, Jason Amato's lighting design, and Ken Burchenal and Kirk Smith's sound design all serve the piece splendidly.

Despair's Book of Dreams and the Sometimes Radio is visiting New York from Austin, Texas, home of Cullum's Vortex Repertory Company. We're lucky to have it. There's a spark of genius in this remarkable and original work; I hope Smith and Cullum come back soon to astonish us again. 

Minimalism achieves new heights (depths?) in Eli's Comin', Diane Paulus's new music theatre piece at the Vineyard. Paulus is credited in the program as director and co-creator (with Bruce Buschel), but from the looks of the finished work she's done very little creating or directing here: Eli's Comin', resolutely untheatrical, barely registers even a song cycle. 

Four women--Ronnell Bey, Mandy Gonzalez, Judy Kuhn, and Anika Noni Rose--sing nineteen songs by Laura Nyro. Some of them are familiar, like "Stoney End" and "And When I Die"; some of them are, to me anyway, utterly obtuse, like "The Wind" and "Emmie." They're sequenced to form the vaguest of narratives--something on the order of a young woman arriving in the city; encountering two street women (prostitutes?) and a mother figure; battling something (I'm not sure exactly what, but it was definitely menacing and male); and then emerging victorious. (I'm reading a LOT into what I saw here, friends.)

The action consists of taking off and putting on various accessories, such as scarves, shoes, and gloves. Once in a while, Wilson Jermaine Heredia (the Tony winning "Angel" of Rent) appears and does what's supposed to be a sensuous dance with one or more of the women.

And that's it. As a curtain call, in a too-little, too-late attempt to provide something like entertainment for the paying audience, the entire ensemble does a spirited rendition of Nyro's "Wedding Bell Blues."

The rest of the time, for about seventy minutes, we are alternately dazed and confused and eventually stultified. We should also be outraged--that any producer would have the nerve to charge $49.50 for a show so thoroughly lacking in content and merit; that, perhaps more to the point, no little child could be found to tell the folks who created Eli's Comin' that their emperor has absolutely no clothes on at all.

Kuhn, Gonzalez, Rose, Bey, and the woefully underused Heredia don't do anything terribly wrong here. But neither do they do anything terribly right. The band, led by Joe Rubenstein, sounds okay.

Only the most dedicated musical comedy fans are going to know anything about Foxy, the latest of Musicals Tonight!'s invaluable concert revivals of lost shows of yesteryear. Here's what they'll probably recollect: that it was crafted as a vehicle for the great clown Bert Lahr, and that Lahr won a Tony Award for this, his last Broadway appearance; that it features a score by Robert Emmett Dolan and Johnny Mercer and a book by Hollywood Ten screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr.; that it was disliked by producer David Merrick, whose attentions at the time were more focused on Hello, Dolly!, which arrived in New York about a month before Foxy; that it takes place in Canada's Yukon Territory, and--remarkably--had its pre-Broadway tryout there as well; and that, practically alone among major '60s Broadway musicals, it was never recorded.

That last factoid, all by itself, makes this revival of Foxy enormously welcome: here is the chance to hear a score that has been honestly lost for nearly forty years. It turns out to be pretty good, too, with lyricist Mercer in top form on comic numbers like "Bon Vivant" (a tour de force for Lahr's character), "The Honeymoon Is Over" (a lament sung by two women who haven't yet, technically, become wives), and "Many Ways to Skin a Cat" (in which the two leads devise their plan to get even with three welching associates and thus set the plot in motion). There's also a lovely ballad for the obligatory sweet young couple, "Talk to Me Baby," and a couple of rousers for the full company ("Rollin' in Gold," "My Night to Howl").

Lardner's book, too, is far better than you'd expect, given Foxy's status as one of the theatre's more obscure flops. It's an adaptation of Ben Jonson's Volpone, with the title character recast as Foxy J. Fox, a genial but greedy old fellow who is abandoned by his pals Bedrock, Shortcut, and Buzzard right after he tells them about a gold strike at the Klondike River. A con man named Doc Mosk happens to be nearby, and it's not long before he has teamed up with Foxy in a scheme to swindle that avaricious trio out of all their wealth. Foxy and Doc arrive in the Yukon with an enormous chest that they claim is filled with gold (but is actually filled with sacks of buckshot); they announce that Foxy is dying and looking to appoint an heir. As expected, Bedrock, Shortcut, and Buzzard instantly apply for the position, and the fun begins.

Subplots concern Doc's renewal of his affair with Brandy, the local madam; and a romance between Celia, a destitute young woman who decides to sell herself to the highest bidder, and Ben, Bedrock's son, who returns from college (at Dartmouth) just in time to save Celia from her fate and, incidentally, to get himself embroiled in Foxy's shenanigans. Lardner and his collaborator Ian McLellan Hunter keep things light and quick, packing plenty of foolish gags and good-natured broad, farcical humor in a story that, in less skilled hands, would be vulgar, offensive, or worse.

Mostly, what all of the creators have done here is to provide their star with moment after moment to shine, and if you're at all familiar with Lahr's unique comic persona, you'll smile with recognition at each one. Foxy makes his entrance howling in pain, his foot caught in a bear trap ("gnong, gnong"); as the evening progresses, he gets to chase a pretty girl around a bed, impersonate an English nobleman, and examine himself with a stethoscope. The accomplished comic actor-singer Rudy Roberson plays Foxy in this production and, to his credit, makes the part his own, without ever diminishing the innate Lahr-ness of the role.

The rest of the Foxy company is just as good. Rob Lorey is a sly, appealing Doc, more than holding his own in several charming numbers like "It's Easy When You Know How" and "I'm Way Ahead of the Game." David Sabella, Andrew Gitzy, and Jay Brian Winnick are brash and funny as Bedrock, Buzzard, and Shortcut, respectively, and they harmonize beautifully throughout the show. George Pellegrino and Natasha Harper are the earnest, sweet-voiced juveniles Ben and Celia, while Jessica Frankel is an exuberant and lusty Brandy. Thomas Mills's staging is looser and more vivid than usual, and Robert Felstein provides excellent accompaniment from the lone piano. All in all, this is about as accomplished a production as Musicals Tonight! has ever mounted. Quite apart from the (considerable) curiosity value, Foxy provides a solidly entertaining evening, full of laughter and pleasant music.

This is not a musical that Broadway producers need to cast their eyes over: Foxy is not, by any means, ripe for revival. (Not unless Bert Lahr gets reincarnated, anyway.) Mel Miller's Musicals Tonight! is precisely the venue for a show like this. It's a nice piece of American theatre history, and it's a lot of fun besides--not a bad deal at all.

One more thing: Miller tells me that there will be a cast album of this Foxy: something for all those diehard fans to look forward to.

Paper Mill Playhouse's new production of Funny Girl is the spring's most delightful surprise--a lavish, tuneful, they-don't-make-'em-like-this-anymore sort of musical comedy. Thanks to the very famous Barbra Streisand film, we think of Funny Girl as a star vehicle. But, as this marvelously entertaining revival proves, it's a surprisingly well-made piece, with exciting production numbers and a quartet of strong supporting roles that bolster the title role most effectively. Kudos to Robert Johanson, Paper Mill's artistic director, for staging the show so skillfully and lovingly, and for casting it with such top-notch talent.

As a reminder, Funny Girl is a mostly-true account of the early life and career of Fanny Brice, the ugly duckling Jewish comedienne/singer who defied the odds to become the star of the Ziegfeld Follies. The show's libretto, by Isobel Lennart, traces Fanny's life from 1910, when the ambitious but obscure teenager gets her first "break" in Keeney's Music Hall, to 1923, when Fanny, now the reigning queen of the Follies, must confront the end of her marriage to gambler Nick Arnstein. The story is told in brief but effective scenes and emotive songs and lavish production numbers that depict the sad arc of Fanny and Nick's relationship, doomed from the start by her tenacity and his pride.

Director Johanson has cast a relative unknown named Leslie Kritzer in the central role of Fanny. It's a gutsy move that pays off handsomely. Kritzer, whose previous credits include the recent off-Broadway Godspell, is a petite lady with a big, gorgeous voice and a personality to match; reminiscent, actually, of Garland more than Streisand. And if she can't quite erase our (indelible) memory of Streisand singing her signature tune "People," she acts the heck out of the role and claims it entirely as her own. Her performances of some of the less-well-known numbers, such as "Cornet Man" (with unexpected shadings of Louis Armstrong) and "Who Are You Now?" are stunning. And her final scene, in which Fanny and Nick bring their troubled relationship to its end, is magnificent--we really feel what Fanny is losing here. Kritzer has what it takes to be a big star on Broadway, and she deserves her own show to do it in.

Robert Cuccioli (Jekyll and Hyde) is terrific as Nick Arnstein, offering an appealing, sympathetic portrayal of this weak but attractive man. He takes full advantage of his best opportunity in the show's score, the sensational "You Are Woman," more than holding his own as virile straight man to Kritzer's hilarious mugging as the starry-eyed Fanny. The other main supporting roles are equally well-realized here: Diane J. Findlay is dry and lovable as Fanny's earthy mother Rose, Marie Lillo is wickedly funny as the obnoxious but well-meaning neighbor Mrs. Strakosh, and Robert Creighton is eager and energetic as Eddie Ryan, the young man who hires Fanny for her first job. Creighton and Findlay are delicious in the charming "Who Taught Her Everything She Knows?" and, with Lillo, have a grand time delivering the witty "Find Yourself a Man." Creighton also dances the lead--winningly--in "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat," the giddy World War I-flavored Follies number that stops the show in the second act.

Indeed, it's the two Follies numbers that really prove explosive here. Johanson and his choreographer, Michael Lichtefeld, have staged them with imagination, style, and taste. "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat" features a knockout line-up of doughboys and doughgirls tapping out a rhythm so intense that the Germans don't stand a chance against it--all as backdrop, by the way, to some superb Kritzer clowning as a Jewish-accented private ("The Kaiser runs a block away/When they tell him here comes Schwartz"). "His Love Makes Me Beautiful," Fanny's Follies debut in Act One, is sumptuous and hilarious, with Michael Anania's lacy, improbable dream of a wedding cake set and David Murin's impossibly exotic costumes recreating the gawdy splendor of the Ziegfeld era with blissful ingenuity. 

The ensemble (a generous twenty-two singers, dancers, and actors) is grand. And Bob Dorian (from American Movie Classics) lends a touch of class and authority as Ziegfeld himself.

Mel Miller's Musicals Tonight! once again hits a bulls eye with Leave It to Me, a concert-style revival of one of the hits of the 1938-39 Broadway season. As usual, Miller gives us a delightfully entertaining show, as well as a fascinating lesson in musical theatre history. Fanatics as well as just plan fans of the Broadway musical are in for a treat.

Leave It to Me boasted no fewer than four stars when it opened more than sixty years ago: Victor Moore (as Alonzo "Stinky" Goodhue, the reluctant newly-appointed American Ambassador to the Soviet Union), Sophie Tucker (as his domineering wife, whose $95,000 donation to the Democratic Party snared her husband his post), William Gaxton (as smooth-talking newspaperman Buckley Joyce Thomas, enlisted by Goodhue to get him recalled so that he can return home), and Tamara (as Colette, Buck's fellow reporter and love interest). And the show served to introduce another star, who became arguably more famous than any of them: Mary Martin had the smaller role of Dolly, plaything of both Buck and his employer, and stopped the show singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" in a remote Siberian railroad station.

The terrific thing about Leave It to Me's book, written by Bella and Samuel Spewack of Boy Meets Girl fame, is how neatly it accommodates the requirements of its above-the-title talent while still holding up comfortably as a well-crafted screwball comedy. The Spewacks found room for various far-fetched predicaments in which to entangle the hapless Goodhue, including a hilarious scene in which he is required to decode a secret message from Secretary of State Cordell Hull. There's also plenty of shady business for suave Buck Thomas to get embroiled in, as well as an obligatory (and messy) love triangle from which he has to extricate himself.

The script is also filled with topical, satirical material that--heard sixty years later-- is at once refreshing and enlightening. For example, Goodhue initially attempts to get himself recalled by kicking the German Ambassador, eliciting this response:

British Ambassador: Britain views your deed with pride and alarm, congratulates and condemns you, and will now perform its breathtaking triple loop, suspended by a single wire, sitting in a tub of water.
Goodhue: Did you say something?
British Ambassador: We'll issue a statement in the morning, depending on which way the wind blows.

(Note that Leave It to Me opened just two months after Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia and Britain looked the other way.)

And could the Spewacks have ever guessed the kind of laugh Mrs. Goodhue would get from a 21st century audience with a line like "Why haven't I got nine children like the Kennedys?"

I've been focusing on Leave It to Me's book because it's the real find in this production; Cole Porter's score, written while he was still recovering from a punishing riding accident, is not up to his standard. "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" is the only genuinely familiar song; "Get Out of Town," "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love," "Tomorrow," and "From Now On" are pleasant if not especially distinctive. The show-stoppers of this production are "Information, Please," a breezy duet for Colette and Goodhue, and "I Want To Go Home," Goodhue's second act comic tour de force. This is, at least in part, attributable to Kenny Morris's superb performance as the bumbling but lovable Goodhue.

Barbara McCulloh acts stylishly and sings beautifully as Colette. But Michael Scott (Buck) and Robin Baxter (Mrs. Goodhue) haven't quite nailed their characters yet, and Jamie Day is off-track as Dolly, doing a Jean Hagen-ish dumb blonde instead of the fresh-faced (and fresh-voiced) naif that Mary Martin surely was. Musicals Tonight! regulars Thomas Mills (director) and Mark Hartman (musical director) do their usual excellent work here, though Mills seems to have missed an obvious comic opportunity in not swathing his "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" chorus in furs.

Quibbling aside, though, Leave It to Me--like all the Musicals Tonight! shows--is a remarkable living document of theatre history. A musical this topical and star-heavy almost certainly could not be successfully revived in a full-scale production nowadays. But the intimate, elegant, relaxed backward glances that these revivals provide are just what the doctor ordered.  

If you're looking for insight into what made Janis Joplin the rebel-singer-pop culture icon that she became, Love, Janis is not going to help you. Although its text is entirely taken from Joplin's letters and interviews, the woman herself feels very much removed from this show: something turned this middle-class white girl into a junkie blues queen in the image of Bessie Smith, but it's not revealed here. Instead we get glimpses of the frightened little girl, run away to San Francisco to sing with the rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company; and, later, of the poseur batting out snappy quotes to Rolling Stone magazine a la John Lennon. But the real Janis Joplin is missing.

She might be in the songs, though: if you're looking for a fantasy Joplin concert, featuring live recreations of standards like "Mercedes Benz" and "Me and Bobby McGee" alongside less familiar material like "Down on Me" and Rodgers & Hart's "Little Girl Blue," Love, Janis just may be for you. The music is played by a seven-piece band directed by former Joplin associate Sam Andrew; I'm no connoisseur but it sounded good to me (good and loud, anyhow). It's sung by Andra Mitrovich and Cathy Richardson at alternate performances; I caught Mitrovich, who looks and sounds enough like Joplin to be convincing but has none of that lady's soul--in any sense.

Nevertheless, by the finale, the beat and energy and noise, and the enthusiasm of the diehard fans--maybe ten percent of the crowd--had infiltrated most of the rest of the audience, leading to resounding cheers and applause when the show was over.

Long before Kenneth Branagh added '40s pop ballads to Love's Labour's Lost, Barbara Vann and Medicine Show teamed up Mr. Shakespeare & Mr. Porter. This frothy delight of a show is back for a limited return engagement; if you're in the mood for a swellegant hoot of a night out, you can't do better than to head on over to 52nd Street and take in this good-natured musical comedy.

Four musical comedies, actually: Mr. Shakespeare & Mr. Porter consists of a quartet of Shakespeare's greatest hits--King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream--each cut down to size (so to speak) and infiltrated with some surprisingly suitable Cole Porter songs. Some examples will give you a sense of how it goes: The opening scene of King Lear, in which the old king asks his three daughters how much they love him, ends with Cordelia's musical reply "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." The mismatched lovers plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream is condensed to a long round-robin rendition of "Let's Do It." And the opening of the Scottish Play climaxes with "You Do Something to Me," a jaunty song and dance by Macbeth and the Three Weird Sisters ("Do do that voodoo that you do so well.")

Familiarity with the plays is assumed: you have to know why it's funny, after the murder of Banquo, that Lady Macbeth sits down and warbles the Ethel Merman ballad "Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please."  But reverence is most assuredly not required: director-adaptor Barbara Vann has a field day taking all kinds of liberties with the Bard's work, as when Gertrude and her Gentlewoman give some most un-Elizabethan advice to Ophelia in the show-stopping "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love." She's also dug deeply in the Porter canon to find material that is uncannily apropos, like this lyric (from Red, Hot and Blue), sung by the witches when asked by Macbeth to identify themselves:

Perennial debutantes, we come out ev'ry season
Perennial debutantes, for a very simple reason--
The year when first
As buds we burst
We met so many nice men
We decided there and then
To come out ev'ry autumn all over again.

Vann's sensibility here is vaudevillian--watch the easy aplomb with which she milks laugh upon laugh as a Marie Dressler-like Gertrude (that's her in the photo above, extreme right). No gag is too broad (or old) to be discarded. This is the sort of show where, when Titania commands her servant to sing a "fairie song," he launches into a bawdy number called "Find Me a Primitive Man"; where the Macbeths murderous plotting is interrupted by the offstage clamor of Duncan's supper; and where Polonius (the marvelously dry James Barbosa) turns up looking like the Yiddish comic Willie Howard in baggy tights and an incongruous dinner jacket.

Besides Vann and Barbosa, standouts in the company include Ethan Aronoff (as a stupendously baffled Hamlet), Mark J. Dempsey (as dull-witted Rosencrantz and Titania's aforementioned fluttery fairy), Michael Henry (as a too-accommodating Seyton and an even-more-so Puck), Jennifer Kidwell (as a thankfully robust, down-to-earth Ophelia), and Jennifer Pace (a big-voiced Lady Macbeth). Design, by Paul Gugliotta, Chris Brandt, Mark Gering, Marcel Williams, Aimee Grubel, and Doug Filomena, is excellent.

All in all, a grand time is had by all. This lighthearted take on Mr. Shakespeare's work is great fun, and the visit with the divine wit of Mr. Porter is a veritable treat. The show ends with cast and audience members dancing a carefree waltz to the strains of "Night and Day," : an enchanting cap to a splendid evening.

The poems of Langston Hughes are not complex. Each tells a story in the rich language of its author. In Only Heaven they have been set to music by Ricky Ian Gordon, and as the show progresses quickly from one song to the next, a story line evolves. It is a loose story of four people living in Harlem, drawn together either by blood or friendship to an earlier time when they lived in the segregated south. There are poems of joy, poems of horror, and poems of hopefulness and faith. The cast of four exceptionally talented singers performs these poems singly and as a company. Sherry Boone’s vitality gives an unexpected punch to her numbers. She conveys a sense of vulnerability especially in her numbers with Monique McDonald. McDonald’s trained soprano shines throughout the evening, but is especially beautiful in the numbers that make up the finale, poems that deal with faith and better times to come. The baritone of Michael Lofton blends beautifully with the tenor voice of Keith Byron Kirk. They have ample opportunity to harmonize, which they do with great aplomb. Singly, each gets several opportunities to shine.

Interspersed we see several short modern dance pieces performed by the talented duo of Whitney V, Hunter and Monique Rhodriquez. These offer the perfect break, allowing us a chance to catch our breath and refllect upon the words just sung as our eyes take in a bit of visual interpretation.

The original music by Ricky Ian Gordon is beautiful to hear. The arrangements under the able direction of Charles Prince feel as though we are hearing a full orchestra. Especially of note is the wonderful piano accompaniment by Mitchell Cirker. Yet, the music does not really match the poetry. I am in no way qualified to discuss the merits of music composition, pro or con. I can only speak of the effect I felt. The music, though very melodious and full seemed to lack a genre. I kept waiting to hear some blues interspersed, something that bespoke more of the time and the place of the poems.

Only Heaven is a musical work performed with the highest degree of professionalism. Erik Ulfers’s set design, as mentioned above, is award-worthy. The direction and staging by Nancy Rhodes is seamless and the entire production just flows. I’m certain that Langston Hughes would have been enthralled and delighted by this rendition.

In the lobby of the John Houseman Theatre, and across the stage, are photos of Pete 'n' Keely at the height of their career. I particularly liked the one of Pete and Keely at the piano with Steve Allen and Frank Sinatra; the shot with Lucy and Desi is pretty neat, as well. These pictures--fakes, of course; Pete 'n' Keely aren't real--tell us just about everything we need to know about these two: purportedly "America's Singin' Sweethearts," they are paragons of '50s squareness.

The other thing we need to know is that Pete 'n' Keely broke up. The show that bears their name is supposedly their 1968 live TV reunion special. The big APPLAUSE sign hanging over the stage lights up, and the unseen announcer introduces the presumably lingeringly famous couple. They burst on stage singing "This Could Be the Start of Something Big."

For a moment, it works; but very soon, Pete 'n' Keely founders, derailed by its own schizophrenia. The cheap, garishly plastic set; the glitzy, color-coordinated Bob Mackie costumes; Keely's blonde beehive; those photos--all of these cue us to expect a particular brand of kitsch. But, believe it or not, it's not delivered. Some of the time Pete 'n' Keely is cute, campy fun--at its best, certainly, during the tour de force cross-country medley in which the pair sing what feels like a hundred songs about various U.S. states and cities in six minutes or so.

Other times, Pete 'n' Keely manages the kitsch, but it doesn't register as funny: a deliberately godawful "Battle Hymn of the Republic" falls flat, and excerpts from a truly terrible musical version of Antony and Cleopatra that they supposedly starred in on Broadway in the early '60s don't parse at all. Neither of these extravagant jokes really fits our expectations of this Steve-and-Eydie-ish couple; I found myself wondering, over and over again, who are Pete 'n' Keely really supposed to be?

We never find out, especially as the show careens into mediocre oblivion in its short second act. Keely gets drunk and sabotages Pete's big solo (on live TV); then the two unconvincingly reconcile. I guess we're supposed to be happy, but it's impossible to care about these plastic people: hey, wasn't that going to be the point?

Finally, Pete 'n' Keely feels most like a vehicle for its female star, Sally Mayes, who gets to sing several overwrought blues numbers--some authentic, some newly-minted copies--without interruption or, surprisingly, irony. She comes off well, if you like this sort of thing. Mayes's co-star, the immensely likable and talented George Dvorsky (Anything Goes) has fewer opportunities.

Mackie's dazzlingly far-fetched costumes are delicious parodies of the creations he used to churn out for Sonny and Cher; they're fun to look at.

Starmites 2001 is an agreeable, entertaining show. Billed as a "musical sci-fi adventure," it tells the fanciful story of a lonely, unpopular teen named Eleanor who gets conked on the head and awakens to find herself in Innerspace. There she teams up with Space Punk and the Starmites, heroes from one of her favorite comic books, to battle the evil queen Diva and her bloodthirsty Banshees. Eventually, when she finds herself face to face with super-villain Shak Graa, Eleanor discovers courage and power within herself she never knew she had.

Structurally Starmites is a lot like The Wizard of Oz; plot details are borrowed from the fantasy canon from Tolkien to the X-Men; musically, the score ranges from tuneful pop to rock to light r&b. It's certainly good fun, though the disparate sources tend to work against one another. The show also tends to take itself a bit too seriously: the camp possibilities of its world of powerful Amazon divas and sexless teenage boy heroes seem pretty obvious, but go unexploited.

The show's greatest strength is its talented cast, headed by Nicole Leach (who plays Eleanor), a petite lady with a big, beautiful voice and a buoyant, engaging personality. Gwen Stewart scores as Diva, leading the company in the rousing second act show-stopper "Reach Right Down." Larry Purifory is masterful as a couple of non-human creatures (abetted by puppet designers Richard Druther, Michael Duffy, and Jeffrey Wallach). Jason Wooten displays some very fancy footwork as the nimblest of the Starmites, while Kim Cea does some impressive vocalizing as the loudest of the Banshees.

Composer-lyricist-co-librettist Barry Keating also directs Starmites; unfortunately, he hasn't found a way to scale down a production concept that's way too large for the intimate space where the show is playing. Whatever charms Starmites possesses are diluted by performances that are pitched to a non-existent mezzanine and a decibel level that eliminates nuance.  Are headset microphones and a state-of-the-art sound system really necessary in a 100-seat venue?

The problem is that Kirsten Childs, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics for Bubbly Black Girl, spends roughly 95% of the show's running time dealing with the conflicted Viveca, with only one (admittedly pretty good) song devoted to her more interesting, put-together self. The transition isn't dramatized at all. It's like that poster that used to be popular in offices, where there's a complicated flowchart on the left and a bright, shiny finished product on the right; in the middle is a big bolt of lightning and the words "a miracle happens." That's Bubbly Black Girl in a nutshell: the miracle's missing, and what remains--riffs on oppression in various forms and styles, from facetious to serious--falls far short of being a satisfying work of theatre.

To be sure, some of these riffs do resonate on their own terms. Two broad comic numbers in which Viveca's lily-white baby doll Chitty Chatty comes to life are clever and spirited; "I Am in Dance Class" is a witty and pointed collage of the thoughts of four very young ballet students; and "Sticks and Stones," the sharpest writing in the show, is a thoughtful consideration of the distinction between name-calling and bigotry. But a good deal of the material is offensive, if not to our sensibilities than at least to our common sense. A rowdy second act would-be show-stopper called "Granny's Advice" is a hard-driving Tina Turner-esque number that attempts to defend the callous ways that men mistreat women: it's meant ironically, but I still don't think Miss Turner would appreciate being the mouthpiece for men like her own abusive Ike.

Fully a quarter of an hour is given over to an idiotic parody of Bob Fosse and Chicago. Childs suggests here that "Director Bob" hires female dancers for their looks and sex appeal: I don't think Ann Reinking or Gwen Verdon would agree.

Finally, Bubbly Black Girl becomes egregious in its sloppy construction. Childs's initial theme--that even a middle-class, well-educated black woman suffers from the institutionalized racism and sexism of contemporary American culture--is valid and worth pursuing. But the show she has written finally has very little to do with that theme. I think that Bubbly Black Girl wants to be about a woman searching for empowerment and self-actualization. But what it turns out to be is the history of a woman whose ill-informed choices suggest a self-destructive streak. 

Lyrics are trite, often stringing platitudes and cliches together as if collation were poetry: the level of wit here is typified by a song that goes "I'm drowning in the secretarial pool." Chronology and logic are cast aside: Viveca ages normally in the first half of the piece, set during the '60s and '70s; but in the second half, which appears to take place in '90s New York, Viveca still seems to be about 25.

And one more concern: does Childs really intend for her (mostly white, at least at the performance I attended) audience to laugh so long and hard at cartoonish black stereotypes?

Bubbly Black Girl has been given a deluxe production by Playwrights Horizons. David Gallo's bold, simple sets are pleasing and appropriate, as is Michael Lincoln's lighting. A.C. Ciulla's choreography is winning, too, and it's nicely performed by a talented ensemble. La Chanze is appealing in the title role, and standouts among the supporting players include Cheryl Alexander as Viveca's dance teacher Miss Pain, Harriet Tubman, and others; Jerry Dixon as love interest Lucas; Duane Boutte as gay friend Keith; Darius de Haas as childhood playmate Gregory; and Jonathan Dokuchitz in a variety of roles.

There are at least four excellent reasons that you will want to see Jean Cocteau Repertory's thrilling new production of The Cradle Will Rock. First, you may have seen the recent Tim Robbins film, or be otherwise acquainted with the now-legendary tale of the opening night of the original production: Budgetary and other pressures, undoubtedly related to the inflammatory nature of a pro-union show in Depression-era America, caused The Cradle Will Rock's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre to be canceled by the federal agency that had underwritten it; undaunted, the company marched uptown to another, empty theatre, where they bought tickets along with audience members and performed the show from their seats accompanied by the composer Marc Blitzstein at a lone piano. Robbins's movie, along with other accounts of that famous night in 1937 that have come down to us in participants' and critics' memoirs, captured the excitement and political significance of the event; but the experience of the work itself has been mostly lost in the shuffle.

So see the Cocteau Cradle Will Rock to discover the work at the heart of this milestone in the annals of American governmental interference in the Arts. What you'll find is an earnest musical play about the reclamation of Steeltown, U.S.A. by the masses; a parable for the theatre about the epic struggle of the Oppressed Worker against the Capitalist Boss, here personified (respectively) by union organizer Larry Foreman and generic bigwig Mister Mister.

The shape of this musical will surprise you (Reason Number Two: see The Cradle Will Rock to marvel at what was surely an innovative, almost unrecognizable work of musical theatre when it was written some sixty years ago). The play begins with the arrest of a young woman, Moll, by a corrupt cop; charged with soliciting when she refuses to give the policeman what he wants, Moll is brought to Night Court. Here she encounters members of the Liberty Committee, stalwart representatives of Steeltown's establishment who have been arrested, by mistake, for participating in a riot following a speech by the unionizer Foreman. Also in Night Court is the gentle Harry Druggist, a former entrepreneur who is now a drunken vagrant. Harry explains to Moll how, one by one (and himself included) the members of the Liberty Committee each sold their souls to Mr. Mister. In flashback, we see the Boss and his family consolidate their control over Steeltown as Reverend Salvation, Editor Daily, Doctor Specialist, President Prexy of the local college, and a pair of upwardly mobile Artists named Dauber and Yasha all compromise their integrity and their commitment to democratic ideals to win Mister Mister's favor and to get their hands on some of his dollars.

So The Cradle Will Rock turns out to be less integrated musical play than incendiary vaudeville a la Bertolt Brecht, with characters singing and speechifying with un-self-conscious theatricality. Blitzstein's score, meanwhile, is a dissonant homage to early Kurt Weill, filled with recitative and song fragments that constantly recall Threepenny Opera and the like. It's fascinating to hear and to behold.

David Fuller has staged the show thoughtfully with vigor and care. He makes excellent use of the Bouwerie Lane's intimate space, placing action in the aisles and at the exits; he's also cast the piece sharply, using the Cocteau's resident company to great advantage, while at the same time allowing them to stretch and challenge themselves and us in a work that is, in some ways, entirely antithetical to the material we and they are used to. (Reason Number Three: go to The Cradle Will Rock to see the Cocteau's remarkable actors almost as if for the first time.) Craig Smith takes prime acting honors as Mr. Mister, creating a memorable portrait of raw nerve tinged with rawer cowardice. Also terrific are Harris Berlinsky as the heartbroken druggist, Elise Stone as the innocent waif Moll, Jason Crowl as the fiery union leader Larry Foreman, and Tim Deak as the pushover Editor Daily and an eggheaded professor named Mamie. Angela Madden, dressed in a pink suit that reminds us ever-so-slightly of one of Jackie Kennedy's frocks, is fine as a brittle Mrs. Mister. Taylor Bowyer registers strongly as the corrupt Reverend Salvation; so do Mark Rimer as Mister's doctor, Christopher Black as his no-account son, and Jennifer Herzog as his indolent daughter. Kudos, also, to Mark Fitzgibbons for an ingenious unit set, Irene V. Hatch for splendidly evocative costumes, and especially to musical director Charles Berigan, who bangs out the soul of Blitzstein's score on a single piano that reminds us, subtly, of how this show might have felt on that historic night back in 1937.

Which brings me to Reason Number Four: See The Cradle Will Rock to feel something you almost never feel in the theatre these days--the genuine passion of artists who are utterly and entirely committed to the rightness of what they are doing. That feeling comes directly from Blitzstein, who is said to have believed that if audiences saw this play they would immediately see the light and join the revolution. The Cradle Will Rock is, in many ways, clumsy, trite, and simple-minded, but its integrity is beyond question. Fuller and his company have preserved that integrity in a production that reminds us that theatre doesn't always have to be about show business or even about art. The Cradle Will Rock is an artifact of a time that seems perilously like our own; it's also an experiment in bringing about social and political change through popular culture. Too often, such experiments feel like failures. But, until October anyway, in this pocket of New York's East Village, here's one that feels like a glorious success.

Your tolerance for The Gorey Details is going to depend on your taste for the lighthearted nonsense that inspired it. Edward Gorey went so far as to call his first collection of prose and verse Amphigorey, alluding to a literary form wherein the work appears to have meaning but in fact does not. The Gorey Details is a full-length "musicale" of this precious stuff.

My tolerance, it turns out, is quite low, at least under the less-than-ideal circumstances of the present production. The Gorey Details is a collection of sketches based on fifteen of Gorey's pieces. Nearly all are structured alike: someone with an extravagantly odd name does one or more extravagantly odd things and then meets with a gruesome end. There are variations, and indeed a couple of the stories diverge from the norm, like the one recounting a tragic day in the lives of some household utensils. One piece, "The Admonitory Hippopotamus," even seems to have a point.

But Daniel Levans (who is credited, oddly, with the show's "direction and staging," whatever that might mean) hasn't found ways to make these stories interesting in a theatrical sense. This sort of thing can work--take last season's Shockheaded Peter, for example, where a dozen or so very similar stories were given very different treatments using puppets, masks, music, and other techniques. But The Gorey Details contents itself with telling stories that are more or less the same in more or less the same way, over and over again.

The numbing result is way too much of a potentially good thing: imagine reading a dozen Woody Allen stories in one sitting and you'll get the idea.

The costumes (Martha Bromelmeier) and the sets (Jesse Poleshuck) convey the essence of Gorey's art reasonably well (though more variety, again, would be helpful). The work of the ensemble of nine actors is mostly undistinguished, though Allison DeSalvo and Ben Nordstrom occasionally give us a hint of what they might be capable of in more accommodating circumstances. 

The In-Gathering has the potential to be a truly fine work of musical theatre; it's not there yet, but if creators John Henry Redwood (book & lyrics), Daryl Waters (music & lyrics), and Hope Clarke (direction & choreography) continue developing it, it could be a thrilling and moving evocation of one of American history's forgotten chapters.

Right now, it's clearly a work-in-progress, though that should not deter you from taking it in. Even raw, The In-Gathering has real power and real potency as it tells the story of a pair of slaves, married years ago but separated when their master sold the wife to repay a debt. After the Civil War, the newly freed January goes off in search of his lost wife Annie Jewel; his journey--and by extension the journeys of thousands of dispossessed former slaves like him--occupies most of The In-Gathering's running time.

Along the way, he meets up with an ageless old black woman named Cozy who turns out to be his guardian angel. Cozy guides January to New Orleans, where Annie Jewel has become mistress to a rich, mean Negro aristocrat named Aristede Drambuie. There, January has to confront this unfamiliar kind of black man, and try to bring his wife back home.

Darryl Waters and John Henry Redwood have provided The In-Gathering with a rich, varied score, ranging from the rousing opening "Dawn" to the gospel-flavored  "Gather Together"; there's also a terrific character song for Annie Jewel that caps the second act called "I Knew a Girl."  Redwood's book is less polished at this point; I'd like to know more about Annie Jewel's journey to New Orleans, for example.

The cast still seems to be settling into their roles, with the exception of Ann Duquesnay, who is invaluably energetic and life-affirming as Cozy. She stops the show with the Act One finale "Gather Together" but has little to do after that; she needs to be brought back for another big number in Act Two.

What's New York's most entertaining, delightful, fun-for-the-whole-family, rip-roaring good-time musical comedy? You'll find it, of all places, at South Street Seaport, on board the ship Peking: it's The Pirates of Penzance, done Gorilla Rep-style, which is to say that it's precisely the melodious, hilarious free-wheeling free-for-all that old W.S. Gilbert wanted it to be: as carefree and silly as ever, and as breezily contemporary and up-to-date as last night's Jay Leno monologue, but much, much funnier.

The story, you may recall, spins into motion with the 21st birthday of Frederic, an apprentice to the notorious pirates of Penzance. Mistakenly indentured to these rogues by his well-meaning but dotty nanny Ruth, Frederic has served his masters to the fullest; but now that he's his own man, duty compels him to oppose these outlaws: he intends to leave the ship, find comrades in arms, and return to attack the pirates, forthwith.

Not, mind you, that these are terribly dangerous pirates: they make a point of never attacking anyone weaker than themselves, and they have a catastrophically well-known soft spot for orphans. Nevertheless, Frederic is determined to do what he must, and his former shipmates, led by their dashing Pirate King, agree to let him go.

Further complications arise in the form of Mabel, with whom Frederic promptly falls in love, and her bevy of lovely sisters; their father, Major General Stanley; and a band of zanily tentative policemen who are eventually called upon to battle the pirates. It's remarkably silly, meant solely to provide occasion for some lovely and familiar Gilbert & Sullivan songs like "Poor Wandering One," "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General," and "With Catlike Tread, Upon Our Prey We Steal" (which you may recognize as the tune of "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here"). The score has been given a wonderful contemporary spin by arranger Steven Gross, and is played to perfection by his three-man orchestra.

Even more delicious than the songs, though, is the comedy, which flows non-stop from the moment the show begins until its boisterous conclusion in a melee of water pistols and dancing. Michael Scheman has adapted Gilbert's original libretto and lyrics with a respectful panache, with the result that this Gorilla-ized Pirates of Penzance is blissfully accessible and up-to-date while at the same time absolutely and utterly faithful to Gilbert's intention. Satirical barbs are aimed at the likes of Mayor Guiliani, Ivana Trump, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton (mostly in the splendidly updated lyric of "Modern Major General," but elsewhere as well); Broadway musicals past and present, from West Side Story to Cats to Rent, are wittily skewered, too. What's great about Scheman's work is that none of the pop culture references feel gratuitous: he has done a terrific job in making this a Pirates of Penzance for today without ever diminishing, or making fun of, the sturdy framework provided him by G&S. It's clear that Scheman loves this show, and he makes us love it too.

Scheman's direction is ingenious and exciting. When you see The Pirates of Penzance, you'll no doubt get to see the spirited company dashing all about the deck of the Peking; on the night I attended the show, an evening rainstorm kept actors and audience under a tarpaulin in just one of the three playing areas, but the staging was a smashing success nonetheless. Scheman's best idea is his use of his high-energy ensemble of fourteen men and women to play all three choruses--pirates, daughters, and cops. This results in some hilarious and entirely un-self-conscious cross-dressing, and a brilliantly executed (and very complicated) climactic battle scene that has these folks switching from pirates to cops and back again right before our eyes. Add the aforementioned water pistols, and you get a finale that can best be described as the living embodiment of a Tweedle Beedle Puddle Battle straight out of Dr. Seuss's Fox in Socks. Moist, delectable fun is had by all.

The company is exemplary. David Joseph is an altogether appealing leading man as Frederic, and he's nicely matched by Annette Cortes's sweet yet assertively modern Mabel. Limber-legged John P.F. Moore is a treat as the Police Sergeant, and the equally nimble-throated Gordon Stanley is perfect as the Major General, stopping the show with his tongue-twisting theme song. Patrick McCarthy, in unironic drag, is a hoot as long-suffering Ruth. And Michael Colby Jones is all delicious swagger and muddle as the Pirate King. The chorus--Brett Colby, Alison Renee Foster, Joseph Greene, Stephen Kaplan, Rebecca Kendall, Kent LeVan, Kenny Marshall, Brenda McEldowney, Kristy L. Merola, Jessica Polsky, Heather Jane Rolff, Colin Stokes, Gretchen Weigel, and J. Michael Zally--tripling as pirates, daughters, and policemen, are outstanding: possibly the best ensemble in any musical on stage in New York right now.

Kudos, too, to costumer Terry Leong, for her taste and wit; and to choreographer Tony Parise for same.

Don't miss this Pirates of Penzance, and don't forget to bring the whole family. You're all in for a grand, happy time.

I wish I knew what the creators of Urinetown had in mind when they created it. Note, please, that; the fact that I can't tell reflects the show's mixed signals (as opposed to, say, depth or complexity). Urinetown is neither serious enough to succeed as satire nor funny enough to succeed as parody. So, to my mind, it doesn't succeed at all.

Okay, let's take it from the top: Urinetown is a musical about a futuristic society where water is so scarce that, as one of the song titles puts it, "It's a Privilege to Pee." A costly privilege, in fact, that is regulated by a monolithic and monopolistic company called You're In (Urine?) Good Hands; the head of this company, Caldwell B. Cladwell, is a wealthy and corrupt autocrat who has virtual control over the town government, police, and economy. As the action begins, Cladwell's company has just announced a price increase for public toilets, which foments massive public protest. When Old Man Strong relieves himself (for free) on the street, he is immediately arrested and dragged off to mysterious, horrid Urinetown. A bona fide rebellion breaks out, led by Strong's son Bobby.

Meanwhile, Cladwell's pure and good-hearted daughter Hope appears on the scene, having completed college in a distant city. She has arrived to begin working in her father's company (starting at the bottom, copying and faxing). But she meets and falls in love with Bobby on her first night back, and soon thereafter discovers she has the social conscience that her father clearly lacks. Eventually, Bobby takes Hope hostage in an effort to win freedom for his mistreated and impoverished fellow citizens.

If you're following along, you can see that Urinetown resembles, well, allegory:  check out those names--Cladwell, Hope, Strong, plus a Cladwell enforcer named Pennywise and two cops named Lockstock and Barrel--and check out some of the song titles--an Act II opener called "What is Urinetown?" and a big number for the capitalists called "We're Not Sorry": we seem to be squarely in Brechtian territory.

But we're not: try to form a "message" out of the morass of detail that constitutes Urinetown's plot and see what happens. If you pursue the environmental angle (i.e., natural resources really are scarce and should be regulated), you wind up on the side of the corrupt and greedy capitalists. If you pursue the political angle (i.e., people should be free to, for example, pee wherever and whenever they wish), you wind up on the side of anarchy. (And should you pursue the purely romantic angle (i.e., love conquers all), you'll find yourself left in the dust midway through Act Two--love has nothing to do with Urinetown at all.)

So--huh? Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis have written a show that, despite feeling very edgy and satirical, would appear to have no agenda whatsoever. So the point of Urinetown would be... what? Ah, well, there's more to tell; for you see, notwithstanding everything I've said, Urinetown is also a parody of/tribute to musical theatre conventions, past and present. In addition to playing his part in the story, Officer Lockstock serves as narrator, and the very first thing he tells us is that Urinetown is a musical. He doesn't tell us--he doesn't have to--that it's a self-aware, utterly-drenched-in-irony musical. The overture sounds like Threepenny Opera's; the opening number looks like Les Miserables'; the big second act dance sequence is a more-or-less deliberate copy of "Cool" from West Side Story. And so on.

Now I suppose Urinetown's continual regurgitation of musical theatre-cum-pop culture artifacts in itself might mean something--but I have no idea what. Is the joke as simple and as broad as: we've paid fifty bucks to see reconstituted musical numbers in the service of a meaningless story? (Do Hollman and Kotis think Threepenny Opera and Les Miserables and West Side Story lack content? Do audiences?)

You can see, I hope, my quandary. 

Now, finally, if Urinetown were even half as funny as its excessive advance hype wants us to believe, it's possible that none of this would matter. But it's not. Which is not to say Urinetown isn't funny--it is, in places; it's just not funny enough to sustain and/or justify itself. If all that Hollman and Kotis really mean to do is give us a howlingly good time, we need to be rolling in the aisles and splitting our sides. Urinetown provokes neither reaction. 

For the record: John Carrafa's choreography (which is called musical staging in the program) is generally terrific and well-executed. Hollman's music is tuneful and snappy (though the lyrics, by Hollman and Kotis, lack bite much of the time). Scott Pask's portentously titled "scenic/environment design" is very effective. And the surprisingly high-profile cast, which includes Tony winner John Cullum and Broadway vets Jeff McCarthy, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Nancy Opel, and Ken Jennings, are as fine as you would expect them to be (and Opel is even better than that, making her character, the grasping Penelope Pennywise, the comic masterpiece that the whole show might have been).

In the theatre, fun is infectious; and so the grand time that Robert Cuccioli, Judy McLane, Lee Roy Reams, Tara O'Brien, Jody Ashworth, and Dale Hensley seem to be having on stage in Paper Mill Playhouse's revival of Victor/Victoria spills happily into the audience. This musical version of Blake Edwards's 1982 film remains problematic, but this production, which is neatly staged by Mark Hoebee and skillfully performed by the aforementioned powerhouse talents, is deft and ingratiating. Lavish and numerous sets and costumes (by Robin Wagner and Willa Kim, respectively), add glamour and pizzazz; and the score, by Henry Mancini, Frank Wildhorn, and Leslie Bricusse, is deceptively appealing. At least my subconscious likes it: I've been humming "Le Jazz Hot" and "Chicago, Illinois" and "Living in the Shadows" and even the title tune for days now.

The plot, on the off chance you don't know it, concerns Victoria Grant, a down-on-her-luck American opera singer stranded in Paris in the Depression Era 1930s. She meets up with Carroll Todd, known as Toddy, a jovial gay entertainer/entrepreneur and together they hatch an improbable scheme: Victoria will become Victor, a Polish count who is also the world's greatest female impersonator: a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.

Complications arrive quickly in the form of American businessman King Marchan, who finds himself immediately smitten by Victor and refuses to believe that he's really a man. Victoria is equally attracted to King, but her enormous success as the faux Count forces her to continue the charade. King's garish American girlfriend Norma, meanwhile, is surprised to find herself supplanted in his affections by what looks and sounds like a guy; and then there's the matter of Toddy's infatuation with King's bodyguard, the stolid Mr. Bernstein.

Victor/Victoria plays with issues of gender and homophobia, as well as with fancier notions of illusion and artifice, without ever getting too serious about any of them. At heart this show is a blend of baggy-pants slapstick and broad music hall comedy, reflecting the proclivities of its creator (Edwards) and its original star (Julie Andrews). The bad news is that this blend is often uneasy: there are places where Victor/Victoria is too corny or too vulgar for its own good. But the good news is that everything is sorted out happily by the final curtain, capped by a cheering message of love and goodwill.

Director Mark Hoebee seems to have a shrewd appreciation for the weaknesses and strengths of the piece, and he's done a splendid job playing to the latter. Foremost among them is his cast: three solid leading players, to begin with, in Robert Cuccioli (a breezy and eminently likable King), Judy McLane (a spirited Victoria), and Lee Roy Reams (a wistfully charming Toddy). Cuccioli mostly plays for laughs here, to fine effect; while Reams gets a couple of lovely moments, solo, in which he reveals the some unexpected depths in Toddy's character. Reams also gets a chance to show us, at the end of the show, what a female impersonator's star turn really looks like: decked out in full drag, he's a riot.

McLane sings the Wildhorn songs, especially "Living in the Shadows," stunningly; and she's actually much more believable in the role than Andrews ever was: I doubt that we'll see the part better acted than it is here. Jody Ashworth (as stalwart Mr. Bernstein) and Dale Hensley (as nightclub impresario Andre Cassell) are invaluable in supporting roles.

Tara O'Brien, meanwhile, as King's floozy moll Norma, threatens to steal the show every time her sleek, lithe body takes the stage. Honestly beautiful and packed with raw energy, O'Brien's performance recalls the finest comedic work of Jean Hagen and Judy Holliday. You can't take your eyes off her, whether she's taking centerstage in a tatty strip number ("Chicago, Illinois"), or bleating out an ear-splitting "Pookie" to summon her boyfriend to bed, or making as grand an exit as possible on the line "Out of my way, pheasant!"  Someone find this lady a Broadway musical to star in, immediately.

Just as they did a couple of months ago with their revival of Anything Goes, Paper Mill Playhouse shows us with Victor/Victoria what American musical comedy can be at its carefree, blissful best. Shows this fizzy and fun are hard to find on the Great White Way, so go ahead and take the trip to New Jersey: you'll have a good time.

A couple of seasons ago, composer Dan Shamir wrote songs for a musical revue called Many a Good Hanging Prevents a Bad Marriage, all of which were settings of verse by William Shakespeare. It was a cute show, with at least one excellent song (a thoughtfully contemporary "To Be Or Not to Be," believe or not). Now that experience has inspired another show, the terrifically-titled What a Piece of Work is Dan! It's tuneful and clever: an entertaining and, one suspects, mostly fanciful account of how that earlier score came to be.

The premise is that Dan has been commissioned by some mysterious Industry Big-Wig to write the score for a Shakespeare musical. Dan, eager for a hit on the Great White Way, agrees, shutting out his former collaborator Richard and his girlfriend Tessa. During the tense two weeks that he has to write the show, he battles his guilt about abandoning them and other friends, plus assorted other demons. And he agonizes over what kind of songs he wants to write.

There's a moral--kind of tacked-on at the end, I'm afraid--to the effect that Dan needs to write for himself rather than others. It gives the show an uplifting New Brain-like ending, but it doesn't really reflect what's gone on for the preceding hour-and-a-quarter. (There's also an awkward framing device, that reminds us of Company, that the show could probably do without.)

For What a Piece of Work is Dan! is, mostly, an exuberant pastiche celebrating the Bard and the American musical theatre. It's also a fine showcase for the versatile Shamir and his lyricist Richard Looney; and for the enthusiastic cast (Looney plus David Gaspin, Tessa Martin, Laura Penney, Anthony M. Pastore, Kate Bradner, and Greg Ainsworth), who put the material over with flair and energy.

High points are the aforementioned "To Be Or Not To Be," restaged here a la Rent to humorous effect; "Bed of Roses," which turns a famous sonnet into a Grease! clone; "The Quality of Mercy," which postulates what A Merchant of Venice would be like if Godspell's Stephen Schwartz had written it; and the ambitious "Sondheim Song," which puts Macbeth into no fewer than three of the master's musicals with bizarre and often hilarious results.

A couple of the straight ballads are quite pleasant, also. Shamir is unquestionably a talented composer and I look forward to his future work for the musical theatre.