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September 2, 2005
TT: A "Friend" indeed
It's Friday, time again for my weekly Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser. I reviewed two musicals this week, one out of town (Goodspeed Musicals' revival of The Boy Friend, directed by Julie Andrews) and one not (the Public Theater's Shakespeare-in-the-Park revival of Two Gentlemen of Verona). The first was good, the second wasn't:Ms. Andrews, who no longer performs, made her Broadway debut in "The Boy Friend" 51 years ago (sorry to be ungallant, but it's no secret). Now she's elected to pass on a half-century of accumulated stage wisdom to her youthful charges, and it shows, not least in the singing of Jessica Grové, who plays Polly, Ms. Andrews' old role. Without stooping to imitation, Ms. Grové neatly contrives to suggest her mentor's lyrical yet exact soprano voice. But, then, it's obvious that Madame Director worked overtime to make sure all her charges spoke and sang crystal-clearly, for which I couldn't be more grateful.
The show itself is a spoonful of sugar minus the medicine, a giddy spoof of the flossy conventions of British musical comedy in the Age of the Flapper. Beyond putting a shine on everybody's diction, Ms. Andrews' chief contribution appears to have been to make sure the cast doesn't overegg the pudding. Polly's romance with Tony (Sean Palmer), for instance, is played surprisingly straight, and profits from it. This isn't to say the funny stuff is thrown away, merely that it isn't allowed to cloy....
As Ms. Andrews so pleasantly reminds us, period pieces can be charming as long as the period itself was charming, or is made to seem so. I assume, therefore, that everyone responsible for the Public Theater's latest Shakespeare in the Park debacle, a revival of "Two Gentlemen of Verona," must have thought the early '70s were a real whee. Certainly this oafish 1971 musical-comedy adaptation of Shakespeare's play reeks-I believe that's the right word-of their shagadelic essence. Even Riccardo Hernández' unit set, an amoeba-shaped platform covered with pink and yellow polkadots and anchored on either end by a pair of spiral staircases, looks like something you might have seen once upon a time on "Laugh-In," or maybe "The Dean Martin Show." The only thing missing is the fireman's pole.
Galt MacDermot, the man who brought you "Hair," wrote the peace-love-rock-'n'-roll score, which is so relentlessly insipid that I found it all but impossible to endure, by which I mean that it made me long in vain for instant death, or at least a fainting spell....
No link, but there's more where that came from, so buy a copy of today's Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal.
Posted September 2, 2005 12:04 PM
