Sweet Charity - Adorable Characters / Fosse Edge

Sweet Charity is not a great musical.  But it is an entertaining musical.  The story concerns Charity Hope Valentine, a dance hall hostess (as opposed to being the prostitute of the source material) in 1966 Manhattan, and her search for love in the big, mean city.  Book by Neil Simon, music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields.

There are a couple of major problems.  First, is the ending – which I won’t reveal.  It’s logical, it makes perfect dramatic sense, in its time it was completely unexpected while still feeling inevitable… and I hate it.  Second, about half the songs are great; the other half are merely competent.  The merely competent songs are the ones where the only reason to have them in the show is, “We need a song here…  I think.”  If They Could See Me Now is a perfect expression of Charity’s joy at having an opulent night out with a movie star.  But when Charity actually gets a marriage proposal, which should be an even bigger deal for her, I’m a Brass Band only packs about half the punch of If They Could See Me Now.  And it's a problem with the material, not the execution.

That being the case, should you see Marriott Theatre’s production of Sweet Charity?  Hell, yes.  It’s a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Alex Sanchez’s direction and choreography are absolutely spot-on brilliant.  As with any Bob Fosse musical, the potential problem for a director lies in not being Bob Fosse.  There’s a dictation of style that you must acknowledge, without being a copycat.  Sanchez does a wonderful job with the choreography, and is an expert at staging the comedy.  Simon’s book is one where the comedy dies if you’re polite about it.  You have to go all out.  Sanchez does that, and it works beautifully.

As Charity, Anne Horak’s acting, singing and dancing are all top-notch.  She completely overcomes the issue that physically, she’s wrong for the part.  I didn’t believe that a gorgeous blonde in 1966 New York would be having her problems.  The role works best with a gamin.  But Horak triumphs.  By the end of the first act, you’re in love with her.  She is completely moving and engaging.

It’s a shame that Alex Goodrich as the neurotic Oscar Lindquist doesn’t appear until Act I is almost over, because he takes the comedy and rachets it up to a whole other level.  When I direct comedy, the biggest problem is getting actors to go as big as they need to be.  They think it’s overacting; but it isn’t supposed to be real – it needs to appear real to the people in the back row.  Goodrich is an expert at going extraordinarily big, getting huge laughs and keeping it believable.

So – the physical casting issue I had with Anne Horak (but she won me over)?  Same issue but different results with as Kenny Ingram as Daddy Brubeck, singing The Rhythm of Life.  Phenomenally talented man; wrong for the part.  His voice is too high.  (A) The pitch of the voice affected the clarity of the words, which come fast and furious.  (B) The role requires a voice that can win over a crowd.  Ingram has a great voice, but it’s a violin, not a trumpet.

Natonia Monét and Dani Spieler are fun as Charity’s pals Helene and Nickie; Adam Jacobs is charming as the suave but rather hapless movie star Vittorio and Alexandra Polkovic is great as his insecure bombshell girlfriend.

One of the truisms for ensemble members is this: give it your all, because somebody’s going to looking at you at all times.  And this ensemble gives it their all.  However, some people have more to give.  Kyra Sorce is very funny as a YMCA receptionist, but I started paying attention much earlier: in Hey, Big Spender, Sorce is one of the dance hall girls.  While beckoning to the off-stage men in the song, Sorce has this look of, “I really want to dance with you but I might have a knife and it’d be fun to use it but don’t think about that – let’s dance!”  It’s this insane look.  And later, she has a brief sideways-lower-lip expression that I first saw in Frankenhooker (also about a troubled Manhattan girl with promiscuity issues.)  Her verbal timing in the YMCA scene is pitch-perfect.  In short, this girl needs to be cast in a major musical-comedy role.  Soon.  (She's the one in the middle; short black hair.)

 Patti Garwood and her orchestra do a fantastic job with the music.  Mieka van der Ploeg’s costumes are period perfect.

To reiterate – Sweet Charity is not the greatest musical of all time.  But this is an amazing production where every aspect is first rate.  Spend the money.  Go see it.

Sweet Charity runs at the Marriott Theatre, Ten Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire, IL  60069.  For tickets and information: 

http://www.marriotttheatre.com/show/sweet-charity

How to Mainly Succeed

Should you go see How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at the Marriott Theatre?  My answer is a qualified “yes.” 

How to Succeed is very close to my heart for reasons I won’t bother with here.  They’ll be in the next post, or as a comment on this one.  So, unfortunately, I’m a picky know-it-all about the show.  Let’s go through the good stuff first, then deal with the four gremlins.

This Pulitzer Prize winning musical deals with corporate America in the early 1960s.  J. Pierrepont Finch, an ambitious window washer, uses a How To book to angle his way to the top.  For fans of classic musicals, the score includes such Frank Loesser hits as I Believe in You and Brotherhood of Man.  If played correctly, it is one of the four or five funniest musicals ever written.  If played correctly.  Meaning, give up any ideas of political correctness.  It takes place in the sixties.  Men were executives, women were secretaries or wives.  Sexual behavior was not so much regulated as it was glorified.  A) That’s the way it was; accept it and realize it’s a period piece.  B) The authors are making fun of greed and sex.  That’s a farce’s JOB.  So if you dampen the venality, there’s no point in doing the show.

Even with the best of Finches, the show is usually stolen by Hedy LaRue and Bud Frump.  Angela Ingersoll is the best Hedy LaRue I’ve ever seen. Playing a cartoon sex bomb, Ingersoll nails the three most important aspects of the character.  One of these is comic timing.

Instead of going for the usual high pitched Marilyn-Monroe-from-Brooklyn imitation (or Carol Channing, as Maureen Arthur played it in the movie version), Ingersoll goes for a low, occasionally raspy cigarette voice that is perfect for the character.  Polite society decrees that I must not mention the actress’s breasts in a review.  But Angela Ingersoll is brilliant at making her tits funny; which is what the part calls for.  I was not fond of Terry Hamilton’s J.B. Biggley.  He kept throwing in a lot of childish shtick into a part that epitomizes Dignity.  His dignity can’t be overthrown if Biggley isn’t dignified.  Hamilton was solely a cartoon… whereas, when Hedy says, “Don't start getting sincere. That's not fair,” Ingersoll looked truly wounded and seemed about to cry.  That’s how you give humanity to a cartoon character.  I can’t say enough about Ingersoll’s performance, so I’ll move on.

As Bud Frump, Alex Goodrich had an interesting approach, which I’m still not sure if I liked or not.  Frump, the villain, is usually the audience favorite because he’s so damned ineffective at villainy.  He’s the Wile E. Coyote of musical comedy.  But Goodrich, who is amazingly talented and nails all the jokes he is permitted to nail (more on that in the Gremlin section), gives Bud a snarling, roaring, venomous rage that is a bit off-key with the breeziness of the script.  I didn’t hate it; but still… Anyway, Goodrich is mostly hilarious.

Choreographer Melissa Zaremba did some brilliant things.  Cinderella, Darling worked for the first time since 1961 because A) nobody was going through the motions on a song they regarded as dated; they bought into it and B) the choreographer made it work by turning it into a pseudo-tap number instead of a static stand-there-and-sing comedy number.  And I won’t spoil the moment in Brotherhood of Man when the executives realize they have to join in.  Very funny (and subtle) stuff.

Jessica Naimy was a wonderful Rosemary, with the perfect angle on the character.  Instead of a sweet (if pushy) doormat, Naimy’s Rosemary looked unflinchingly at her options – secretary or wife – and was just as hungry and conniving about her goal as Finch was about his.

Derek Hasenstab was great in the dual roles of Twimble and Womper, as were Jason Grimm as Bratt and Marya Grandy as Smitty.  The ensemble was expert at their jobs.  Felicia P. Fields as Miss Jones seemed to be very ill the night I saw it, so I’m going to cut her some slack.

The Gremlins:

1. Mentioned a bit earlier.  How to Succeed is a period piece.  If you can go along with the idea that sex and greed are funny, you’ll have a good time.

2. Pacing.  Sigh.  Just sigh.  The first half of Act One is unbearable.  There is a rehearsal technique called “speed through.”  You just spit out the lines as fast as you can, no emotion, no communicating, no periods, no spaces between words.  Don Stephenson directed the majority of Act One as a speed through.  When Rosemary meets Finch, you can’t understand a word she says because she’s been directed to spitoutallthewordsasfastaspossible.  And it’s not just her.  Everybody does it.  The message, I guess, is that we’re on a rocket ride!  What it actually says is that the director has no confidence in the material and wants to get it over with.  If he doesn’t care, why should we?  Punchlines?  What punchlines?

3. The Matthew Broderick revival has a lot to answer for.  First – Miss Jones, who is now nearly always cast as a large black lady.  Sigh.  A black Finch… great.  Or Rosemary.  Or Hedy.  Or Bud.  Or Womper.  But Miss Jones is the one character in How to Succeed who needs to be played by a middle-aged, starchy, repressed white woman, because anything else kills the joke in Brotherhood of Man – that the most unexpected person in the room suddenly decides that she is Mahalia Jackson.  It’s not prejudice; it’s getting the joke right.  It's like casting Sean Connery as Maxwell Smart.  He's great at what he does, but he's wrong for the part.

Then, in this production, not only is the wrong person singing the song, but it is turned from gospel into scat.  Bad scat, at that.  It kills the double meaning of “Oh, brother!” if you don’t actually sing those words.  Brotherhood is not just an eleven o’clock number – it’s a stinging satire of redemption, being sung by irredeemable people.

4. The second Matthew Broderick effect: miscasting Finch.  Ari Martin is a wonderful leading man.  But you don’t need a handsome, romantic leading man for Finch.  He isn’t a cuddly puppy dog; he’s a slinky, sneaky cat pretending to be a cuddly puppy dog.  This is one of those parts, like Harold Hill in The Music Man, where Comedy Comes First.  If Finch can dance and carry a tune, great.  But the primary factor of the triple threat is comedy.  Not Matthew Broderick.  Not Daniel Radcliffe.  Ideally, you need a young Nathan Lane, who can take over the stage and defend it against all comers.  It’s why Young Frankenstein is never going to work onstage – Frederick requires an equally triple-threat man when the comedy should lead.  Ari Martin is a tremendous singer and dancer, and can play comedy.   But he’s not an aggressive clown; and that’s a minus.

Bottom line: if you aren’t as picky as I am about How to Succeed, you’ll have a great time.  When the amphetamines wear off enough to let the jokes land, there are a lot of laughs.  The singing and dancing are expert.  It’s a decent evening in the theatre.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING

Mostly recommended

When: Through Oct. 16

Where: Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire

Tickets: $50 – $55

Info: (847) 634-0200

www.marriotttheatre.com

Run time: 2 hours and 35 minutes with one intermission