<b>✭✭✭✭</b>✩
<b>music and lyrics by William Finn, book by James Lapine, directed by Robert McQueen
Acting Up Stage Company and Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, Toronto
April 25-May 12, 2013
</b>
Marvin: “But who would I be If you had not been my friend?”
Acting Up Stage has teamed up with the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company to bring Toronto an important revival of William Finn’s musical <i>Falsettos</i>. As most music theatre fans will know, the Broadway version of <i>Falsettos</i> (1992) is comprised of two one-act musicals – <i>March of the Falsettos</i> (1981) and <i>Falsettoland</i> (1990). When Finn and book writer James Lapine combined the two to form one musical, the two were heavily edited in book and music to fit together. For this production, however, William Finn has for the first time ever given permission to a company to use the text and score of the original one acts rather than the combined version. For that reason the current staging will present two parts of <i>Falsettos</i> in the same way that audiences of the time would have seen them in 1981 and 1990.
The two musicals are significant for being in the vanguard of depicting ordinary gay life in musicals. <i>March</i> show the tensions that surround the idea of creating a gay family at a time when the concept was unusual. <i>Falsettoland</i> is a seminal in addressing the AIDS epidemic in a musical. Many music theatre specialists have argued that the two shows are stronger pieces on their own than they are edited together for the Broadway <i>Falsettos</i>. Acting Up Stage now gives us the chance to see the ideal solution to presenting the two works together.
In the decade between the two works Finn’s musical language matured, moving from an interest in imitating many musical forms to suit each subject under discussion to a more integrated style in the later work. Lapine’s view of the main character Marvin also changes from a harsh portrait of a man who undermines his own happiness to one in the second work to has learned better how to accept the changes that life brings. Only a bit more than two years pass for the characters from one musical half to the next, but now the changes in musical style and perspective suit the separate focuses of the two pieces and we no longer feel the need to have them more fully integrated to create a unified effect. Indeed, now the differences between the two make them more interesting together, not less.
<i>March of the Falsettos</i> is itself a sequel to a previous musical by Finn, <i>In Trousers</i> (1979), whose main character is the same conflicted Jewish gay man Marvin, whose life is the subject of all three one-acters. In March, Marvin (Stephen Patterson) has left his wife Trina (Glynis Ranney) and his 10-year-old son Jason (Michael Levinson) for his male lover Whizzer (Eric Morin). But his goal as he sings in a recurring song is to create “A Tight-Knit Family” by having Whizzer move in with him, Trina and Jason. This arrangement pleases no one as both Marvin and Trina tell their psychiatrist Mendel (Darrin Baker). While Marvin fights with Whizzer over what their roles are in their relationship, Marvin loses Trina to Mendel, who has fallen in love with her and wants to marry her. Now Marvin feels all his relationships, except perhaps with Jason, are in ruins.
In <i>Falsettoland</i>, Jason, now 12½, is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. Trina and Mendel have been happy together and are still friends with Marvin. Two new characters appear – Marvin’s Lesbian neighbours Charlotte (Sara-Jane Hosie), an internist, and her partner Cordelia (Sarah Gibbons), a kosher caterer. While all five are watching Jason play in a Little League baseball game, Whizzer shows up and Marvin and Whizzer realize they have never been happy apart. Eventually, Whizzer comes down with a new disease that no one including Charlotte understands although she knows “Something Bad is Happening”. We, like Finn’s audience of 1990, know that Whizzer has AIDS, even if, given the musical’s early ‘80s setting, the disease don’t know have a name. The characters now confront the dilemma of how to celebrate Jason’s Bar Mitzvah in light of Whizzer’s terminal illness.
Stephen Patterson has a very strong, ringing voice as Marvin and while he character is at odds with everyone in <i>March</i>, it is good to see his attitude mature in <i>Falsettoland</i>. Eric Morin, who looks more like a fitness model than an actor, also has quite a strong voice and is both a fine actor and dancer. There are not many chances for independent dance sequences in the musical but the athletic tango-cum-fight that Timothy French has choreographed for Marvin and Whizzer is thrilling.
Young Michael Levinson, who so effective as the boy Noah in Acting Up Stage’s superb production of <i><a href="perma://BLPageReference/360BC6A5-314F-4C19-97AC-1C534F74BAC1">Caroline, or Change</a></i> last year, is just as effective as Jason in <i>Falsettos</i>. A fine singer and precocious actor, his Jason is the most sensible character in the entire musical and is justifiably frustrated with the tantrums and strange preoccupations of the adults around him. As one might expect, Glynis Ranney is a sensitive if slightly neurotic Trina. Uncharacteristic patches of hoarseness suggested that she was a bit under the weather on opening night, but she pulled through with her character’s most important song, “Trina’s Song”, where she tries to make sense of the odd situation created by the men in her life.
Darrin Baker is, next to Levinson’s Jason, the most sympathetic character of the musical. He makes Mendel’s agonies over being attracted to a client (Trina) and his subsequent agonies over proposing to her the comic highlights of the evening. In <i>Falsettoland</i>, Sara-Jeanne Hosie and Sarah Gibbons bring a breath of fresh air by opening up the claustrophobic “family” of <i>March</i> to the larger world. Hosie is suitably concerned and authoritative as Charlotte and Gibbons suitably warm but ditzy as Cordelia.
While the singing and acting are excellent, Patrick Du Wors’ design is rather odd. <i>March</i> takes place on what most people would view as an empty stage. The back curtains are black, the floorcloth is black and the stage apron is black. The stage uses only seven chairs and two tables for furniture. If you stay seated during intermission, you will discover that this empty stage is actually a set. A large number of crew come out to dismantle the black rectangular stage to reveal a smaller round, white-tiled stage underneath. While the second set is suitable for the hospital scenes of <i>Falsettoland</i> and the roundness may suggest the cycle of life, it’s hard to see what the point of the first set-as-empty-stage is supposed to be. Surely, there must be a less complicated way to design a set that will suit both parts of the musical.
If there is a problem with the Falsettos as a work, it is the lack of insight Finn and Lapine give us into Marvin’s struggle with his sexuality and the absence of any background to Marvin and Whizzer’s relationship. March begins with Whizzer moving with Trina and Jason as a <i>fait accompli</i>. Partly, this is because the prequel to <i>March</i> already dealt exclusively with Marvin’s battle over is sexuality, but it would certainly help, especially in Marvin’s scenes with Mendel to bring us up to date with how Marvin got to where he is and what he sees is Whizzer, with whom he keeps rowing.
Director Robert McQueen rights highlights the song “March of the Falsettos” in a non-naturalistic fashion as the key to the entire musical. Marvin, Whizzer, Mendel and Jason all sing about manliness, the first three in falsetto to match Jason’s unbroken voice. The adult men of <i>Falsettos</i> are all just grown-up boys who still have to learn how to be adults. Unfortunately, it takes the experience of the fragility of life for to make them reach the maturity that Jason, ironically, already has achieved. Satiric, witty and moving, <i>Falsettos</i> is fine example of how well music theatre can deal with complex moods and issues when it chooses to do so.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photo: (top) Eric Morin and Stephen Patterson; (middle) Michael Levinson. ©2013 Joanna Akyol.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://actingupstage.com">http://actingupstage.com</a>.
<b>2013-04-28</b>
<b>Falsettos</b>