Reviews 2003
Reviews 2003
✭✭✭✩✩
music by Cy Coleman, book and lyrics by Betty Comden & Adolph Green, directed by Valerie Moore & Patricia Hamilton
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 22-November 2, 2003
"Off the Rails"
Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1932 play "Twentieth Century" has been adapted twice. In 1934 Howard Hawks' film of the same name became one of the greatest American comic films. In 1978 the musical "On the Twentieth Century" by Cy Coleman with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, became a moderate success, but no one would list it as one of the greatest American musicals. The Shaw Festival gives this mock-Thirties musical a nearly impeccable production, but one can't help feeling its energies would have been better spent on the real thing.
In both film and musical theatre the imperious theatre director Oscar Jaffee ("Jaffe" in the film) has to flee Chicago to avoid creditors after his fourth disastrous show in a row. On the Twentieth Century limited, the most glamorous American train of the day, he meets Lily Garland (née Mildred Plotka) whom he discovered and turned into a star. (The meeting is accidental in the film, intentional in the musical.) If Oscar can get Lily to sign a contract to appear in his next production, her name alone will guarantee investors and help him out of his financial plight. The only problem is that Lily now loathes her former mentor and lover and wants nothing to do with him. Mixed up in all this is a religious nut Letitia Peabody Primrose (a gender switch from "Mathew J. Clark" in the film), who is willing to finance Oscar's next project, the life of Mary Magdalene, since it is based on a religious theme.
At least one third of the film is devoted to Jaffe's discovery and transformation of Ms. Plotka into Ms. Garland and details their mutually dependent relationship before they later happen to find themselves in adjoining drawing rooms on the train. Once the train sets off the mayhem never relents. The musical, however, is keen to get everyone on the train as soon as possible. This causes three problems. First, while some songs move the action forward, just as many reflect on it so that real tension never develops. Second, two extended scenes, a flashback in Act 1 and a fantasy scene in Act 2, take place off the train thus ruining the pressure cooker atmosphere that the film so carefully develops. And third, while Oscar's background is sufficiently filled in, Lily's never is so that their attraction-repulsion, so vital to understanding their relationship, is missing. Also missing is the sense, so clear in the film, that Lily's personality is the mirror image of Oscar's. Both are fantasists who often can't tell reality from illusion.
None of the musical's creators are in top form. Cy Coleman's score is a pastiche of song and dance forms from the 1920s and '30s, none particularly memorable. But that is not as much a problem as the lyrics by the veteran team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green. You would never know from this show that they were responsible for "On the Town" or "Singing' in the Rain". Far too often lyrics for a song consists of a single phrase repeated endlessly as in "Sign Lily, Sign", "She's a Nut", and "Oscar/Lily". There is fine music for a quartet of singing porters, but Comden and Green give them nothing to sing about. The only song in the show were both music and lyrics rise to the occasion is the hilarious "Repent" sung by Miss Primrose.
The show is as enjoyable as it is because the fine cast puts it across with so much energy and conviction. Gary Krawford (Oscar) and Patty Jamieson (Lily) aren't John Barrymore and Carole Lombard and don't pretend to be. Krawford comes off more as a likable old ham than a mad director and Jamieson seems more like a wealthy ingénue than a grand star. Both bring off their roles with panache, Krawford especially in "I Rise Again", and Jamieson so much so in the "Veronique" number one wishes the Shaw would showcase her in an operetta.
Ultimately, its Brigitte Robinson (Miss Primrose) who steals the show. She always suggests mischief and lunacy lurking just beneath her innocent dowdiness. William Vickers and Patrick R. Brown make a great pair as Oscar's loyal but exasperated minions, Oliver Webb and Owen O'Malley. Lisa Horner is hilarious as actress Imelda Horner (a character invented for the musical), who can't sing a note without the help of her accompanist. Jeff Madden exudes energy as Oscar's rival, director Max Jacobs. Evan Builung seems to try to make Lily's boy toy Bruce Granit an interesting character when strong and dumb would do just fine.
Co-directors actor Patricia Hamilton and choreographer Valerie Moore have created highly intricate blocking that makes the show seem more interesting than it really is. Surprisingly Moore doesn't make Oscar and Bruce mirror each others actions in the mirror duet "Mine" in Act 1. Since the book doesn't emphasize it enough, they pair should have tried to create more chemistry between the leads. Although model trains in different gauges pass overhead, only once does a character do anything on stage to suggest the motion of a speeding train.
Yvonne Sauriol's costume design is much indebted to the film. While her tea tray with the Twentieth Century logo is clever, she has not solved the show's main challenge of how to depict two adjoining drawing rooms on stage. Her rooms are two open platforms. The two corridor doors and the connecting door thus have to mimed making Harry Frehner's lighting crucial to tell us where to look. As in a farce where who's where when is important, real doors need to be used.
"On the Twentieth Century" is another 1970s attempt to recreate the innocent fun of the musical comedies of the 1920s and '30s. All you get, however, is the silliness without the great songs to go with it. The Shaw has had such success with musicals by Gershwin, Kern and Ellis, I wish they'd return to them again instead of to such pale imitations.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: William Vickers, Gary Krawford and Patrick R. Brown. ©2003 Andrée Lanthier.
2003-06-22
On the Twentieth Century