From SanDiego.com - March 14, 2008
All those songs!
By Welton Jones
“Dancing in the Dark,”
the new musical at the Old Globe Theatre, launches itself vigorously with an act
curtain saturated in nostalgia and an overture to die after.
(Given a bottomless trunk of Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz songs like “By
Myself,” “You and the Night and the Music,” “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My
Plan,” “A Shine On Your Shows,” “That’s Entertainment” and the title tune, what
would you expect? Well believe me, overture-writing being the quaint and
all-but-lost craft that it is now, this could have been something sad and sodden
but, thanks to either Larry Hochman’s orchestrations or Eric Stern’s
arrangements, it is instead a sparkling cascade of dear tunes served with deep
love and solid respect.)
The bad news is that the show which follows isn’t yet at the same level. The
good news is that it’s never really bad, either.
This is a musical for true believers and slaves of the passion. It’s a backstage
story based on a legendary movie (“The Band Wagon”) adapted from the early
Broadway revue of the same name. It’s packed with theatrical and dance in-jokes
(Did somebody mention Arthur Laurents?) and sticky with all the standard
sentimentality. The only thing resembling a bad guy is the modern-dance
choreographer (“Martha Graham without the laughs,” a line that REQUIRES
quoting.) who doesn’t get it.
It’s an assemblage sprung from the brain of Douglas Carter Beane, last seen
fashioning a successful Broadway show out of the fabled film flop “Xanadu.”
That’s the sort of labor that begets rueful tales such as this one, in which
collaborators rip each other’s artistic flesh just out of audience view, whilst
cooing publicly about their creative bliss.
Well, I might as well say it. What this show lacks that its two predecessors had
is Fred Astaire. That’s all.
It always seemed kind of a dumb part even with Astaire playing it: Broadway kid
heads for Hollywood, forgetting his roots, until he hits the skids back east
trying for a comeback in a misguided project which only he, finally, can save.
It’s just hard to believe Astaire as a flop.
Scott Bakula, who has been wallowing in Hollywood himself recently but who I
remember from an under-rated Broadway show called “Romance/Romance,” is in the
Astaire role and, since his song and dance is pretty standard stuff, he’s free
to make a bit more of the part, which, acting-wise at least, he does.
The Broadway “Band Wagon” (New in 1931!) was just a collection of Schwartz-Dietz
songs. For the 1953 film, Betty Comden and Adolph Green were imported by MGM to
write a real book which they did, featuring themselves (as played by Nanette
Fabray and Oscar Levant) and Astaire as, well, sort of HIMself. (This kind of
endless rummaging in distant origins seems inescapable, given the nostalgic
thrust of the show.)
For the present version, Beane has fluffed up the story and cut back on the
choreography, seeking to mount more a real play than just a framework for
hanging up songs. Admirable ambition, but he just takes the little story too
seriously. Everybody knows it’s tough to create a hit show. But everybody also
knows that a musical with songs like this is going to end happily.
Actually, this one ends with an odd coda set 50 years later, with Bakula as
creaky grandpa, which then segues into first an movie-style linked-arm march of
the principals to “That’s Entertainment” followed by a finale stolen directly
from “A Chorus Line” which was itself, of course, stitched together from decades
of musical numbers stretching at least back to the original “Band Wagon” and...
Whew! Just an awful lot of show biz schmaltz here.
The ensemble, under Gary Griffin’s direction, is attractive, enthusiastic and
game. Patrick Page is a naughty pleasure as a self-important Brit; Mara Davi is
appealing as the ingénue; and Paul Byrd impressive as the surly dance master.
I wish I liked Adam Heller and Beth Leavel better as the creative team but
competent is reassuring at the stage where this show is right now, still finding
its feet.
John Lee Beatty’s scenery is presently rather too reliant upon bland drapery and
random wagons. Except for some heavy whimsy in specialty girls’ outfits, David
Woolard costumes appear rented from a tux shop. Ken Billington helps his design
colleagues with nimble, knowing illumination.
What’s really working, though, is the music, with Don York conducting what
sounds like a lot more than 12 players. The arrangements, resting so comfortably
on the splendid bones of the basic score, are so ideal that they give the rest
of the show a goal worth clawing towards.
Copyright 2007
sandiego.com, Inc.
