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Long Beach staging of the retro
musical is lavish, enjoyably frothy old-fashioned frivolity. Orange County Register
By Eric Marchese
It's no accident that Musical Theatre West's timing of its Long Beach production
``Me and My Girl'' coincides with Valentine's Day: The 1930s' show, reconstructed
in the 1980s, is a valentine to those tune-filled, light-hearted stage and
screen musicals of the '30s. Its theme, too -- that true love can conquer
any number of seemingly unbeatable odds -- is likewise in tune with the
spirit of today's holiday.
The show also re-creates the physical slapstick, deliberately bad puns and engagingly silly milieu of the British music hall circa 1935. Yet that audiences today even have productions such as MTW's is a testament to the determination of contemporary musical theater folks to reconstruct a classic stage musical that had been performed yet was unpublished.
The show's history is sketchy. It originated in England in the mid-'30s, when British stage star Lupino Lane commissioned L. Arthur Rose, Douglas Furber and Noel Gay to write a musical in which Lane's famed cockney character, Bill Snibson, would go nose to nose with the stuffed shirts of the British aristocracy.
The new show, ``Me and My Girl,'' was a smash hit through the late '30s and early '40s, but once the clamor had subsided, the public's interest moved on to newer and more modern musicals.
``Me and My Girl'' sank into oblivion, until the early 1980s, when Gay's son, Richard Armitage, noticed that royalties on his father's music were beginning to increase. The painstaking reconstruction began -- first with a new script by Stephen Fry, then with contributions by director Mike Ockrent, the inclusion of additional hit Noel Gay songs, and new arrangements by musical director Chris Walker that emulated the style of '30s British dance bands. The revised ``Me and My Girl'' triumphed in London in 1984, then moved to the West End and Broadway.
The Karen and Richard Carpenter Performing Arts Center may be too cavernous to truly capture the right music-hall feel the show needs. That aside, director-choreographer Roger Castellano and his brother, musical director Dennis Castellano, have nailed the correct look, sound and feel of this musical classic. The songs are full-blown musical extravaganzas brimming with color and movement, as hordes of extras execute intricate dance steps -- everything from cotillion dancing to the classic tap.
``Me and My Girl's'' hero is a lighthearted little cockney chap named Bill Snibson (Wayne Bryan), who learns he's descended from royalty. The late Earl of Hareford has passed on, leaving no male heir -- but the family solicitor has tracked down Bill, who is the earl's love child from a one-night fling.
Plunking the crude, working-class cockney from Lambeth into the rigid decorum of the bored British socialites at Hareford Hall is a recipe for unbridled mirth, and in their reconstruction of '30s-style music-hall comedy, Fry, Ockrent and company don't disappoint. Bill's a silly little fellow given to jabbering on in the fashionable ``cockney rhyming slang,'' patting any available female on the rear and hanging out in the kitchen with the cooks and servants who, to his dismay, insist on calling him ``my Lord.''
There's the rub, and the conflict necessary to making ``Me and My Girl'' more than just a collection of jokes, visual gags and songs. Bill wants Sally (Bets Malone), his beautiful but equally low-class girlfriend, to join him at Hareford Hall, but Bill's domineering aunt Mariah (Brenda Cox) insists on grooming him into a gentleman worthy of inheriting his title and the estate. To his dismay, Bill soon realizes he's unfit to become an earl -- yet, as Sally has pointed out, he's now too polished to return to his cockney mates in Lambeth.
The couple's setbacks are only temporary, given voice in Sally's poignant singing of the wistful ``Once You Lose Your Heart'' and the lovely ballad ``Hold My Hand.'' Most of Gay's songs are bright and cheerful, from the easygoing title song to the sunny ``The Sun Has Got His Hat On,'' the breezy ``Leaning on a Lamppost'' and the show's liveliest, most infectious song, the catchy ``Lambeth Walk.''
Though director Castellano's cast is huge -- more than 40 -- he never loses the handle on moving them on and off stage, while Dennis Castellano brings the musical scenes to life. Every member of the cast, from the leads to the chorus members, brings energy, elan and elegance to this joyous theatrical enterprise. Thomas G. Marquez's costumes are perfect, from the pastels of the monied socialites to the thousands of pearl buttons on the gaudy costumes of Bill's Lambeth buddies. Not all of the visual jokes worked on opening night, but Bryan was able to get past this in his portrayal of Bill. Bryan isn't a top comedic actor, yet he's obviously inspired by much of the great comic material the character affords him. He's a great song-and-dance man, and it's in the musical numbers where he really shines.
Malone is terrific as Sally, the endearingly ignorant cockney lass willing to give up her love for Bill so that he may inherit his due. Tracy Lore is likewise simply smashing as the sexy vamp Lady Jacqueline, whose salacious advances toward Bill were risque enough in their time to be blue-penciled by England's censors.
Kevin McMahon could stand to make the prissy Gerald Bolingbroke more distinctively nerdy, and Cox could use a bit more starch as Bill's nemesis, the cultured battle- ax Mariah.
But Robert Machray is a quiet delight as the stolid Sir John, pining for Mariah's love for 50 years, and Lenny Wolpe is a scene-stealer as solicitor Parchester, whose bland, gray-suited appearance is at hilarious odds with his propensity for breaking into cheerful song at the most inopportune moments. That kind of spontaneity sparks all of ``Me and My Girl,'' which simply means you should check your cares at the door and prepare to be thoroughly entertained.
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