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Eric Marchese Special
to the Register
Friday, July 18, 2003 'Crazy' in love with the 1930s
A lavish Long Beach staging of the retro-musical has the era's laughs, glamour and heart.
In most of the musical comedies from the 1930s, it was boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. In "Crazy for You," a retro-'30s musical created a few years ago, the boy never has the girl in the first place. In fact, in the story line concocted by Ken Ludwig, the relationship between the boy and girl has more sophisticated shadings than anything seen during the Depression era.
Playwright Ludwig, who wrote the comedy "Lend Me a Tenor," and co-creator Mike Ockrent based their story on material from the era's own Guy Bolton and John McGowan. In the 1930s, a songwriting team would be hired to write the show's music. Ingeniously, Ludwig and Ockrent use the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, fitting them into convenient niches within the story.
It's all quintessentially, gloriously '30s - a concept so inspired as to win the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1992. Musical Theatre West's lavish new staging at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center captures that '30s feel even while giving us a nudge and a wink to suggest, as any good retro-musical should, that everyone knows this show was merely created in the image of vintage stage musicals and is not the genuine article.
For today's audiences, who may not relate so readily to something so dated as to seem stilted, "Crazy for You" is the ideal. Ludwig peppers his script with old vaudeville-style jokes, and Ockrent is an old hand at retro musicals, having previously created "Me and My Girl" (staged by the troupe just a few months ago). Director Jamie Rocco and company reconcile the bright, sassy script of this "New Gershwin Musical" with its songs, which have the jazz era's heart and vibrancy. The glittering sets and costumes give this production the look of a big Broadway show. Rocco follows Susan Stroman's original choreography, which turns every available object onstage into a prop for a dance scene - yet his dynamite cast doesn't make a single false move, making this one eye-popping staging.
The story concerns Bobby
Child, a New Yorker whose heart has always belonged to the world of musical
theater, and Polly Baker, the only eligible bachelorette in the sleepy little
town of Deadrock, Nev. Defying all logic (hey, did anyone ever say these
shows were logical?), Bobby's mother, who owns a bank, sends him west to
get Polly and her dad to sign over the deed to the theater building they
own in town. Sharing their passion for musical theater, Bobby and Polly
hit it off - until Polly discovers that Bobby is only there to take the
theater away from her.
Bobby decides the only way to win Polly back is to help her and the townsfolk resurrect the theater. Disguised as Bela Zangler, founder of the Zangler Follies (read: Ziegfeld Follies), Bobby sends for a gaggle of Zangler Girls, whose presence transforms Deadrock's scruffy, female-starved men-folk into respectable gents of the world of theater.
Like Rocco, musical director Todd Helm has an intuitive feel for Gershwin's music, evidenced by his canny conducting of the orchestra. The show's use of Gershwin songs is impressively inventive, too. Bobby is tap-dance crazy, so when he and the Zangler Girls sing "I Can't Be Bothered," they execute a synchronized tap dance line. The jazzy song "Slap That Bass" becomes an involved dance scene with intricate choreography. When Bobby and Polly call it quits, he serenades her with "They Can't Take That Away From Me," then leaves - and Polly, filled with regret, sings "But Not for Me."
David Engel is an engaging Bobby whose high, eager voice and loose-limbed style are ideal for the physical comedy demands of the role. What's more, he's a convincingly imperious Hungarian impresario as Zangler. As the feisty, spirited yet very feminine Polly, Tami Tappan Damiano's portrayal is more serious, filled with intensity and quiet romantic longings. Both are agile, versatile dancers who make a raft of styles - ballroom, tap, soft-shoe, standard musical theater and more - look effortless. Each is a quadruple-threat - solid actors of unimpeachable song-and-dance skills up to the gymnastic demands of the show.
The rest of the cast must also handle the rigorous dance scenes, including this production's chorus - the eight women playing Zangler Girls and the eight men who play the various cowboys of Deadrock, all of whom garner some of this staging's biggest laughs. Kevin McMahon's Lank Hawkins is a gruff comic foil to Bobby. Christine Toy Johnson should take the same approach as Bobby's fiancˇe, Irene, yet plays it straight. Ira Denmark's Zangler is funny if not especially idiosyncratic. Vocally, this is one ear-pleasing show.
The sets, originally designed and built
for American Musical Theatre of San Jose, are modular segments that make
for smooth, quiet changes, while William Ivey Long's original costume designs
scream 1930s (ya gotta love those huge, ornate Zangler Girl headdresses!).
This handsome, colorful show, with its corny jokes and soaring Gershwin
songs, is one vast, beloved valentine to the classic Broadway musical of
the vintage era.
Friday, July 18, 2003
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