Readers
of The Jade Sphinx are perhaps weary
of hearing about the swelligant series of musical revivals at City Center here in Gotham. Encores!
is simply one of the chief pleasures of living in New York, where the audience
is often as interesting, varied and engaging as the show. Here, musical theater buffs congregate for restagings
of little-seen shows with top-notch casts and the finest orchestra performing
on Broadway. The creative minds behind
the series are Artistic Director Jack
Viertel and Music Director Rob
Berman, who have done a superb job of mounting these shows since 1994.
This
year’s crop of Encores! productions included the incandescent Little Me and the fetching and moving Most Happy Fella. They close out the year with a first – a
revival of a European musical that is perhaps best known through its US film
version – which was, oddly enough, made without music.
Irma La Douce was first performed in Paris in
1956. It has a score by Marguerite Monnot (1903-1961), with
book and lyrics by Alexandre Breffort
(1901-1971). It ran for four years. It moved to London’s West End in 1958 – where
this version, directed by Peter Brook
(born 1925), ran for three years. It was
mounted on Broadway by David Merrick
(1911-2000) in 1960. The English adaptation
and translation was by Julian More, David Heneker and Monty Norman. It ran for one
year. (An empiricist might conclude that
musicals about prostitutes play better in French.)
Most
readers will be familiar with the non-musical film version of 1963, starring Jack Lemmon (1925-2001) and Shirley MacLaine. The film version shares with most musicals a
frenetic energy and a colorful, vibrant bounce, and comes recommended. (However, Jack Lemmon is often an exhausting
screen presence, and is at his most febrile here. You have been warned.)
The
story concerns Irma La Douce, a successful prostitute who lives in Paris. A
poor law student, Nestor le Fripé, falls in love with her and is jealous of her
clients. In order to keep her for himself, he assumes the disguise of a rich
older man, "Oscar," and takes many odd jobs to pay for her. Finally
no longer able to sustain his exhausting life, he disposes of his Oscar
identity, only to be convicted of murder, and transported to Devil's Island. He escapes and returns to Paris, where he
proves that he is innocent before reuniting with his beloved.
As
always, Encores! are wonderfully staged and mounted. This is the first-ever full set in the series,
by John Lee Beatty, and it’s a stunner. Sadly, the set is really quite the best thing
about the show. The entire production
never manages to build momentum, and despite their best efforts, the cast lacks
the verve and panache necessary to pull off the show.
As Irma,
Jennifer Bowles sings wonderfully
well, but her dancing (more stomping than stepping, really) is lamentable. Nor does she really have the personality, nor
the energy, necessary to stop the show through any of her solo numbers. Rob
McClure, in the dual role of Nestor and Oscar, lacks the comic timing and farcical
sense that someone like Christian Borle or
Danny Kaye would bring to the role,
and leaves little impression. Indeed,
the entire cast is too subdued to electrify the farcical proceedings, and the
resulting show just lies there lifelessly.
The one exception is Malcolm Gets,
as the bartender, who sings well and plays adroitly.
This lack
of energy is the result, in part, of the pedestrian staging by director John Doyle. It would seem that his idea of bedroom farce
is a great deal of running and mugging, without positioning his players in any
strategic way around the stage.
The main
problem, of course, is the book, by More, Heneker and Norman. There is a persistent melancholy note, and,
more telling, it is never quite as smart as it thinks it is. It also relies upon the old chestnut of
someone not recognizing their disguised lover, not even during sex. It doesn’t work in Shakespeare, and it hasn’t
worked since then. Worse still, the book
never really exploits the comic potential of the material, and the manic
qualities inherent in the book devolve into mere whimsy.
An unfortunate
end to what was a stellar season at Encores!, but even the best are entitled to
an occasional misstep.
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