Plymouth
Music Series'
" Lady in the Dark"
Minneapolis Star-Tribune - October 15, 2001
Michael Anthony, October
15, 2001
Asked why we're so interested these days in vintage Broadway
musicals, Pop the kindly old stage manager would probably say, "Harrumph!
It's because the new ones aren't any good." Pop's got
a point. But there's another reason. We have nearly a century
of popular musical theater to look back on now, a
huge body of repertoire spotlighted by several dozen classics
that still engage and entertain, and one of those is surely "Lady
in the Dark," the show with music by Kurt Weill, lyrics
by Ira Gershwin and book by Moss Hart that way back in 1941
made psychoanalysis a fit subject for the musical stage.
Plymouth Music Series presented the show as its season- opener
Saturday night at Orchestra Hall in a lively concert staging
by Vern Sutton, who also played several key roles. While one
might argue that Plymouth's chorus of 100 or so voices is too
big to provide an authentic Broadway sound, conductor Philip
Brunelle did use Weill's original orchestration with its wonderfully
blaring saxophones, and the proud hoofers of JazzDance, the
local dance troupe headed by Danny Buraczewski, injected a
whimsical '40s aura to the dream sequences, the little one-act
operas that form the heart of Weill's innovative score.
In the role created by Gertrude Lawrence, Connie Evingson looked
terrific as our heroine Liza Elliott: chic, sophisticated and
possessed of what tap dancers used to call "6 o'clock
legs," meaning flawless. And a little repressed, as Liza
needs to be. The brilliant editor of a fashion magazine, Liza's
unhappy and can't make up her mind, so she goes to a psychiatrist
(played in a nicely clinical tone by Tim Russell). Evingson
gave us a real character, though it needed more push in a couple
of scenes, and her singing voice has just the right cool but
insinuating tone for songs such as "My Ship" and "The
Saga of Jenny," the tale of a woman "who couldn't
say no in 27 languages."
The cast was strong. Sutton delivered the most famous of patter
songs, "Tchaikovsky" with exuberant clarity -- 39
seconds in the reprise, thereby matching Danny Kaye's timing,
according to Gershwin's memoirs. Keith Rice, a properly handsome
Randy Curtis, sang a rich-toned "This Is New." James
Bohn was a suave Kendall Nesbitt, James McKeel a strong Charlie
Johnson, and a bunch of small female roles were filled out
amusingly by Janet Hanson and Linda Zelig. To repeat a reflection
from two years ago, after Plymouth's equally fine production
of "Of Thee I Sing," what
a pity this was just a one- nighter. If Brunelle and Plymouth
want to keep doing vintage musicals -- and what a nice idea
that is -- they need to move them to a theater and playthem
for at least a weekend in a venue that wouldn't need miking.
Face microphones are a hindrance in a drama and give a directionless
unreality to the voices.
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