Dick Decareau

Alex Viola

Beth McVey, who was in We Have Always Lived in the Castle at the Yale Rep last year.

They’ve announced the cast of the Tin Pan Alley revue Hello! My Baby at Goodspeed’s Norma Terris Theatre.

So…
Hello! Justin Bowen (playing Mickey McKee)!
Hello! Stephanie Koenig (Nelly Gold/Ned O’Reilly)
Hello! Kelly McCormick (Frances Gold)
Hello! Junior Tierney (Dick Decareau)
Hello! Beth McVey (Ethel Coots)
Hello! Frank Root (Bert Coots)
Hello! Alex Viola (Violet Gold)
Hello! Ensemble!: Jessica Azenberg, Matthew A. Bauman (Albie Coots), Catherine Blades (Alice) Zak Edwards, Michael Mendez (Kid Vicious), Clinton Roane (Noble T. Jones), Allie Schauer (Marie), Jeremy Sevelovitz (Johnny), Ashley Wallace, and Michael Warrell (Dickie the Duck).

As previously announced, the show’s directed by Ray Roderick, who did a bang-up job on Strike Up the Band at the Goodspeed earlier this season. The book and concept come from Cheri Steinkellner, writer/producer of TV’s Cheers and Teacher’s Pet and librettist of the Broadway version of Sister Act. New music, and new arrangements of the old music, are by Georgia Stitt.

There are certainly some ragtime gals in there. And you aren’t you dying to know what Dickie the Duck does?

Image from Hello! My Baby's 2010 presentation at the Festival of New American Musicals.

Naturally, the Goodspeed got Ray Roderick, the man they’ve come to trust with all their 1920s or ‘30s-styled musicals—Singin’ in the Rain, 42nd Street and, from this very same season, the wondrous My One and Only—to direct. They also got My Own and Only’s choreographer, Kelli Barclay, on board.

I had a line on this news a couple months ago, but held my tongue. I saw Stitt (a wonderful pianist and arranger whom Goodspeed audiences have previously experienced as the Music Director for The Baker’s Wife in 2002), accompany a bunch of top-notch cabaret singers at a private event in Los Angeles. (Thank you, NEA/Annenberg Fellowship!) Chatting with the performers afterward, the Goodspeed gig came up. I figured it would be announced any day, but the theater sent out the press release just last week.

The show runs Nov. 3-27 at the Goodspeed’s Norma Terris Theatre in Chester.

The songs in Hello! My Baby have been covered over the years by everyone from Al Jolson to the cartoon frog in “One Froggy Evening” to Alice Cooper. The show has ringers such as The Gershwins popping up in its hit-filled score, plus Tin Pan Alley heavyweights like Walter Donaldson and Richard Whiting. But look for Hello! My Baby to do a neat resuscitation job on lesser-known early 20th century hitmaker Joseph McCarthy, whose “You Made Me Love You,” “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” and “Alice Blue Gown” are all featured.

This latest cast is deftly assembled from Goodspeed veterans who also have big-city musical and touring chops. D.B. Bond, who plays Stine, toured in Legally Blonde, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and even in the title role of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and served Broadway in the casts of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. Stine’s film-noir alter ego Stone will be Burke Moses, of the sprawling Goodspeed production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and seen on Broadway in The Frogs, Kiss Me Kate, Beauty and the Beast and Guys and Dolls. Moses has played Stone before, in 2006 for the Reprise! Broadway’s Best series at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse.

The double role of Bobbi and Gabby is played by Laurie Wells, Diva Dorothy Brock in the Goodspeed’s 42nd Street. Liz Pearce—Velma in the U.S. and U.K. tours of the critically underappreciated Scooby Doo in Stage Fright (concocted by Jim Millan of Canada’s Crow’s Nest theater, assisted by Mark McKinney of Kids in the Hall/Slings and Arrows). The Goodspeed resume of Nancy Anderson, who plays Donna/Oolie, stems back to ‘90s productions of Sweeney Todd and By Jeeves. Jay Russell (Lincoln in Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas when it world-premiered at the Long Wharf Theatre) is Buddy Fiddler/Irwin Irving. Jeffrey David Sears, City of Angels’ Jimmy Powers, was in the ensemble of a recent Avenue Q tour. Gregor Paslawsky (Lenin in the Long Wharf and Williamstown productions of Stoppard’s Travesties) is Luther Kingsley/ Werner Krieger. Danny Bolero (from the first national tour of In the Heights) is Lt. Munoz and Pancho Vargas. Allen E. Read (Paper Mill Playhouse’s 2009 revival of The Full Monty) will play Peter Kinglsey and Gerald Pierce.
Big Six will be played by Jerry Gallagher. Spencer Rowe will play Sonny. Josh Powell will play Officer Pasco, Del Dacosta, and Gene. Robert J. Townsend will play Mahoney. Christina Morrell will play Margaret and Anna. A young actress Kathleen Rooney, who happens to share the same name as my wife but is completely unrelated, plays Mallory/Avril. Others involved: Michael Keyloun (Dr. Mandril/ Gilbert), Jerry Gallagher (Big Six), Spencer Rowe (Sonny), Josh Powell (Officer Pasco/Del Dacosta/Gene), Robert J. Townsend (Mahoney) and Christina Morrell (Margaret/Anna).

Four-fifths of the a cappella group Marquee Five—Mick Bleyer, Vanessa Parvin, Sierra Rein and Adam West Hemming—has been cast as the show’s back-up vocal ensemble “The Angel City 4.” (The other MF member, not to be at Goodspeed, is Julie Reybur.) Shades of the recent Goodspeed revival of My One and Only, which featured a consistent vocal trio, dubbed The New Rhythm Boys, in a supporting role.

City of Angels will be directed by Darko Tresnjac, who took this gig (and the assignment to direct Bell, Book and Candle at Long Wharf and Hartford Stage) before being chosen as the new artistic director of Hartford Stage a few months ago. Tresnjac directed Carnival! for the Goodspeed last year, and his association with the theater goes back to A Little Night Music a decade ago.

City of Angels is one of those shows that seems more attuned to regional theaters than to Broadway, where it really stuck out in the early 1989 as an alternative to Meet Me in St. Louis and revivals of Shenandoah and The Sound of Music. City of Angels book writer Larry Gelbart was on a roll at the time, stage-wise: his political comedy Mastergate had moved to New York following a regional premiere at the ART in Cambridge.

Looking forward to this one very much.

Show Boat
Through Sept. 17 at the Goodspeed Opera House, East Haddam.Music by Jerome Kern. Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Based on the novel by Edna Ferber. Directed by Rob Ruggiero. Music Direction by Michael O’Flaherty. Scenic Design by Michael Schweikhardt. Costume design by Amy Clark. Lighting Design by John Lasiter. Choreographed by Noah Racey. Production Manager: R. Glen Grusmark. Production Stage Manager: Bradley G. Spachman. Produced for Goodspeed Musicals by Michael Price.

Performed by Sarah Uriarte Berry (Magnolia), Ben Davis (Ravenal), Andrea Frierson (Queenie), Karen Murphy (Parthy), Lenny Wolpe (Cap’n Andy), Danny Gardner (Frank), Jennifer Knox (Ellie), Quentin Earl Darrington (Joe), Lesli Marghertia (Julie), Maddie Berry (Kim), Paule Aboite, Elizabeth Berg, Elise Kinnon, Denise Lute, A’Lisa Miles, Mollie Vogt-Welch, Kyle E. Baird, Robert Davis, Robert Lance Mooney, Rob Richardson, Greg Roderick, Jet Thomson, David Toombs, Richard Waits, Nicholas Ward, Adam Fenton Goddu and Christiana Rodi.

Oh, this crazy boat we call show.
The stage area of the show boat in Show Boat fills the Goodspeed stage. To show the world outside that show within a boat within a winding river within a changing country at the end of dawn of the 20th century, director Rob Ruggiero has cast members run up and down the theater aisles. He has slaves stand ominously at the back and sides of the auditorium, watching important dramatic developments.
With some shows, this would be too much. But Show Boat has a scope and richness that demands that it be experienced on as many levels as possible.
If they don’t make ‘em like Show Boat anymore, that may have something to do with Edna Ferber, on whose novel the show is based, having been dead since 1968. They don’t make ‘em like Stage Door, Royal Family or Dinner at Eight anymore either. And why did it take so long for something to make a musical out of Giant (coming to the Dallas Theater Center in January, presumably en route to a New York premiere at the Public)?

To say that Show Boat is heavier, deeper, broader, wetter than a lot of other musicals of its time doesn’t really say much. Other musicals of the time weren’t based on 400-page novels by Edna Ferber, who was not just a robust prose stylist but a skilled dramatist, especially when it came to stories about show business.

Rob Ruggiero has accessed several versions of the Showboat script—a document much revised over the years. He’s wisely restored bits which purposefully make you uncomfortable—bits which show that even the most well-intentioned characters are beholden to the racist, sexist and classist biases of the era. Bits which demonstrate how, despite the presumed freedom and independence which Cap’n Andy’s Show Boat has, floating down the Mississippi and stopping to entertain folks along the way, the ship and its inhabitants and firmly affecting by the real-life strugglies going on onshore.

Ruggiero’s rich, rewarding, warts-and-all approach reminds me of Gordon Edelstein’s exceptional revival of The Front Page nearly a decade ago at the Long Wharf Theatre. As with that Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur classic (of the same Algonkuin Table Broadway era as Ferber’s work), you can strip away the sexist remarks and the racist tendencies and the grittiness, but where do you stop and still maintain the realism which distinguished the show in the first place? Show Boat’s uncomfortable moments are woven into the very fabric of its thick curtains. Just having Joe sing “Old Man River” doesn’t cut it. Including the irony and humor of having Joe’s wife describe this vibrant man as shiftless and lazy, buying into the vernacular and stereotypes of the time while also downplaying his poetic observation skills, adds nuance to this understated character. What else adds to Joe’s character? A full-bodied portrayal by David Aaron Domane, in which his periods of onstage silence and reflection speak as loudly as his booming baritone singing voice.

In trimming Show Boat’s cast to fit on the concise Goodspeed Stage, Ruggiero has maintained enough black male chorus members to keep Joe company, giving the show an ensemble burst of class struggle right at the outset, with a rousing round of “Colored folks work while the white folks play.” The script revision used here is not afraid of the n-word if it serves the plot (and it does).

Sarah Uriarte Berry as Magnolia, Lesli Margherita as Julie, Andrea Frierson as Queenie and David Aaron Damane as Joe in the Goodspeed Musicals production of Showboat. The show's run has been extended through September 17. All photos accompanying this review are by Diane Sobolewski.

The many ways in which the 1951 Technicolor movie scrubbed and streamlined the plot did Ferber’s sprawling narrative a real disservice. The stage show resonates so strongly because the characters grow and change. Little Kim (so named because she was born on the river at the intersection of Kentucky, Illinois and Mississippi) grows into a young woman, smart and confident enough to boss around her no-nonsense grandmother. That amusing development, which virtually ends the show, helps Show Boat end on a note of progress and new adventures, not just the sorry shmaltz of the motion picture version.

Men in this show are constantly being forgiven for grievous wrongs they’ve inflicted on their loved ones. They’re forgiven just because they show up with hangdog expressions on. Ruggiero and the cast understand that this is not something you can hang a show on anymore. They find the depth and humanity and expressiveness elsewhere.

Often, it’s right there in the songs. As Julie, subject of a miscegnation subplot, Lesli Margherita creates stirring self-pitying torch song renditions of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” and “Bill,” which are all the more plaintive because of the way Ruggiero surrounds her with other cast members, who are only vaguely aware of the subtext. Margherita’s performance is both nuanced and directly, glowingly entertaining. Julie would be a lump if she didn’t keep a spark of spontaneous lust within her, and Margherita keeps that fire burning.

Likewise, Sarah Uriarte Berry as Magnolia, the princess of the Show Boat who becomes a key romantic figure on its stage and off it, isn’t just sweet—she’s grandly sweet, vulnerably sweet, fascinatingly sweet, all-eyes-on-her sweet. The man who sweeps Julie off her sweet feet, well-heeled gambler Gaylord “Gay” Ravenal, is played by Ben Davis not as a drop-dead handsome blusterer in the old Howard Keel mold but as a flawed yet attractive mortal whose weaknesses are immediately apparent. Gay takes Julie for granted, but she mothers him back; it’s a believable relationship in which both are culpable—though he’s much worse, no question.

With all this melodrama—the doses of tragedy unusual for a musical theater piece written in the 1920s, when the genre was still known as “musical comedy” and dark stuff was intended for operas—a certain overarching lightness is required to put the whole Show Boat show over. That touch comes courtesy of the delightful Lenny Wolpe, who accesses his whimsical Wicked/Little Shop of Horrors/Drowsy Chaperone side to show us a relentlessly upbeat and hopeful Cap’n Andy, who commands his ship with a ruthful, velvet fist. It’s a pity Andy isn’t given a song (it’s always been a role reserved for personality-based comic actors). But he does get to dance with his daughter, and it’ll break your heart.

Lenny Wolpe and Karen Murphy as Cap'n Andy and Parthy Ann Hawks in the Goodspeed's Show Boat. Photo by Diane Sobolewski.

The Goodspeed shows us how Show Boat still overwhelms and carries us along, even when we cringe at bygone attitudes and creaky, ridiculous attempts to redeem or excuse horrifying behavior. The trip depends as much on detours—strong brief appearances by minor characters allowed to steal scenes, brash brass-heavy arrangements of familiar tunes played with the fervor of New Orleans jazz bands—as it does on the main event. This Show Boat literally spills off the stage and makes us deal with life’s realities as well as its escapes.

TONY YAZBEK AND ALDE LEWIS JR. TAP THE TITLE TUNE IN MY ONE AND ONLY AT THE GOODSPEED OPERA HOUSE. PHOTO BY DIANE SOBOLEWSKI.

My One and Only

Through June 25 at the Goodspeed Opera House.

Music & lyrics by George & Ira Gershwin. Book by Peter Stone and Timothy S. Mayer. Original staging and choreography by Thommie Walsh and Tommy Tune. Directed by Ray Roderick. Choreographed by Kelli Barclay. Produced by Michael Price. Associate Producer: Bob Allwine. Set Design by James Youmans. Costume Design by Robin McGee. Lighting Design by Paul Miller. Projection Design by Michael Clark. Sound by Jay Hilton. Hair & Wig Design by Robert-Charles Vallance. Orchestrations by Dan DeLange. Assistant Music Director: William J. Thomas. Production Manager: R. Glen Grusmark. Stage Manager: Bradley Spachman. Performed by Tony Yazbek (Billy), Gabrielle Ruiz (Edythe), Trent Armand Kendall (Rev. Montgomery), Khris Lewin (Prince Nikki/Achmed) Kirsten Wyatt (Mickey), Alde Lewis Jr. (Mr. Magix), Vasthy E. Mompoint & Victor J. Wisehart & Richard Riaz Yoder (New Rhythms) and the Ensemble of Nancy Rnee Braun, Brian Davis, Deanna Glover, Joe Grandy, Trent Armand Kendall, Matthew J. Kilgore, Drew King, Lea Kohl, Vasthy E. Mompoint, Jarran Muse, Kristyn Pope, Allison Kaye Rihn, Kristen J. Smith, Victor J. Wisehart and Richard Riaz Yoder.

“This boy is going to make me get out of my chair.”

It’s not often that an old-school musical gives you the same tingle up your spine as a suspense thriller. But even with all those familiar Gershwin melodies, a glorious sense of feverish anticipation is what My One and Only delivers.

The plot is ostensibly about a young aviator attempting to make the first solo flight across the Atlantic. There are nasty spies whacking good Americans on their noggins with wrenches, and an aquatic entertainer who’s gone missing—perhaps she’s in Persia?

But no, that’s not where the suspense lies. It comes with the announcement that “I’m dancing and I can’t be bothered now,” or the news that “we’re in the swim,” or that after that there’ll be some kickin’ away of clouds. It comes with a melody you know well, slowed to a rhythm you’ve never heard it at, and the realization that “Strike Up the Band” could be an emotional ballad.

Not to mention—wow!—that bit where the boy (high-flyer Billy) gets Mr. Magix (Alde Lewis Jr., a protege of the tap genius who first danced this part a quarter-century ago, Charles “Honi” Coles) out of his chair, for as flashy and assured a bit of male tapdance bonding as you may see in your lifetime. This number, which earns the right to illustrate and punctuate the musical’s title song, encompasses as much drama as it does dance. It hands down traditions. It puts insouciant youth in its place. It respects grumpy old men. It spreads joy to the rest of the cast and knocks the audience flat out.

This is the sort of musical you only attempt if you’re certain you can startle with the production numbers. They have to be sensational. At Goodspeed they are, and the dancers know it. They’re beaming. They’re showing off. They’re striking up the band and kickin’ the clouds away. They’re dancing and they can’t be bothered now. Not that we would think for a moment of bothering them.

The reason My One and Only doesn’t get revived all that often isn’t due to any weakness in script or score. It’s because, as it says in the subtitle the Goodspeed plasters on its programs and posters, this is a “tap dance spectacular.” The original production won two Tonys—for its star Tommy Tune, one of the greatest (and gangliest) tap dancers of his time, and for choreography. However funny and frisky and the action gets, it all has to be grounded by spectacular dances.

This was clearly the Goodspeed’s priority. I have great memories of the original My One and Only from over 30 years ago, and those memories are largely about specific star turns by well-known performers. Not having big names like Tommy Tune or Twiggy (for whom the lead roles were originally fashioned) to exploit, the Goodspeed has spread around the spectacle more democratically. For every sensational solo routine, there’s an equally showstopping ensemble number.

My One and Only uses tap shoes and Gershwin tunes as its foundation, but the show is as much a product of the 1970s as it is of the 1920s. It has a sense of adventure and discovery and amorous aggression that’s as applicable to the disco age as to the flapper one—and translates very neatly into our own times. The show’s moral is shared with a zillion Gershwin standards: It’s easy to get yourself down about something, but you don’t have to. Why not kick up your heels?

Half a dozen of the songs in My One and Only (“Funny Face,” “”High Hat,” “S’Wonderful,” “”In the Swim,” “He Loves and She Loves,” and the title tune) derive from a single Gershwin show, Funny Face. That show, and other Gershwin songs brought into the My One and Only score such as “Soon,” come from the same year in which My One and Only is set, 1927. For Funny Face, the Gershwins replaced “How Long Has This Been Going On?” with “He Loves and She Loves”; My One and Only uses both. The rest are a mixed bag, from 1921’s “Boy Wanted” to 1937’s Nice Work If You Can Get It—both songs which describe love in terms of gainful employment—with “Kicking the Clouds Away” (1925), “Blah, Blah, Blah” (1931) in between.

Placing old-fashioned positivistic anthems in a historical context which acknowledges real-life heroes gives My One and Only a kinship to one of the biggest hits in the Goodspeed’s history, Annie. The shows were created only about five years apart. Annie is set in 1933 and features an appearance by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. My One and Only is set in 1927 and makes frequent mention of Charles “Lucky” Lindbergh.

The show’s also blissfully self-aware, as only an anachronistically sunnily dispositioned, nostalgia-driven show can be: A plot progression is dismissed with “Ah, that’s first act business.” There are fart jokes to offset all those starched dress shirts, and gospel wails to integrate the Tin Pan alley atmosphere. When the recurring vocal trio known as The New Rhythms (Vasthy E. Mompoint, Victor Wisehart and Richard Riaz Yoder) emerge at one point with a hilariously cheesy prop to illustrate a sky voyage, they acknowledge it deliriously: “It’s a plane! On a stick!” There’s some serious intelligence at work in the complicated choreography, multi-obstacled romantic plotline and rapid-change set design of this show, but it would be half as impressive without such inspired silliness.

There are slight similarities between My One and Only and The Boyfriend (which the Goodspeed revived in 2005). Both use seaside frolics for big production numbers, and the lovers in each meet at upscale parties. But My One and Only is jazzier and hipper and saucier, less overtly parodic. It’s less interested in capturing a lost era than it is in amplifying what was cool about it.

Tap dancing is surprisingly still spryly cool, even in this age of shoegazing and raves. In the fleet-footed lead role of Captain Billy Buck Chandler, Tony Yazbeck wisely doesn’t even try to ape the role’s originator Tommy Tune. He’s more of a sweaty, athletic, Gene Kelly-esque tapper, and he leaps into each dance as if prepared to tap ‘til he drops. The object of Billy’s affections, swimming ace Edythe Herbert (Gabrielle Ruiz), is required to sing more than she dances, and does so in a confident, personable cabaret style that really invigorates otherwise familiar love songs. Vaudeville yocks are provided courtesy Billy’s tomboy flight mechanic Mickey (Kirsten Wyatt, invoking the great Betty Garrett, not to mention Deborah Walley in Beach Blanket Bingo) and villainous Prince NikolaiErraclyovitch Tchatchavadve (Khris Lewin), whose thick accents transforms “romance” into “ruh-myenz” and “piece de resistance” into “piss of resistents.”

KHRIS LEWIN AND KIRSTEN WYATT TIE UP LOOSE ENDS AS COMIC RELIEF IN MY ONE AND ONLY. DIANE SOBOLEWSKI PHOTO.

The Goodspeed literally frames this succession of dance, crooning and comedy routines with a purposely boxy set design and quickchanging photo and film images to set the scenes. There are more projections in this production than in a Yale School of Drama thesis project. It all makes for a snappy presentations that goes beyond exhilarating into exhausting. The Goodspeed currently has Cutman, a new musical about championship boxing, playing down the road from the Opera House at the Norma Terris Theater, but it’d have to hit hard to be any punchier than My One and Only.

This show is a welcome reminder that a Gershwin tune stands for more than a pleasant melody. The Gershwins fueled a revolution, one that still spins 85 years or so later.

My One and Only will make you get out of your chair.