City Folk in East Haddam: Chats with Burke Moses and Liz Pearce from the Goodspeed Opera House production of City of Angels

To my deepest noir chagrin, I have not yet seen City of Angels at Goodspeed Opera House. Oh, I assuredly will—it’s up through nearly the end of November, and this rousing hardboiled musical is so rarely revived that this production is an unmissable opportunity. I have wonderful memories of the original Broadway production (which won half a dozen Tonys and boosted the career of James Naughton) in the early ’90s and the subsequent national tour which co-starred The Brady Bunch’s Barry Williams.

The relative lack of productions the show’s had since its initial success, even on the regional, college and small-theater level, is a mystery as large as the dreamy one at the center of Larry Gelbart & Cy Coleman’s show. According to Larry Gelbart’s misshapen and rambling 1998 memoir Laughing Matters, the development of the show could not have not gone more smoothly, from Cy Coleman’s initial pitch to work on a “true jazz” musical about “private eye movies of the ‘40s” to director Michael Blakemore’s insistence that the show’s title be changed from Death is for Suckers to something less overtly parodic and more fitting for a “perfectly executed, respectful version of a ‘40s film noir.”

A few weeks back I had a chance to discuss the Goodspeed’s fresh production of City of Angels with two of its stars, Burke Moses and Liz Pearce.

Moses, who plays the fictional ‘40s gumshoe Stone—a figment of the imagination of modern-day screenwriter Stine (played by D.B. Bond) in the show—agrees that exaggerated comedy is not appropriate here. For starters, he says, “I never do camp.” But beyond that, “this text is so subtle. The only way to do this kind of parody is to play it close to the bone. It’s an unbelievably clever script, not your standard musical jokes. Some of the lines, you have to wait two or three beats for them to connect. To prepare, I watched a lot of film noir, and realized that there’s far more to Humphrey Bogart than I thought.”

Burke Moses has made his career in musical theater—including at Goodspeed, where he stood out on the crowded stage of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers—but “when I was a young guy, with this baritone voice, I couldn’t get heard for a musical. Then, when I was in my early 30s, I got two calls in the same week: one to replace the Sky Masterston in Guys and Dolls, the other for a new musical being developed then, Beauty and the Beast.” He found his calling in manly roles like Stone. In fact, he’s one of the few actors in this City of Angels who’s had an opportunity to do the seldom-revived show previously—in a West Coast concert version features rewrites and other revisions by creators Gelbart and Coleman themselves.

He loves returning to Goodspeed because it promises “quite a lengthy rehearsal process. You don’t come here for the pay, but because they consistently do quality work.

“The book is complex, because you have the color story and the black and white story. My character personally doesn’t change, but some of the other actors have to be two completely different characters. Darko [Tresnjak], I hadn’t met him before this, and he’s done a hell of a job. He understands pacing. This production is very clear. We’re able to do things technically, with a lot of projections, and that helps. Plus Cy Coleman set out to write a real jazz score, with swing and bebop.

“It’s why I love musical theater—it’s the only medium that can actually give an audience goosebumps.”

Liz Pearce, who plays the dual role  of femme fatale Alaura Kingsley and film celebrity Carla Haywood, worked with Burke Moses previously at Goodspeed in that stage-filling Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but she’s better known for a more recent testosterone-terpsichorean musical, Billy Elliott. She returns to the Broadway cast of that show for the final months of the New York run once the Goodspeed gig ends this month.

Theatergoers with children may recongnize Pearce from tours of the high-quality stage adaptation of the Scooby-Doo cartoons. Pearce met her husband Piere-Marc Diennet while doing Scooby-Doo in Stagefright. She finds City of Angels, despite its colorful manner and purposeful use of cinematic clichés, to be a much less cartoonish mystery machine. “I play Alaura in the film noir sequences, this seductive, sexy, conniving woman. But I’m also Carla Haywood, the movie star who plays Alaura, and she’s honest and straightforward.” Pearce found the humanity in both roles. “I have a lot of dialogue, only one short song, and no dancing, so for me it’s more like a play. The style of film noir acting is very difficult. I studied Double Indemnity before I even auditioned.

“The jazz really adds to the feeling of the show. You can tell the orchestra adores playing it. There are these incredible costumes and wigs. Burke and I have a great time. We come off stage and just start laughing.

“Working with Darko was also a big incentive for me,” Pearce continues. So did returning to the Goodspeed, where she began her career with a central role in the theater’s production of George M! a decade ago. “After three years in the city, it’s great to escape out here. Everybody feels like family.”