Today Stephen Sondheim Is 80

Today is the 80th birthday of Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

To celebrate, I am reprinting (below) a review of three of his shows that I wrote in 2001. In addition, I would like to point readers to some of the posts I made to mark Sondheim's 75th birthday in 2005: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, and Part Seven.

This tripartite review appeared in The Metro Herald (Alexandria, Va.) on July 6, 2001.  So far as I know, it has not been previously available in an easily retrievable format on line:

THREE BY SONDHEIM (INCLUDING A RAIN DELAY)

Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

Special to The Metro Herald

The theatre world is abuzz with the announcement that, next year, the Kennedy Center will be mounting a festival of six musicals by Stephen Sondheim, under the overall direction of Eric Schaeffer. Schaeffer, artistic director of the Signature Theatre in Arlington, has already garnered a worldwide reputation as an interpreter of Sondheim’s work and recently made his West End directorial debut with the new musical version of The Witches of Eastwick [see The Metro Herald, March 2, 2001].

While we await the Kennedy Center’s celebration of America’s greatest living composer-lyricist, Signature is whetting our appetite with a revue of Sondheim’s work, Putting it Together.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER
Originally conceived by actress/director Julia MacKenzie in England, Putting it Together had its first New York production about six years ago, starring Julie Andrews. It was later revived in Los Angeles and New York under Schaeffer’s direction, with Carol Burnett in the “lead,” with Kathy Lee Gifford substituting for her at some performances. (“Lead” is, well, misleading, since PIT is an ensemble production, with the five characters even lacking names.)

Signature is always at its best when presenting musicals, and even better than that when presenting Sondheim [see our reviews of A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and A Stephen Sondheim Evening, for comparison]. So Signature patrons were suitably pleased to see PIT chosen to close the theatre’s current season.

Putting It Together is a collection of Sondheim songs, performed by five excellent singer/actors: Sheri L. Edelen, Jason Gilbert, Ty Hreben, Bob McDonald, and Jane Pesci-Townsend. There is no plot, as such, or story, but there is a dramatic arc. Songs that previously seemed wedded to their original contexts get refreshed here, gaining new layers of meaning and putting to bed the suggestion that Sondheim can’t write “hits.” While not all of the Master’s songs can stand on their own, many of them can, and those represented here prove it.

PIT includes not just songs from Broadway musicals (and off-Broadway, counting Assassins, and off- off-Broadway, counting The Frogs), but also from Sondheim’s Oscar®-winning score for the movie Dick Tracy. The wide variety gives each member of the cast a chance to shine—whether it’s Edelen’s “Sooner or Later” or Pesci-Townsend’s “Could I Leave You” or Gilbert’s amusing “Invocation and Instructions to the Audience” or—well, I could go on and on.

Director Eric Schaeffer has also designed the set for this production, a simple thrust stage that allows for maximum flexibility. The lighting design by Michael Phillipi enhances the entire unified effect, which extends even to the design for the show’s poster and program.
. . .


COMPANY
A five-night, free engagement of a concert version of Company at the Lubber Run amphitheatre in central Arlington almost became a four-night run when a thunderstorm and cloudburst suddenly crashed the party just as the curtain was about to rise. But Sondheim and Signature fans being what they are, the audience withstood the rain, soaked to the skin, and most held out for a one-hour rain delay. Thanks to the diligence and dedication of the crew—including several high-school students who volunteer with Signature Theatre—the show went on, and it was well worth the wait. One instrument, an electronic keyboard, was lost to the weather, but the rest of the orchestra was able to play. (Luckily there were no strings in the orchestra; it would be hard to expect them to withstand the rain and humidity.) And play they did!

Because this is a concert version of Company, it might be referred to as “Company-lite.” The focus is, as one might expect, on the songs. A few instances of dialogue are retained, just to keep the show flowing, but this is a considerably truncated version of the path-setting musical play that hit the scene in 1970 with an impact that has not yet dissipated.

There were “concept musicals” before Company, but when Stephen Sondheim added music and lyrics to George Furth’s series of playlets about married couples in New York, adding—as the mortar in this mixture—a single man who is friend to them all, they created a revolution in musical theatre. Without Company, it is unlikely that we would ever have seen A Chorus Line, Falsettoland, or Cats. (Well, we could have lived quite nicely without Cats.) This is not to say that Company had no antecedents. Cabaret, Hair, and even Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro contributed to the line of development that Company continued. But few realized where that line was going until Company’s debut.

Company’s own development did not end there. The score used in Signature’s Lubber Run concert is the one revised by the composer and used in 1995 in productions at the Roundabout Theatre in New York and the Donmar Warehouse in London. It differs slightly from what you would hear on the original cast album (with Dean Jones in the lead) or the original London cast (with Larry Kert as Robert, and the rest of the New York cast; Kert took over from Jones six weeks into the Broadway run). Both the Roundabout and Donmar cast recordings are available on CD.

Stepping up to the plate again— what a busy man!—Enc Schaeffer cast a talented set of singers for this concert. It is difficult to pick out the best moments, but surely Eleasha Gamble (as Marta) presented one of the freshest, almost optimistic renderings of “Another Hundred People” ever heard—in stunning contrast to the character’s cynicism as seen in the book. (Marta’s unforgettable scene—”I want to get all dressed up in black.. . and go sit in some bar at the end of the counter, and drink and cry.”—is missing from this version.) And Judy Simmons’ delivery of “The Ladies Who Lunch,” perhaps the best- known song from Company, resulted in the most sustained applause of the evening. And special credit must go to Amy McWilliams, as Amy. Humans being what they are (flawed), it is simply not possible for one of them to sing Amy’s part of “Getting Married Today” without at least one miscue or breathing error. McWilliams came as close to perfection as anyone I have ever heard or seen do this song, with only one noticeable flaw.

If there is any weak link in this chain of performers, it is, unfortunately, Scott Leonard Fortune as Robert. Although he has a rich, resonant baritone voice, Fortune simply failed to convince. Perhaps it is because the role was originally written for a tenor, but even with the songs transposed to his range, Fortune seemed to be out of his element. Or perhaps the rain had an unfortunate effect on him that night.

The rest of the cast included actors familiar to Washington-area theatre-goers: Suzanne Briar, Will Gartshore, Mary Payne, R. Scott Thompson, Jean Cantrell, Tom Sellwood, Tim Tourbin, Steven Cupo, Deanna Harris, and Tracy Lynn Olivera. Paul Raiman conducted the orchestra, while Signature stalwart Karma Camp did the musical staging.

Signature deserves a huge round of applause for giving to its community—Arlington County, which incubated Signature during its early years—this series of free concerts. Word is that this will become an annual event. Let’s hope so.


GYPSY
Unlike its Charlottesville neighbor, Live Arts, which often engages in the experimental, the avant garde, and the challenging, Heritage Repertory Theatre, a summer stock company that performs on the grounds of the University of Virginia, focuses on the tried and true. Its series of plays each summer consists mostly of critical or popular successes, Tony® and Pulitzer award-winning plays, or plays drawn from familiar American literature. This is not a fault, of course; it is just a demonstration of the depth and breadth of theatrical productions in this country, even in a small city like Charlottesville.

To launch its 28th season, HRT’s producing artistic director Robert Chapel chose Gypsy, an American “musical fable” by three-fourths of the team that gave us West Side Story: Arthur Laurents (book), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), and Jerome Robbins (director/choreographer). Jule Styne wrote the music, and there is little doubt that this is the best score of Styne’s 50- plus years in show business.

This production, directed by Chapel and choreographed by Kiira Schmidt, has a huge cast. (I actually lost count.) It is presented in a straightforward, traditional fashion, in contrast to Signature Theatre’s production earlier this year, which was directed by Baayork Lee.

To point out just one divergence:  at Signature, Lee chose to use the overture (one of the best-known in the American musical theatre) as an opportunity to introduce the setting and the characters, in a Runyonland-like pantomime on the thrust stage, with a setting that remained basically the same throughout the show. At HRT, the orchestra performs the overture in front of a brightly-lit act curtain, decorated with the original “Gypsy” logo (as seen on the original cast recording, for instance). At the end of the overture, the curtain rises, and we are on stage at an audition for Uncle Jocko’s children’s amateur vaudeville show. And we go on from there.

Where Lee emphasized some of the darker aspects of Gypsy—and there are many—Chapel hones in on the comic and the musical. Renee Dobson plays a sprightly Madame Rose, whereas Donna Migliaccio at Signature was more driven, more obsessive, more inward-looking. After “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” Migliaccio’s castmates were cowed and frightened; Dobson’s were simply resigned to their fate. In “Rose’s Turn,” Dobson seems to be having fun, wishing and wondering; Migliaccio had a nervous breakdown.

Still, HRT’s Gypsy is an entertaining evening. Some of the young talents—from the University of Virginia, Elon College, and local elementary, middle, and high schools—are obviously going places. The young girls who play the Baby June and Baby Louise (Allyson Graves and Maggie Horan) have tremendous stage presence, considering their ages. Nathan Moore does a star turn as Tulsa in “All I Need Is the Girl,” and Laurie Saylor convincingly transforms herself from doormat Louise to burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee in just a few, intense minutes.

Gypsy is a true classic of the American musical theatre. It is hard to pass up any opportunity to see it. If you get a chance to see this production in Charlottesville, please do so.

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'Two Strangers, The Rain, and the River'

The cold, wet winter that we have endured since December 19 sent me looking for means to feel warm and dry. I found it in a review of two plays performed in Charlottesville during the summer of 2001, about eight and a half years ago. Here is what I wrote in The Metro Herald on July 27, 2001.  (This article has not previously appeared in an easily accessible on-line format.)

TWO STRANGERS, THE RAIN, AND THE RIVER:

THE DIVINERS AND THE RAINMAKER IN CHARLOTTESVILLE

Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

Special to The Metro Herald

It has been said that all dramatic literature fits into one of two categories: a person goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.

The archetype of the first category may be Huckleberry Finn in all its incarnations, including the musical Big River. But it also includes films as different as It Happened One Night and Some Like it Hot or plays like— if you take “journey” in a metaphorical sense—Pygmalion and its musical offspring, My Fair Lady, in which Eliza Doolittle journeys from flower girl to lady in three hours plus intermission. Waiting for Godot is about a journey that stands still.

In the second category, the presence of the stranger in town usually results in changes to the town itself, and its people. The town becomes physically or spiritually transformed. This is a common theme in musicals, from The Music Man to The Witches of Eastwick.

Two plays recently produced across town from each other in Charlottesville share this theme: The Diviners, by James Leonard, Jr., and The Rainmaker, by N. Richard Nash. Both plays are also related in that, on the surface, they are about the need for water.

The Rainmaker is a professional and an amateur theatre perennial, best known from the 1956 film version starring Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. It was also turned into a musical, 110 in the Shade, by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (creators of The Fantasticks and I Do! I Do!) with a book by the playwright, N. Richard Nash (who also wrote the screenplay). Nash, who died last December at the age of 87, built his reputation largely on this single, oft-produced work. (He also wrote a teleplay of The Rainmaker that was produced in 1982.) As such, it fits in quite nicely with Heritage Repertory Theatre’s mission of bringing familiar works to a new audience each summer.

By contrast, The Diviners, by Jim Leonard, Jr., is a relatively new play, first developed and performed by the Hanover College Theater Group with the support of the American College Theatre Festival, and first produced professionally by the Circle Repertory Company in 1980. Still, it has become remarkably popular, especially among college theatre groups. A Web search turns up more than 560 hits, almost every one of them a reference to a college production of The Diviners in the past six years or so. While not particularly cutting edge or avant garde, its tight focus and emotional impact make it a natural for Live Arts Summer Theater Festival.

Both plays offer a slice of Americana. The Rainmaker is set on a ranch in some unspecified western state in the 1920s. (We know it’s not Kansas or Nebraska.) The ranch and its neighbors have been suffering from a drought. The Diviners is set more identifiably in the small town of Zion, Indiana, in the midst of the Great Depression. While there is no sense of dryness in the air, the search for water and the coming of rain are key elements in the plot.

The main characters in The Rainmaker are the Curry family – father H.C., sons Noah and Jim, and daughter Lizzie. Lizzie is what used to be called an “old maid,” and her father and brothers are anxious to get her married off. When the play opens, she has just returned from a trip to visit some relatives in another town, with the hope that one of her cousins might marry her. That having failed, H.C., Jim, and Noah pay a call on their town’s deputy sheriff, File, and invite him to dinner—essentially setting him up on a date with Lizzie. Into this mix arrives Bill Starbuck, a fast-talking conman who promises to produce a rainstorm within 24 hours, in return for $100 (at that time, a large amount of money).

In the second act, Starbuck intervenes in the Curry family’s quarrel about Lizzie’s future and takes Lizzie into hand romantically, assuring her that she is pretty as well as intelligent. With her confidence bolstered, she is able to make a choice between Starbuck the drifter and File the steadfast.

HRT’s production of The Rainmaker has some excellent performances, with some drawbacks: All the actors could have benefited from a dialect coach, since there is little consistency in the way they talk. The location of the play may be unspecified, but the Sheriff and File sound like they’re from Texas, while Lizzie seems to come from the Upper Midwest, and her brothers speak with the cadences of Generation X’ers from the mid-Atlantic region.

As Lizzie, Andrea Wollenberg is just a bit too pretty to convince us that she’s a hopeless case when it comes to marriage. She does stand taller than her siblings and presents a somewhat “mannish” appearance, but she’s not the “plain” (read: homely) spinster that her brother Noah makes her out to be. She does convince us that she’s a strong woman, however, in the tradition of Katharine Hepburn before her.

As the brooding Noah, Daniel Perez gives a quite different sort of performance than he did in Art earlier in HRT’s season. While Yvan was manic and neurotic, Noah walks around with a black cloud hanging over him. If he could salt that cloud, their ranch would have no problems with drought. His care for his sister comes out in a mean-spirited way, and when he bites, the audience reacts with horror.

Jonathan Walsh sparkles as Jim, the younger, more playful brother. He has a minor subplot involving a local girl, and his transformation, encouraged by the stranger Starbuck’s presence, is the most clear-cut among the characters. Walsh is the sort of actor who could easily be found in the pages of a teen fan magazine, with a countenance that belongs on a weekly TV sitcom. He exudes both confidence and energy.

Director David Shelton has done a good job in assembling the elements for a solid production of a familiar play. Yet The Rainmaker cries out to be done in musical form. Perhaps it would have been a better choice for HRT to present 110 in the Shade. It would be interesting to see the two versions of the same story for comparison.

The Diviners, as directed by Toby Emert, already has music, but not in the sense of a musical play. Instead, it is framed—bookended—by gospel songs performed by the entire cast as a choir. The songs do nothing to advance the action or create characters; instead, they set the scene for us: a small town in Indiana that for 10 years has been without church or pastor. Into this situation arrives C.C. Showers (Chris Estey), who has, for unstated reasons, quit his job as a preacher in his home state of Kentucky and hitchhiked into Zion looking for honest work.

What he finds when he gets there is Buddy Layman (Alex Davis), a 14-year-old idiot savant with a talent for finding water underground (“divining”) and for predicting rainstorms. Years earlier, Buddy’s mother had drowned (and he almost had done the same), and as a result, Buddy the Diviner has an incontrovertible aversion to water.

Th play consists of what seem to be unrelated sketches about the town and its people. Each scene, however, adds more to our knowledge of what came before, and what it might be that afflicts Buddy and gives him his “talent.”

In the key role of Buddy, Alex Davis gives the most remarkable performance I have seen by a juvenile on any stage in years. In a role that could give itself over to histrionics and eccentricities, Davis approaches his character with nuance and subtlety that one would think are beyond his years. (Davis is 15 years old himself.) He gives us an immature boy formed by the mind of a mature actor. He does this both vocally and physically. His wide eyes and bright smile tell us that Buddy is an innocent, and through small—not grand, not hysterical—gestures, like scratching his nose or blowing his hair away from his eyes, he demonstrates a unique understanding of a troubled yet, under the grime and the neuroticism, normal teenager. If this performance is any indication—and one would need to see him in another role to know if he has a broad range—Alex Davis has a great acting career ahead of him.

The acting in this production of The Diviners is competent and, in some cases, strikingly understated. Shawn Fisher, who plays Buddy’s father, Ferris, does not seem to be acting at all. His conversations are as I natural as anyone might have with the local garage owner (which Ferris is). He moves and talks as one would expect a single father in his mid-thirties to move and talk.

Thematically, The Diviners might be seen as either profoundly religious or deeply antireligious. The townspeople seem to have lived quiet yet moral lives in the absence of organized religion in the ten years since their church burned down and their minister left. Yet tragedy ensues when they become overly excited about the arrival of a new preacher, Showers, who resists the role they want to impose on him. Oddly enough, none of the citizens of Zion—is there significance in that name?—seems disturbed that their town lacks a physician. (Melvin [Michael Allenby], a farmer, provides folk diagnoses and folk remedies.) Yet the absence of a preacher strikes at their collective heart.

One of the lovely things about The Diviners is that the secondary characters are drawn with care and distinction. Individuals who in an- other play might just be undifferentiated “happy villagers” each have three dimensions such as Darlene (Deb Stockwell) a rebellious adolescent who down deep is still the “good girl” that her Aunt Norma (Jeannie Jones) wants her to be. Jennie Mae (Alice Reed), Buddy’s sister, bears a remarkable resemblance to Alex Davis, creating a certain tie between them that is re-emphasized by Reed’s sensitive attention to how a loving older Sister actually behaves toward what we would now call a “special needs” child.

How I have managed to go for more than 20 years without seeing The Diviners is a mystery to me, but this production really struck gold, and I plan to go back and see it again before its run ends. To give some indication as to the emotional impact of this play, at the closing of both the first and second acts, the audience, after giving appropriate applause, sat in silence, as though they were in church, rather than engage in the chatter one expects during intermission or as people exit a theatre. Their mood was contemplative. This, if nothing else, is a tribute to the director and his players and this play.

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HRT Cancels 2007 Season

The shortcomings of the Daily Progress web site became clear again to me as I searched and searched for an article I read in Saturday's print edition, to no avail.

Local entertainment correspondent Jane Dunlap Morris reports that the Heritage Repertory Theatre, the decades-old summer stock company at the University of Virginia, has decided to cancel its 2007 season, because construction near the Drama Department's building will make it difficult for patrons to attend performances.

In the article, which appears on page B7, inside the sports section, cites the assistant business manager of the UVa Department of Drama, James Scales, as explaining that

construction of UVa's nearby studio art building and a new parking garage that's slated to accommodate 478 cars will overlap, creating headaches for Heritage patrons, hunting for parking spaces.

After looking for alternatives, officials decided to go dark for the 2007 season, [Scales] said.

"Our plan had been to shuttle folks from the Ivy-Emmet Garage," Scales said.

They learned that shuttle buses would be able to bring theatergoers only as far as Beta Bridge on Rugby Road, and patrons would have to walk up Culbreth Road to the theaters, which could be difficult for disabled or elderly guests and inconvenient for everyone, Scales said.

The Heritage Rep is a real treasure, and even a temporary absence is a loss to Charlottesville's community of culture. While some might say it sticks to the tried-and-true, its ambitious (and emotionally moving) production of Sunday in the Park with George in the Culbreth this year more than made up for Nunsense and Don't Hug Me in the Helms.

Perhaps the HRT's decision will serve as an incentive for Live Arts to expand its Summer Theatre Festival, which shrank last year, and for Ash Lawn-Highland to add more offerings to its summer opera festival -- perhaps even staging a genuine opera next year, instead of ill-suited, dance-oriented musical plays (this past summer's West Side Story) and operettas (2006's The Merry Widow).

On Broadway

With the opening of Oscar®-nominated director John Madden’s film version of Proof this weekend (in limited release) and on September 30 (in wide release), I thought I would revisit my review of the play by David Auburn from three years ago.

Proof (the film) includes in its cast Gwyneth Paltrow (who appeared in the play on London’s West End and received her own Oscar® for her leading role in Madden’s 1998 movie, Shakespeare in Love), Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hope Davis as the four principals. The screenplay, by Auburn and Rebecca Miller (daughter of Arthur Miller), adds at least another seven characters who do not appear in the stage version.

My take on Proof is incorporated into this review essay, which appeared in The Metro Herald on August 14, 2002. :

Heritage Rep’s Summer Season: Entertaining, Provocative

Charlottesville, VA — The Heritage Repertory Theatre’s 29th season has drawn to a close, after offering audiences a mix of comedy, music, and drama with professionalism and glimpses at the stars of the future.

The season opened with 10 performances of Anything Goes, the tried-and-true 1934 Cole Porter musical. Boasting many of Porter’s most familiar songs – “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “All Through the Night,” “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” and the title song, among others – this is one of those musical comedies for which the audience comes into the theatre humming the tunes.

Based primarily on the 1962 off-Broadway revival, this production of Anything Goes included songs interpolated from other Porter musicals, including “Let’s Misbehave” and “Friendship.” Director Robert Chapel captained this lighthearted musical with a light touch, bringing audiences an evening of entertainment in which (as the Emcee in Cabaret might say) they were able to “leave their cares outside.”

Most of the cast of Anything Goes also appeared in other shows in the rest of HRT’s repertory season, in dramatic, comic, or musical roles, and this classic gave them the jump-start they needed for the summer.

As a bookend to Anything Goes, the more recent revue Smokey Joe's Cafe consists of songs from the early rock-and-roll era, with no heavy message nor social significance. Made up entirely of songs by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (with other collaborators), Smokey Joe’s Café is a tribute to the Brill Building, New York’s headquarters for pop tunesters in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. The professional-quality cast was able to belt them out, doo-wop, and dance with athleticism, but only a handful of songs qualify as “classics” – notably “Spanish Harlem,” “Kansas City,” and “On Broadway” – leading to an entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying evening. The excellent set design by Tom Bloom deserves special mention, however, as do the costumes by Janine Marie. Director/choreographer Cate Caplin delivered what she promised, and most audience members were pleased with the result.

What came between these two was much more profound, however, particularly the two non-musical plays, Proof (directed by Douglas Sprigg) and Comic Potential (also directed by Chapel, who chairs the UVA Department of Drama).

Both these plays provided a platform for actress Sarah Dandridge to prove her mettle. In two very different roles, she was given a chance to demonstrate an amazing acting range. In David Auburn’s Pulitzer- and Tony®-winning Proof, as the late-blooming, emotionally adolescent 20-something daughter of a famous mathematician, Dandridge was brooding, introspective, shy, and intelligent. In Alan Ayckbourn’s Comic Potential, playing a robotic soap-opera performer – no, really, her character is an android, or “actoid” – she was able to eat up the scenery, a wild, unpredictable, furiously funny turn.

Her leading man in both plays, Jason Odell Williams, was also afforded an opportunity to show his depth as an actor. His role in Proof, as a young mathematician facing his limitations, was complex, in that we must like him while wondering whether he is ultimately trustworthy – a test also required of Dandridge’s character.

Proof is one of those great, recent plays about the life of the mind. (Margaret Edson’s W;t and Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love also fit in this category.) It expresses the passion that some people feel about their intellectual pursuits, passions so intense that they are inexplicable to outsiders – even to members of one’s own family. In Proof, the sharing of this passion – in this case, higher mathematics – is what resolves the play’s central conflict. Moreover, Proof asks us whether the line between genius and insanity can ever be defined, and whether, once defined, it is a barrier or not. It doesn’t answer this question, but it makes us ponder it.

Comic Potential gives all its actors a chance to show off their comedic abilities. Ayckbourn constructs a number of set-pieces that are impossible to describe in just a few words, but, in online-chat-speak, they leave you ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing). Set in the not-too-distant future, Comic Potential pokes fun at television executives, billionaires, Wellesian film directors, and, well, audiences, too. It makes us examine what is fundamental about our humanity and asks whether love is what separates us from even the most intelligent machine. It does in comedy what Steven Spielberg attempted to do in his film, A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

For a good date night, it’s hard not to recommend I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, a musical revue by Joe DiPietro (book and lyrics) and Jimmy Roberts (music). Still playing off-Broadway after more than six years, this production is directed by Jack Donahue, a University of Virginia graduate who is also a cabaret artist, actor, and singer.

Four performers take on various roles in this revue, which follows male-female relations from first date through marriage and children to widowhood and retirement. It consists of songs and sketches that any couple (married, divorced, or someday-to-be-married) will see reflective of real life. I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is one of those shows that has moments for everyone to say, “I know him!” or “I did that!”

A lot is demanded of the four performers in this show – Geno Carr, Nathan Moore, Kiira Schmidt, and Nancy Snow – especially considering that all four of them also appeared in Anything Goes (with Moore, Schmidt, and Snow in principal roles in that show!). They all deliver nicely. Carr has a rubbery face made for comedy, Moore seems able to handle anything thrown at him, Schmidt is both a terrific dancer and a natural comedienne, and Snow has a lovely voice. We’ll be seeing them all again, doing big things.

Special mention should be made of Jack Donahue’s one-man show, Summer Songs, which played for one brief week at the beginning of HRT’s season in the intimate Helms Theatre. Donahue, who is based in New York, has spent the better part of the past year at his alma mater, teaching theatre and directing the University Drama Department’s production of Cabaret last spring. Donahue is one of those young singers who values the standards – he has a special affinity for the songs of Johnny Mercer, but he delivers with equal aplomb the works of Rodgers & Hart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Henry Mancini, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin ... the giants of 20th-century popular music. If you have a chance to catch Donahue’s cabaret act – in New York or elsewhere – don’t pass it up. You’ll end the evening with a smile on your face and a song in your heart – more than one song, actually.

The Heritage Repertory Theatre performs each summer in the University of Virginia’s Department of Drama Building, using both the large Culbreth Theatre and the smaller Helms Theatre for its shows.

The Heritage Rep knows how to hold on to its performers. This year Geno Carr starred as Applegate in Damn Yankees, which Kiira Schmidt choreographed, and he and Nancy Snow performed together in a revue of Frank Sinatra songs, My Way, along with Perry Medlin (who does a mean, and I mean mean, if spot-on, impersonation of Liza Minnelli) and Ashley Hunter -- a production also choreographed by Schmidt.

Proof is by no means the first play to explore the interplay and dividing line between genius and madness, nor is it the last. One recent example of the genre is The Highest Yellow, written by John Strand with music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa. The Highest Yellow, which focuses on the strained relationship between Vincent van Gogh and his doctor, premiered last year at Signature Theatre in Arlington. It featured Marc Kudisch as van Gogh, Jason Danieley as Dr. Felix Rey, and Judy Kuhn as Rachel, the prostitute to whom van Gogh presented his severed ear.

(You Gotta Have) Heart!

My friend, Tim Hulsey, reminds me that tonight was the opening of Damn Yankees at the Heritage Repertory Theatre in Charlottesville. (HRT is the summer stock offering of the University of Virginia's Department of Drama.) Tim plans to see the show tomorrow night, and I hope to catch it next week.

Since 1971, with the departure of the Senators from Washington to Texas, Damn Yankees has seemed even more of a fantasy than its plot elements would suggest. Who could have imagined that in the summer of 2005, there would actually be a major league team in Washington -- the Nationals now, not the Senators -- conspiring to use eminent domain to displace numerous homes and businesses in Southwest D.C. in order to build a stadium on the backs of hardworking taxpayers, looting the public purse to the benefit of millionaire team owners and multimillionaire baseball players!

Anyway, let me get off my soapbox and back into the batter's box, so to speak.

Back in 1996, I was fortunate enough to see show-biz legend Jerry Lewis play the lead in a road company of the 1994 Broadway revival of Damn Yankees at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Here is my review of that production, which appeared originally in the Metro Herald in December 1996:

Damn Yankees: Darn Good Fun!
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

"First in war, first in peace -- and last in the American league!" That's how Washingtonians of a certain age remember their beloved, if hapless, Washington Senators. Though never so clumsy as, say, the 1962 New York Mets, during the 1950s the Senators struggled simply to keep out of eighth place -- the bottom of the standings.

At the same time, the New York Yankees were winners all the way, taking the pennant each year of the decade except 1954 (when the Cleveland Indians took it) and 1959 (when the Chicago White Sox won the flag). So it is no mystery why Washington area baseball fans would have been constantly muttering "damn Yankees!" at their TV and radio sets after a ball game.

This it was that Maryland journalist Douglass Wallop wrote a best-selling novel in 1955 called The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, which was turned into a hit musical, Damn Yankees, that same year, co-written and directed by the legendary George Abbott, with music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. Starring the incomparable Gwen Verdon as Lola and the devilish Ray Walston as Applegate, the play was turned into a movie (with the same stars, plus Tab Hunter) in 1958.

Forty years later, Broadway revived Damn Yankees, this time putting Jerry Lewis on the boards as Applegate. Though Lewis has been performing since the age of five (he is now 69), spreading his talents through nightclubs, radio, movies, and television, Damn Yankees is his first Broadway appearance. Now he is appearing in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Slightly rewritten for a late-20th-century audience, the basic plot remains the same. Loosely based on the Faust legend, Damn Yankees tells the story of Joe Boyd, a 60-something real estate agent who acclaims he "would sell his soul" to give the Senators a slugger who can win them games. Instantly, Applegate (the Devil) appears and offers to take Joe up on the deal, turning him into 22-year-old Joe Hardy, a sensation with a bat (and he can field, too). Joe, taking a leaf from his real estate book, insists upon an "escape clause" -- if he quits by 9:00 p.m. on September 24 (the night before the last game of the season), he can keep his soul and return to his wife. Reluctantly, Applegate agrees. He's never lost a deal in thousands of years, after all.

Joe Hardy (played by John-Michael Flate, who bears a passing resemblance to Cal Ripken, Jr.) turns out to be just the shot in the arm that the Senators need. Flagging in seventh place in July, the now-nicknamed "Shoeless Joe" takes them to within one game of winning a free pass to the World Series in September.

Still, Joe yearns for his wife and home. Applegate tries to discourage this by sending his assistant, Lola (Valerie Wright), to seduce him. Lola has never failed before, but she's never met someone like Joe, either.

When Lola fails to divert Joe's attention, Applegate uses the press -- do things never change? -- to besmirch Joe's reputation by accusing him of being a discredited player named Shifty McCoy ("Say it ain't so, Joe!" could be a line from this play.)

Needless to say, Joe rises above these challenges, uses his escape clause, and returns to the warm security of his wife's arms.

Directed by Jack O'Brien, the show moves smoothly and at a fast pace. Rob Marshall, the choreographer, has devised dances that take advantage of his cast's athleticism -- after all, how else would baseball players dance? Like all modern Broadway choreographers, Marshall's work has echoes of Bob Fosse, the innovator who choreographed the original cast of Damn Yankees. He puts it all to good use.

Jerry Lewis is surprisingly low-key in his portrayal of Applegate. Although he does take a few opportunities to mug for the audience, and to use some of the "kid shtick" that made him famous forty-five years ago, his Applegate is a suave, serious businessman. One exception: During the number "Those Were the Good Old Days," Lewis takes center stage to tell a few jokes that would feel at home in a Borscht Belt resort. ("A priest and a rabbi are on an airplane . . . ") The audience, of course, eats it up -- that's what they expect from "the King of Comedy."

As Lola, Valerie Wright defines sexy seductiveness. She oozes, she stretches, she pouts, she purrs. How Joe resists her temptations is the key question of the show.

The male chorus in this show deserves special congratulations. Originally written as a much smaller part -- mostly as background singers -- O'Brien and Marshall have pulled out all the stops for these singing and dancing baseball players. Special mention goes to Ned Hannah as Ozzie, who lights up the stage whenever he appears.

A delightful feature of this production of Damn Yankees is the presence of Mel Allen, one of the greatest sportscasters of all time, as the "Stadium Voice." Although his voice is only on tape, hearing it was terrific, if only for a brief moment.

The sets and costumes successfully evoke the ‘50s, using the shapes and colors that we associate with that era. Not mere copies of old furnishings or clothing, the designers provide an aura of the time -- much as the designers of the recent revival of How to Succeed in Business evoked the early 1960s.

Damn Yankees is fun for all ages. The audience on December 17, at least, included adults who could have seen the original production, children accompanied by their parents, and teenagers and college students out on dates. In a way, this show is back home, with references to Griffith Stadium, Georgetown, the U.S. Senate basement, and other local landmarks.

The Kennedy Center's production of Damn Yankees continues through January 12, 1997, in the Opera House.

Watch this space next week for comments on HRT's new production of Damn Yankees.