Dancing in the Dark
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Leavel, Heller
Photo by Craig Schwartz
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By January Riddle
You know it’s going to be a good night when the overture makes you think of Fred Astaire, and you squirm in your seat for wanting to leap up and dance in the aisles. And so it was. The pit orchestra, directed by Don York, was enthusiastic and engaging. Scenic Designer John Lee Beatty’s gauzy, brightly-hued curtains alternated easily with simple furniture to facilitate an easy mood and quick set changes. David Woolard’s clever costumes included the realistic, the amusing, and the hilarious. Gary Griffin’s skilled direction brought out the best of a wonderful cast, and Warren Carlyle’s choreography made dancers of everyone on stage.
Yes, indeed. It was a very good night at the Old Globe Theatre’s world premiere of Dancing in the Dark, Douglas Carter Beane’s delightful adaptation of the 1952 musical, The Band Wagon.
Never heard of The Band Wagon? Never mind. If you’ve ever seen a musical, the classic 1930s score by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz will seem familiar. You will remember “That’s Entertainment,” and the title song, at least.
The original starred Fred Astaire, both on the stage and in the 1953 film. Astaire played the role so facilely wrought by Scott Bakula (American Beauty, Quantum Leap) on the Globe stage, that of a stage-trained movie star, Tony Hunter, trying to make a come-back in a doomed new musical. Like the original, this modern Dancing is a play within a play, a musical within a musical; yet this one has been freshened up, its predictable plot turns spun with silliness and some updated expressions.
If you’re a musical theatre buff, you will recognize many theatrical in-jokes and lyrical spoofs. Not to worry if you’re a relative novice. There are plenty of modern innuendoes and cultural jibes to make you laugh with confidence. Beane has masterfully incorporated real-life details, which he gleaned from the young actors currently playing in the chorus.
Beane and director Gary Griffin also paid homage to the lead characters’ similarities to the lives of the actors when they cast the show. He told one interviewer that the art-imitates-life motivation led them to Bakula, a television actor who got his start in theater and has returned to those roots from time to time, earning a Tony nomination in the late 80s.
Judging from his energetic dancing and his unwaveringly clear voice in this production, Bakula has not lost his stage shoes. As the irrepressible Tony Hunter, he is wonderfully paired with stage veteran Beth Leavel as Lily Martin, the “better half” of Lester Martin (an adept and affecting Adam Heller). Together, Lily and Lester are the writing team that will bring the show to Broadway, save Tony’s career, and put its director, Jeffrey Cordova (elegantly played by Broadway star Patrick Page), on the pedestal he thinks he deserves. No pressure, right?
As so often happens in real life, the road to success has an abundance of detours and detractions. Lily and Tony have a history that gets in the way of their collaboration and of Lily and Lester’s marriage. The musical so beautifully crafted by the Martin writing team (pitched in an Act 1 show-stopper that elicited bravos from the opening night audience) is reduced to a shabby vaudevillian revue due to too much meddling by its clueless director and a self-centered choreographer, Paul Byrd (played just a bit woodenly by Sebastian La Cause). This particular piece of the plot is a hilarious satirical commentary on art created by committee, and this company exaggerates it just to the point of caricature that culminates in the parade of states number, “Rhode Island is Famous for You.” It’s fun and ridiculous at the same time.
It’s also poignant, thanks to a cast and ensemble that have the courage and talent to pull it off. Leavel and Heller are so true that their biographies could call them married, such is their splendid chemistry. Both have exquisite timing and huge voices and, together with Bakula, they make what could be an improbable story appear rational.
What makes this production just short of perfect comes late in Act 2, when an aged Tony appears to a young ensemble, supposedly decades after his successful comeback. The entire scene is like a college lecture, with summations of the lead characters’ lives and careers like so many begats and obits. It brings the happy tone down to a yawn, and it doesn’t really need to be there at all.
Fortunately, the final scene with the full company and chorus brings it all back up, with enough energy and bounce to overcome that earlier lapse of creative judgment. When the curtain falls, you are back on your feet cheering and wishing Fred Astaire could be here to see you dancing out the door.
Dancing in the Dark plays at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park through April 13. Performances are at 7 pm Sun, Tues, Weds and at 8 pm Thurs through Sat. Matinees are at 2 pm Sat & Sun.
Tickets are $52-$79. Call 619-23-GLOBE or reserve online at www.TheOldGlobe.org
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