Review: A desert song

In the era of the jukebox musical (imagine: Absolutely Free: the Frank Zappa Musical), the amusement park musical (bright lights, strobes, 3-D projections, a cast of dozens!), the reverse revival musical rewrite (let's change EVERYTHING!), and similar extravaganzas, one occasionally encounters an intimate, small-cast show that stands out like a tiny diamond in a pile of costume jewelry.

The Company
Photo by Evan Zimmerman

The Band's Visit, the national tour of which is now playing at The Fabulous Fox, is one of those little gems. Based on an award-winning 2007 Israeli film of the same name and boasting a captivating and ingenious score by David Yazbek (previously famous for big-budget stage versions of popular films like The Full Monty and Tootsie) and book by playwright Itamar Moses, The Band's Visit is the modest tale of an Egyptian police band which, due to some linguistic confusion at the main Tel Aviv bus station, finds itself marooned for the night in the tiny desert town of Bet Hatikva instead of their intended destination, the city of Petah Tikvah. Over the ensuing 24 hours, their lives become entwined with those of the villagers in ways none of them could have predicted.

Sasson Gabay, Janet Dacal
Photo by Evan Zimmerman

Heading the uniformly excellent ensemble cast are Sasson Gabay as the melancholy widowed band director Tewfiq (the role he created in the original film) and Janet Dacal as Dina, who runs the local restaurant and longs for some romance in her life to break up the daily monotony of living in, literally, the middle of nowhere. In a touching and subtly acted scene late in the show, she tries to get him to break out of his shell and he tries to do so. Alas, as the old song goes, "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

Joe Joseph, Sasson Gabay, Janet Dacal
Photo by Evan Zimmerman

There's finely nuanced work as well from Joe Joseph as trumpeter and would-be ladies' man Haled, whose standard pickup line is "do you like Chet Baker?" Not surprisingly, when he gives romantic advice to repressed villager Papi in "Haled's Song About Love," he does so in the soft, lyrical style of the late jazz trumpeter and vocalist. Substituting for Adam Gabay (son of Sasson) on opening night, Danny Burgos was a wonderfully vulnerable Papi who handled the character's wide-ranging song "Papi Hears the Ocean" with great skill.

Other standout performers include James Rana as the clarinetist and frustrated composer Simon, Pomme Koch as the village slacker Itzik, who loves his baby son but can no longer reach his wife, and David Studwell as Itzik's father-in-law Avrum.

The Company
Photo by Matthew Murphy

"Once not long ago a group of musicians came to Israel from Egypt," runs the sentence projected on a scrim at the top of the show. "You probably didn't hear about it. It wasn't very important." And, indeed, nothing that happens in The Bands Visit would be of any importance to the world outside of Bet Hativka. But to the inner lives of the villagers, the events in this 90-minute, one-act musical are very important indeed.

Performances continue through March 8th at The Fabulous Fox in Grand Center. When you go, make sure you hang around for the band's irresistibly lively post-curtain call session on stage. The ensemble of violin, cello, clarinet, oud (a Persian lute), and darbouka (a "goblet drum" that's harder to play than it looks, as I can attest from personal experience) is solid and guaranteed to send you out into the night with a smile on our face and maybe even a melismatic melody in your heart.

Chuck's Choices for the weekend of August 9, 2019

It certainly is summer; both of the new shows this week are musicals.

---

New This Week:

---

Assisted Living: The Musical

The Playhouse at Westport Plaza presents Assisted Living: The Musical running through August 11. "From early retirement right up to the pulling of the plug, 21st Century seniors are partying like it's 1969. Imagine: no work, no pregnancy and a full array of Medicare-subsidized pharmaceuticals. Get your tickets today, before your short-term memory goes!" The Playhouse at Westport Plaza is at 635 West Port Plaza. For more information: playhouseatwestport.com.

My take: Having hit my "three score and ten," I'm a bit dubious of shows like this one, but I'm putting it on the list anyway because audiences of my fellow geezers seem to have embraced the show everywhere it has been produced, and because the entire cast consists of two very talented performers—Rick Compton and Betsy Bennett, the show's creators—switching back and forth among multiple roles. That sort of theatrical high wire act is usually great fun to watch if it's done well, as appears to be the case here. "If Compton and Bennett aren't having a great time," writes Ann Pollack, "they're surely fine actors. This is a romp from start to finish. It may even take the edge off the fear of growing old."

---

Matilda
Photo courtesy of The Muny

The Muny presents the Muny premiere of the musical Matilda continuing nightly through August 11th. "With a story inspired by the eccentric genius of internationally-acclaimed author Roald Dahl, and a world inspired by St. Louis native and world-wide artistic legend Mary Engelbreit, Matilda shows how imagination is exactly what we all need to navigate life's many challenges. When sent to a dismal school, Matilda uses her clear eyes and keen smarts to help her discover her own surprising powers! Created by the world-renowned Royal Shakespeare Company, this four-time Tony Award-winning magical musical, still running in London's West End, is sure to marvel and entertain Muny audiences." Performances take place on the outdoor stage in Forest Park. For more information, muny.org.

My take: My fellow critics have been pretty much unanimous is their praise of this fanciful musical. "Not since Annie," writes Steve Callahan at KDHX, "has there been a show so delightfully dominated by kids. Matilda has, by my count, thirty-two classmates. And these MUNY Kids are pros! They fill the stage with wildly energetic yet precise song and dance." At stltoday.com, Calvin Wilson says this "tuneful and stylish musical" is a "must-see show" that "brings the Muny's 101st season to a triumphant close." "Muny artistic director and executive producer Mike Isaacson's idea to welcome Matilda to the amphitheater's spacious stage in the guise of renowned local artist Mary Engelbreit's colorful and whimsical works is an inspired master stroke," writes Mark Bretz at Ladue News. Looks like a winner.

Review: The marriage of true minds

Corinne Melançon and Steve Isom
Photo by Peter Wochniak

Share on Google+:

Looking for a lightweight, feel-good summer musical that sends you away with a smile on your face and probably a memorable tune or two in your head? If so, let me direct your attention to Stages St. Louis's excellent production of I Do! I Do!, which runs through July 1st, 2018.

When it premiered on Broadway in 1966, this two-character musical by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, the creators of the runaway hit The Fantasticks, was already something of an exercise in nostalgia. Like the play on which it's based--Jan de Hartog's The Fourposter from 1951--I Do! I Do! tells the story of the marriage of Michael and Agnes, from their hesitant honeymoon night in 1895, through the birth of their children, Michael's success as an author, and their wistful preparation, in old age, to move to a smaller house and turn the home over to a new couple just starting out in life. In the play that departure takes place in 1925. The musical extends it to 1945, but in both cases the action remains firmly rooted in a sepia-tinted past

Corinne Melançon and Steve Isom
Photo by Peter Wochniak

Like any married couple, Michael and Agnes have their ups and downs, but the latter are few and far between and are reconciled with unconvincing ease. It hardly matters; Mr. Jones' book is clearly about celebrating marriage, not analyzing it. And Michael and Agnes sing in the final number ("This House"), "Marriage is a very good thing / Though it's far from easy / Still, it's filled this house with life and love." If you want realism and ambiguity, look to Sondheim.

Possibly the greatest asset of I Do! I Do! is the score. The show's biggest hit, "My Cup Runneth Over," was a huge success in the 1960s for Ed Ames, and was also recorded by everyone from The Lennon Sisters to Aretha Franklin. Its gentle celebration of love is still calculated to bring a lump to the throat, while "The Honeymoon is Over" remains a caustically funny picture of a love boat that's close to sinking. The Act II opener, "Where Are the Snows?," is a whimsical picture of a couple looking back on their younger days, while the title song paints an amusing picture of the naïveté of young love ("You can throw away your every care and doubt / For that's what married life is all about"). More importantly, the songs advance the story and illuminate character, which is ultimately the test of a good musical theatre score.

The Stages production is actually two shows in one, with two separate casts the alternate performance nights. The night we saw it, Michael and Agnes were played by Steve Isom and Corinne Melançon (who is also the show's dance captain). They alternate with David Schmittou and Kari Ely, both of whom will be familiar to Stages audiences.

Mr. Isom has a long history with Stages. In the past I have only seen him in supporting roles, so it was good to finally have a chance to appreciate his work in a leading part. He perfectly captures both Michael's pompous cluelessness as well as his tenderness, and proves to be a deft physical comic. Vocally, he reminded me more than once of the late, great Robert Preston--very appropriate, given that Preston was the original Michael on Broadway.

Corinne Melançon and Steve Isom
Photo by Peter Wochniak

Ms. Melançon is sheer delight as Agnes. Her "Flaming Agnes," in which Agnes envisions life as a very gay divorcée, is a comic tour de force, while her performance of Agnes's Act II identity crisis, "What Is a Woman?," is appropriately moving. Vocally strong and physically graceful, she glides through director Michael Hamilton's fairly straightforward choreography with ease.

The main set piece for productions of I Do! I Do! has always been the four-poster bed that gave the original play its title, and scenic designer James Wolk has come up with an impressive-looking one for Stages. It's also mobile enough to be spun around and quickly rolled upstage behind a sliding wall when it's not needed for a scene. That allows for more set pieces than might otherwise be the case on the Reim Center's relatively shallow stage, including separate dressers for Agnes and Michael.

I Do! I Do! isn't one of the 20th century's great contributions to musical theatre, but it's an agreeable diversion. And the Stages production is sheer perfection. Maybe, in this summer of "universal brouhaha" (to quote Tom Lehrer), that's enough. Performances continue through July 1st in the Robert G. Reim Theatre at the Kirkwood Community Center, 111 South Geyer Road in Kirkwood. For more information: stagesstlouis.org.