AISLE SAY Massachusetts
TEN CENTS A DANCE
Music by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics
by Lorenz Hart
Conceived and Directed by John Doyle
starring Malcolm Gets and Donna McKechnie
Williamstown Theatre Main Stage
August 11-28
Ten Cents a Dance is the new Rodgers & Hart songbook musical, conceived and directed by John Doyle, currently running at the
Williamstown Theatre Festival Main Stage. Doyle staged Sweeney Todd and
Company, among other musicals, with actors and singers who played an array of
musical instruments. More than merely playing instruments, Doyle’s productions
have integrated the use of instrumental work into the staging and the heart of
the projects he has produced.
I saw his
production of Company on Broadway before I saw the touring company of Sweeney
Todd a few months later. I was impressed by the level of skill that the
ensemble demonstrated, though I found the upbeat numbers rather hobbled by
people wheeling double basses and women in heels skittering about playing
saxophones and other less-than-delicate bits of brass. But musical virtuosity
is Doyle’s signature and it has certainly worked for him often enough.
The two Sondheim
shows cited are unqualified masterpieces of musical theatre. Each has a strong
narrative line and characters whose motives are never less than crystal clear.
I think that the sound structure of these musicals allows for the flights of
fancy that Doyle has undertaken. Ten
Cents a Dance, like all songbook
shows, is something else.
In many anthology
musicals, a collection of songs is bundled together by theme or by time. There
are also a number of shows that write a loose structure in which the songs can
be placed so that a story is imposed where no story ever existed before to knit
the musical selections. There are also composer-lyricist tributes that are more
concert-based than anything else – songs are selected and performed with
or without some connecting narration to set up or define what was sung and what
is yet to come.
For Ten Cents a Dance, Doyle has chosen
about three dozen songs from the Rodgers & Hart canon and he has grouped
them into five episodes entitled “The Blue Room”, “Isn’t It Romantic”, “Manhattan”, “Ten Cents a Dance” and
“Quiet Night”. Delivering this
catalogue of songs, Doyle has cast Malcolm
Gets as Johnny and Donna McKechnie,
Diana DiMarzio, Jessica Tyler Wright, Jane Pfitsch and Lauren Molina as Miss Jones 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1, respectively.
Set on a stage that
is surrounded by art deco-inspired panels, scrims and a massive
floor-to-ceiling circular staircase, designed by Scott Pask, the six performers are onstage throughout the 90-minute
intermissionless programme. A grand piano sits on a revolve that gets plenty of
action and scattered on risers that frame the stage is a wide assortment of
musical instruments almost all of which get strummed, bowed, blown or plucked.
But the basic structure
of this particular revue appears to be in its early stage of development. The
male character sits at the piano for much of the evening (and Gets is certainly
an ideal singer-musician who gets to demonstrate his extensive vocal and
instrumental range before the final curtain) angsting over the five women who
coo, berate, tease, taunt and flirt in his direction. For their part, the
women, who are dressed in variations of the same dress and the same hairstyle,
deliver the majority of their songs as though they were enduring some kind of
cathartic therapy. It is more than slightly bewildering to spend time with the
work of Rodgers and Hart and to feel almost punished by the relentless downbeat
tone that refuses to abate.
The staging of the
songs is equally baffling. The women descend the enormous staircase as though
they are wisps of a dream long past, and the chiffon-like fabric of their
dresses plus the reverb in the sound design reinforces the imagery. However,
once they get down those stairs they are effectively without any individual
personality and they float and drift from one position to another. And when
they are not on the stage to sing and/or play numbers, they cross to one of
many platforms, climb stairs and access the instruments that lie in wait. The
aggravating fact is that there are also stairs for the women to descend when
they are done with their accompanying. There is a lot of traffic on the stage,
what with all those stairs and all those instruments and all that needless
desire to show off just how many instruments any number of people can play. And
since no one, aside from Gets, is allowed to show off real mastery of
musicianship, it’s a case of more-is-more. Instruments are used because they
are available and the performers can, to varying degrees, play them or, at the
very least, appear as though they can. By the time we reach the final number,
and every woman is clutching a violin, we’ve reached a point of diminishing
returns.
What a bizarre
notion this show is and when, I wonder, were such great music and lyrics used
to less effect.
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