I have no real idea
what to make
of the bio-musical Cagney, an
overview of the life and career of tough-guy character-leading man of
the
movies, James Cagney. The
book, by Peter
Colley has in its favor having
found a
framework in which to present a lifespan without focus-sprawl though
providing
continuous forward moving energy; yet it seems fairly perfunctory in
the
execution. The music and lyrics by Robert Creighton (who is also impressive in the title
role) and Christopher
McGovern, follow a kind of
by-the-numbers
(no pun intended) plan that fulfills the needs of most moments, yet
doesn’t
deliver anything much that’s better than blandly, familiarly
functional. You
might say that the show's over-arching, way-bright style means to
emulate a general
sense of the presentation style that infused and informed the classic
movies of
Cagney’s heyday…yet it doesn’t replicate that general sense
consistently or well enough to
count as a stylistic choice of significance.
Basically,
the goddamn thing gets away with itself on the strength of two
elements: the first, as indicated
above, is structural coherence.
The
second is energy.
Basically those.
The
direction, by Bill Castellino,
is
summer stock shiny, the cast directed to jump into each character trope
with
shameless, unsubtle abandon—and the choreography by Joshua
Bergasse, is as Yankee Doodle’d
and
happy-tappy as you can stand, and then persuades you that you can stand
a
little more.
The
delivery system—on an impressive, nostalgia-loving set by James
Morgan, not incidentally, easily
facilitating cinematic
fluidity—is far more impressive than the show itself; which, taken song
for song and scene for scene, if you clock the audience reaction to
anything
but the dance numbers, doesn’t ever perform better than decently. But
that
mechanical decent-ness plus the dance numbers, plus
the walk-in curiosity about
Cagney that the audience themselves bring to the party…
…well, that unique confluence
pulls off a fluke of an evening the like of which I’ve never quite
experienced
before. But I begrudge it nothing. I’d even cautiously tell you to see
for
yourself. Because I’m not a dirty rat…
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