You’ve doubtless by now read a lot of opinions
about Road Show. Well, here’s another, one whose overall
view at
least you probably haven’t read. And it’s this:
Everybody’s
right.
As
realized in its—according to its authors—definitive form, Road
Show, formerly Bounce,
formerly Wise Guys,
formerly (but never
publicly) Gold! is
something of a Rorschach test for the viewer.
John Simon was right to say it was better and hotter in Chicago, Linda
Winer
was right to say it’s a “dear” little show, Brantley is right to say it
doesn’t
know how to properly exploit the riches of its true-life subject
matter, and
everybody who says it’s terrific, they’re right too.
Now,
how is this possible. How is all this
possible, not merely as a manifestation of “there’s no accounting for
taste”
but as the rationale for there being no clear, accurate majority
consensus?
Well,
it has to do with a phrase that the show’s composer-lyricist, and one
of the
theatre’s international treasures, Stephen Sondheim, has been throwing about both publicly
and in
private: that the new iteration, directed by John Doyle, at the Public Theatre, is at long last “the show we
intended.” In
previous incarnations, directors Sam Mendes and later Harold Prince had their hands in (and the authors
might also
say “on”) this historical triptych—a survey of the life of the Mizner
brothers, peripatetic entrepreneurs of the early 20th century—and as
those few of you out there reading this who’ve ever authored a musical
in
production do know, and the
rest of you might know, and
if not should know:
the director of a musical finding its way
isn’t just putting the thing on its feet, but acting as interpreter and
frequently dramaturg as well—and in the discovery process, the
change in sensibility between one
director and another can be stark enough to fully change the character
and texture of the piece.
And
while John Doyle has certainly stamped Road Show with his directorial and design
imprimatur (an
abstract, all-purpose set of shelves, cubby holes and other storage
boxes—a conspicuous one being a coffin—forms the landscape and defines
the playing space), he seems also to have put himself in the role of
filterer;
to have asked the authors, perhaps in a way they feel nobody had
before, “Well, what do you intend?” and to help them distill,
distill, distill so that both
story and thematic essence are unequivocally
clear.
What’s
causing the controversy of opinion is this: It’s clear to a fault.
It’s
so distilled that
the
production comes off as emotionally neutral. There’s no real
performance heat,
not in the sense that the audience feels on the primal, visceral level
that
most successful musicals manage to tap into. So if the material engages
you,
you bring your own heat to it. And if it doesn’t, you stay removed.
Not
merely the story (book by John Weidman) has been so distilled, but also
Sondheim’s score. While the version
called Bounce broke
no new
ground for the maestro, anyone who saw, or heard that version—via
attendance, cast album or bootleg recording (my exposure was via the
latter
two)—would at least have acknowledged that there was a vigorous
playfulness at work. Yet at the Public, some of the same music—by which
I
mean the same melodies, same motifs, same arrangements (if represented
in
reduced orchestration [dare I say likewise distilled for a smaller
ensemble?] by the inestimable Jonathan
Tunick, who is in finer
fettle
here than he’s been in many a year)—in being reworked, re-shaped,
re-assigned, re-lyricized toward that “ultimate” clarity…feels
slighter.
The
opening tune, once titled “Bounce,” has been transmogrified into one
called
“Waste” about the sad profligacy of pursuing an empty get-rich-quick
American
dream. If the musical is now the Hope and Crosby-style “road movie” the
authors
wanted, it’s a road movie by way of Brecht.
The
performances too are more instructive and illustrative than
full-blooded, the
characters likewise being portrayed as essences, so we both understand
them
more as symbols and engage with them less as people. In Bounce, Howard McGillin’s Willie was a smooth
playboy with
the charm of a classic rogue, and Richard Kind’s Addison was a the
well-meaning
bumbler whose sincerity allowed us to root for the dream and see the
good side
of his brother with him. In Road Show, Michael Cerveris’s
Willie seems driven by a cool pathology toward a constant state of
almost
sociopathic dissolution; and Alexander Gemignani’s Addison, though still a nicer guy,
has a seems haunted by a fatalistic certainty that
he’ll never measure up, which adds (ironic verb) a hollowness to the center of his
sweetness.
Is
the subtext being brought too close to the surface?
And
as a result, are the actors playing the end of the show (in terms of
psychological states) from the beginning?
Could
it be we’re being “told” too much and not allowed to draw our own
conclusions?
I
ask these questions rather than offer concerete observations because,
again, the
Rorschach test. The questions only reflect the musings
inspired by mine.
The
only absolute opinion I’ll pass on as a worthwhile barometer is this: I
don’t actually
think this is the show the
authors intended. I think it’s the iteration of dramatic themes they intended. I think it’s the
clearest possible
blueprint for the message they wish to impart (and indeed, except for
the Mizners
and their parents, all the cast are clothed in costumes that feature
ground
plan, blueprint-style designs, albeit as black lines against a beige
background).
I
think the show they
intend is
this version of the words and music, but with more heat. I just don’t
think they know it yet, and
that’s entirely natural; they’re flush with the victory, the catharsis,
of
getting this edition
onstage.
Of freezing the material.
But
that said and that done, I think they’re one more director away. Not
dramaturg-director this time, but a “simple” re-interpreter. Someone
who,
without fudging the meaning or the balance, will “sloppy it up” a bit
and get
all up in its face. More importantly get it all up into ours.
But
that gold, for these wise guys, is a few more bounces down the road…
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