Monday, March 17, 2014

Bullets Over Broadway on Broadway

Bullets Over Broadway
St. James Theatre
Saturday, March 15, 2pm

When this shady old bitch was in college some 20 (gasp) odd years ago, Bullets Over Broadway was required Friday night drunken dorm viewing for any aspiring theatre dork/queen. So you can imagine the show boner I popped when Woody (pun intended – hehe) Allen announced he was prepping Bullets for a musical stage adaptation.

My amorous mood was shattered once producers announced they would use pre-existing period songs instead of creating an original score. My beloved Bullets was to be adapted into another awful jukebox musical tourist trap a la Mamma Mia. Don't speak. Please, don't speak.

The interpolated songs are fairly logically integrated into the plot and are newly arranged with some updated lyrics that lend (some) specificity to their placement in the show. There are, nonetheless, several instances where the shoe-horn effect grinds this otherwise solid stage adaptation to a screeching halt.

I don't know what kind of incriminating photos the producers are holding against Karen Ziemba, but I'm thankful it's forced her to accept what amounts to a glorified featured ensemble role. Regardless, she manages to transform the pleasant yet pointless "There's a New Day Comin'" into a reasonably inoffensive second act opener. Though I suspect the number was added to accommodate her luxury casting. And the thoroughly anticlimactic finale (“Yes, We Have No Bananas”) seems like a non sequitur, a place holder until the creative team can come up with an appropriately glitzy replacement.

The rest of the score is good to serviceable, mostly a means for the cast to show-off vocally or give Stro a reason to inject some leggy showgirls into the mix. It's all entertainingly performed and staged, but any one of the songs could be randomly cut and you'd really not miss it much. 

The flashy but tasteful art deco-inspired set is a marvel of designer ingenuity, with a remarkable amount of different locations suggested by a minimum of set pieces.  The second act rotating stage-within-a-stage embellished with chorus girls in tableau is the kind of staging inventiveness we expect from the prop-happy choreographer that brought us Crazy For You.

The show looks great, all the performances are solid and the choreography is vintage Susan Stroman - though nothing quite reaches the eye-popping excitement of her best work (i.e. "I Got Rhythm" or "Little Old Lay Land"). Still, the show never felt more than "pleasant" to me.

Keeping with my boner metaphor, I think the show shoots it's proverbial wad too soon. Near the beginning of the show, the wannabe actress, Olive, has an outrageous number called "I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll" (insert bat over head). Anyway, it has the audience roaring. Unfortunately, nothing that follows tops it. The audience keeps waiting for the 11 o' clock number that never comes.

Nick Cordero's Cheech is the highlight of the show and a shoe-in for a best supporting actor Tony nom. Mazzie looks and sounds gorgeous, but would have benefited from an original song that might better exploit her huge range and personality. Zach Braff is adorable with a pleasant enough singing voice, but the character doesn't really register much amidst all the other big personalities surrounding him. Helene York is an audience favorite, but seemed to go for the obvious choice - ditzy slut with nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. I think a much more interesting choice would have been to temper her a bit, make her more subtlely manipulative with maybe a hint of Bettie Boop. Then again, what do I know? Woody's a gajillionaire and I answer phones.

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"I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing thana hundred people's ninth favorite thing."

Jeff Bowen, Lyrics "[Title of Show]"