Team spirit

But Stageloft doesn't win many points with Rodgers & Hart

by Steve Vineberg

RODGERS & HART: A CELEBRATION Directed by Edward Cornely. Musical direction by Tracy Martino. Choreographed by Tracy Martino and Tyson Funk. Set designed by Edward Cornely and Tyson Funk. Costumes by Ellen Cornely. Lighting by Eric L'Ecuyer. With Sally Anne Dunn, Robin Gabrielli, Ann Garner, Gregorio Malonte, Pamela Turpin, and Eric Wefald.

The revue Rodgers & Hart: A Celebration at Stageloft is obviously a labor of love. In the course of two hours, Edward Cornely's production spins through 60 songs by the great songwriting team, whose partnership began in 1920 -- when Richard Rodgers was a teenager and Lorenz Hart in his early 20s -- and ended in 1943 with the first Rodgers & Hammerstein collaboration, Oklahoma!, and Hart's untimely death. Cornely and the musical director, Tracy Martino, have recycled not only the most famous Rodgers & Hart songs ("Bewitched," "Where or When," "Johnny One Note," "Falling in Love with Love," and so on) and many of the loveliest lesser-known numbers (such as "A Ship Without a Sail" and "Nobody's Heart") but also a handful of truly obscure ones. I knew, for example, that "Blue Moon" underwent several lyrical transformations, that (as "Prayer") it was written for Jean Harlow to sing in the film Hollywood Party and then passed onto Shirley Ross (as "The Bad in Every Man") in Manhattan Melodrama. But this show unearths a third tryout version called "Don't Breathe, It Isn't Allowed."

The problem with Rodgers & Hart: A Celebration is that it's monolithic. The songs just keep coming at you, and though there's considerable pleasure to be had in just sitting back and listening to them, any show, however endearing the material in it, needs to be shaped. The six performers -- Pamela Turpin, Ann Garner, Sally Anne Dunn, Gregorio Malonte, Eric Wefald, and Robin Gabrielli -- sing and sing and sing. There's very little variety in what they're given to do with their songs -- Cornely doesn't even mix up the three couples, so the duets become monotonous by the second act. Occasionally he tries to group the numbers, but the dramatic conceptions of the groupings are weak and generally haven't been thought through very well. For example, a travel medley includes "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," which has nothing remotely to do with travel, and "I've Got Five Dollars" doesn't belong in the category of songs about singing. The setting Cornely has chosen for his revue is a radio station, which furnishes '30s-style microphones for the singers but, as far as I could tell, nothing more. We never find out what the radio show is supposed to be, and the occasional narration is in the past tense, reminding us that these are present-day performers talking about songs from a long-ago past. Why are people in period clothes and a period setting referring to Larry Hart's death in 1943?

The performers struggle with mixed success against the major obstacle that no one has really directed them (or choreographed them, even though the program lists two choreographers), and against the oddities of some of the arrangements. ("Little Girl Blue" and "Ten Cents a Dance" are hacked up and put back together, for some reason, and the tempo shifts in "On a Desert Island with Thee" seem arbitrary.) Robin Gabrielli, sporting a fedora and a double-breasted suit with ease, comes off best, especially in his ballads, "With a Song in My Heart" and "Nobody's Heart," and in "Sing for Your Supper." His baritone is true, and when he sings with feeling, his unadorned style serves the songs beautifully. When he mugs, though, his ironic affect is quickly wearying, but then, everyone in the cast makes the mistake of mugging too much. Sally Anne Dunn performs one of the show's highlights, a rendition of "It Never Entered My Mind," one of the last songs the pair wrote together; the number has been recorded dozens of times, but Dunn manages to put her own stamp on it. She also does a nice job with "A Ship Without a Sail." And I liked several of Ann Garner's performances: "Little Girl Blue," "You Took Advantage of Me," and "The Lady Is a Tramp."

These songs don't need much of an excuse, but they do need a context. Cornely should have done a little more homework. "Happy Hunting Horn" from "Pal Joey" isn't about hunting; it's a paean to the joys of womanizing. And the lyrics to "Dear Old Syracuse" are incomprehensible when they're performed without any explanation by top-hatted revue performers, since the show they were written for, The Boys from Syracuse (a musical version of The Comedy of Errors), is set in ancient Rome. Edward Cornely could turn Rodgers & Hart: A Celebration into an entertaining evening, but he'd have to go back to the drawing board.