Some ensemble required

Worcester Forum and NETC face the music

by Steve Vineberg

GUYS AND DOLLS Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser. Based on a story and characters by Damon Runyon. Directed by Steven R. Braddock. Choreographed by Nancy Safian. Musical direction by Fred Frabotta. Set designed by Derek R. Lane. Costumes by Paula Ouellette. Lighting by James J. Fallon. With Fabio Polanco, Masiel Reyes, Candice Rose, Jack Celli, Paul Stickney, Tim Smith, Ellen O'Neall Waite, and Joseph Frustaci. A Worcester Forum production at East Park Pavilion, through August 23.

CAROUSEL Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Music by Richard Rodgers. Based on Ferenc Molnar's play Liliom as adapted by Benjamin F. Glazer. Directed by Tim Mahoney. Choreographed by Denise Day. Musical direction by Kallin Johnson. Set designed by Steve Hayes. Costumes by Polly Flynn and Beth B. Lundergan. Lighting by Christopher Gates. With Stephen Schonhoff, Jessica Pollack, Maureen J. Daw, Matthew J. Carr, Kelli Putnam Deliso, William Beck, Kerri Jenkins, and Gail V. Swain. A New England Theatre Company production at Anna Maria College, through August 1.

Though they differ vastly in tone, Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1945 Carousel and Frank Loesser's 1950 Guys and Dolls both emerge from the heart of the golden era of the American book musical. Though Show Boat, written in 1927, is the earliest example of a plot-driven musical, Broadway didn't become obsessed with strong books and more complicated narratives until the '40s. And at that point librettists went crazy questing for adaptable material from other media. Oscar Hammerstein derived Carousel from a downbeat fantasy, Liliom, by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar, which had been twice filmed (once by Fritz Lang). Loesser fashioned Guys and Dolls, a more frivolous and less sentimental musical, out of a couple of stories by the heavily stylized comic writer Damon Runyon. These were two of the most successful shows of their time, running for years and spawning famous movie versions in the mid-'50s.

The new reliance on the musical-comedy book in this period made tougher demands on performers, who now had to be actors as well as singers, dancers, and comics. That's just as true for Guys and Dolls, where the conflict between the romantic leads, the inveterate gambler Sky Masterson and the Salvation Army sister Sarah Brown, is developed as much through relatively lengthy dialogue scenes as through duets, as it is for Carousel, a melodrama in which the protagonist beats his wife, gets involved in an ill-fated robbery, and stabs himself in the middle of the second act. The drama is part of the heavy apparatus of these shows, which present obstacles to community theaters that a light-handed musical comedy like Anything Goes -- which lacks three-dimensional characters -- doesn't.

Worcester Forum and the New England Theatre Company confront these hurdles with spirit in their current respective revivals of Guys and Dolls and Carousel. Forum has the added challenge of integrating the young local performers trained in its Theatreworks program into professional productions starring Equity actors. The results, as in last year's West Side Story, are mixed. The director, Steven R. Braddock, and the choreographer, Nancy Safian, work hard to find ways of accommodating experienced actors with buoyant amateurs, but the energy of the young ensemble isn't always an adequate substitute for the precision a big Broadway musical requires. This Guys and Dolls is scattershot, and it lacks rhythm. It has some strong moments, like the first scene between Sky (Fabio Polanco) and Sarah (Masiel Reyes) and the title number, sung by Paul Stickney and the reliable Tim Smith (who makes a genial, high-style Benny Southstreet). Candice Rose, who plays Adelaide, is both charming and touching. Ellen O'Neall Waite brings the pitifully underwritten role of Arvide Abernathy, Sarah's adviser, to life. And pleasures pop up in unexpected places, like Paul Hernandez's electric dancing in the Cuban number late in act one. But on the whole the cast fails to find a balance between vigorous, cartoonish overplaying -- Paul Stickney, as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, is the major offender here (especially when he's not singing) -- and bland underplaying.

The idea of a Theatreworks project, as I interpret it, is that the unleashed energy of young performers carries all before it, while the pros in the cast have to find a way to get on the same wavelength. They manage this without awkwardness or condescension; everyone on stage, regardless of experience, seems to be having a good, rowdy time. But whether Braddock encouraged his cast to improvise or merely allowed it, it backfires every time: depending on the skill of the improvisers, the unscripted moments feel either like something in a high-school variety show or else like schtick. A musical like Guys and Dolls imposes a style on the ensemble that it can't fool around with. Moreover, these performers don't receive the visual and musical support they need to carry off that style -- like a strong band, a carefully thought-out set design, costumes that look like they're tailored to the actors. The modified zoot suits Paula Ouellette has thrown on the men in the cast look like they came off a rack, and only a handful of the actors have the right physique to wear them.

The costumes aren't a problem in NETC's Carousel: considering the immensity of their task, designers Polly Flynn and Beth B. Lundergan have done laudable work in assembling them. And musical director Kallin Johnson has trained the singers with his usual efficiency: the show sounds lovely, particularly the ensemble numbers. But director Tim Mahoney, choreographer Denise Day and set designer Steve Hayes totter under the load of this enormous musical drama. Carousel's appeal eludes me, but I know many, many people are moved by a story I find maudlin -- the love affair between a ne'er-do-well carnival barker and the strong-hearted young woman who loves him unconditionally -- and swept away by the Richard Rodgers music (which I'd appreciate more if those drippy Hammerstein lyrics weren't attached to it).

Certainly I understand why a company would want to mount the show. What I don't understand is why NETC, time and time again, refuses to sit down and figure out the best way to employ its limited resources. Lacking a revolve to support a carousel for the celebrated opening scene, Hayes has thrown up a convex tripartite flat that takes up so much of the playing area that the large cast is forced downstage. And since he never removes it, the subsequent scenes are all played awkwardly against the merry-go-round tent, which becomes increasingly irrelevant to the action. If he'd designed an unlocalized set, then choreographer Day's idea to abstract the "Carousel Waltz" might really have taken off; here it comes across as half an idea. (NETC made exactly the same mistake with the set for their last production, My Mother Said I Never Should.) And I was puzzled by the use of slides, badly projected onto sheets on both sides of the stage: they don't add anything and they don't look good.

Mahoney hasn't shaped the show physically; entrances and exits seem arbitrary, and his staging obscures a lot of the big dramatic moments, like the death of the antihero, Billy Bigelow (Stephen Schonhoff). And the demands of the script hornswaggle the performers, who mostly act from the neck up. That's true, for instance, of Jessica Pollack, who might otherwise be close to ideal as Julie, Billy's wife: she has a modest-but-firm quality that seems exactly right for the role. The actors who are most successful are Kelli Putnam Deliso as Nettie Fowler, Julie's consoling cousin (who leads two of the show's best-known songs, "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone"), and young Kerri Jenkins as Billy and Julie's misfit daughter, Louise.

The sweet voices and the conviction of the cast make up for a lot of missteps in this production, but they can't compensate for what comes across as a lack of forethought. I couldn't tell what Mahoney thinks the play is about, or how he and Stephen Schonhoff read the character of Billy Bigelow. Anyone who takes on this role has his work cut out for him, because there's a dysjunction between the tough, sexy Billy we keep hearing about and the one who has to sing those fruity lyrics about the tide stealing up on the beach like a thief and the unborn baby daughter who'll be pink and white like peaches and cream. But in the NETC production, I could never see what the actor and the director wanted Billy to be, and that decision, it seems to me, needs to be at the heart of any Carousel.

Both Guys and Dolls and Carousel are elephantine shows, and though you pull for Forum and NETC, you can feel the productions go slack under their own weight. Both Braddock and Mahoney have done better work; clearly the problem isn't a lack of talent or intelligence, either in them or in their actors. But the tasks Forum (since the inception of Theatreworks) and NETC -- two admirable and well-meaning organizations -- have set for themselves remain unaccomplished. Forum has yet to discover a medium that will allow both their ringers and the untried young talent to shine. NETC has to figure out how to direct its resources toward preparing the challenging productions it wants to offer. Both companies' aims are impressive, but theater isn't judged by aims alone.