Sister act

It's a tough script for the Paisley's to follow

by Steve Vineberg

THE PAISLEY SISTERS' CHRISTMAS SPECIAL Book by Jim Ansart, Joel Benjamin, Bret Silverman, and Steve Silverman. Music by Bret Silverman. Lyrics by Jim Ansart, Joel Benjamin, and Bret Silverman. Directed by Sheila Stasack. Musical direction by Bret Silverman. Choreographed by Ceit McCaleb. Set by Sarah Sullivan. Costumes by Ted Giammona. Lighting by Annemarie Duggan. With Robin Allison, Amy Rivenbark, Charis Leos, Rebecca Bellingham, and the voice of John Davin. At Worcester Foothills Theatre, Worcester, through January 2.

The new musical The Paisley Sisters' Christmas Special, receiving its first professional production at Foothills, is set in 1964, on the occasion of the singing quartet's first color-television spectacular. Despite their stage name (a reference to a style of fabric that didn't come back into fashion after the turn of the century until Carnaby Street revived it in the '60s), the sisters, Connie, Lonnie, Bonnie, and Ronnie, have been singing together, we're told, since the late '40s. But on this occasion Ronnie, who is recovering from a breakdown at Bellevue, is being replaced by her 16-year-old daughter Abigail. The play takes place on and off camera, and it's meant to be a broad, cheerful parody of TV Christmas specials from the end of the era when variety shows were still performed live.

Well, it's broad, all right. There were four authors on the script (Jim Ansart, Joel Benjamin, Steve Silverman, and composer Bret Silverman; Ansart, Benjamin, and Silverman also penned the lyrics), none of whom seems to have taken charge of either the style or the tone. Sometimes what we get are exhausted retreads of show-biz comic clichés (mostly revolving around the efforts of the teenage novice, Abigail, to steal focus from the others), but whenever the writers slip in an ad for the Paisley Sisters' sponsor, Plasticon, we're suddenly thrown into the loopy, much harder-edged universe of Saturday Night Live commercials. And the director, Sheila Stasack, isn't prepped for it -- no adjustment is made in the performance style. Yet it's that universe that takes center stage in the second act, when we learn that the chemicals used in the plastic products have damaged the absent sister's brain and are now affecting Bonnie (Amy Rivenbark) as well -- a revelation that comes with aggravating slowness, considering that the jokey commercials have already made the same comic point. The main problem here isn't that the script is loose or sophomoric; it's that it can't make up its mind what sort of comedy it is. And then, in the middle of act two of a musical that has not for an instant pretended to take place in the real world, Lonnie (Robin Allison) sings a ballad, "Just for Christmas Let's Pretend," about her romantic disenchantment with her married lover, the show's producer (John Davin provides his offstage voice) -- and for five minutes the style shifts to naturalistic musical comedy and the tone becomes serious. (The song's lyrics contain an anachronism -- an allusion to the ritual of weeping over It's a Wonderful Life, which didn't become a Christmas perennial until nearly a decade later.)

The four actresses who play the Paisleys -- Rivenbark and Allison are joined by Charis Leos as the leader, Connie, and Rebecca Bellingham as the adolescent Abigail -- are all strong, lively singers, and each brings a different personality to the material. Leos, who has a terrific, smudgy face for comedy under her brunette wig, is maternal and frantic -- her Connie is the organizer and the most conventional of the sisters. Allison's Lonnie, the redhead, has a Joan Blondell tough-dame quality, an air of sensuality, and a darker vocal tone than the others. As Bonnie, Rivenbark (the black-haired one) is looser-limbed and loonier than the others, even before the chemicals in her brain start to affect her on-camera behavior, and she shines in the "Mrs. Santa Claus Blues" number. Bellingham's Abigail wears a blond wig, like her mother before her, and it helps give her a Connie Stevens look. Bellingham is probably too old to carry off a 16-year-old's part, but she's very good -- she has a sharp sense of style, and she can act. All four women give solidly professional performances; there's little to complain about in their contributions to the evening -- or in those of the musicians, Jim Rice, Mick Lewander, and Rob Simring, or in composer Silverman's musical direction.

But God, it's a dopey musical. I don't mind the absence of any real wit in the writing so much as the ragtaggle, haphazard approach of the writers. And it's the first time since Michael Walker took over the artistic direction of Foothills this fall that the production, too, feels seedy, un-thought-out. In one of the commercial sequences, Lonnie models a dress made of asbestos that she praises for its indestructible form-fitting shape; I gather the joke is supposed to be that though it doesn't lose its shape, it feels like a 10-ton weight. But what Ted Giammona has designed is a rectangular sack. At the end, a slide show offers glimpses of the future achievements of the four singers, but the images are badly framed and the name of one of the characters is misspelled. Professionalism, like God, is in the details.