The Wall Street Journal-20080215-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Entertainment - Culture -- Review - Theater- The Ghost of Daisy Mae
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Entertainment & Culture -- Review / Theater: The Ghost of Daisy Mae
Full Text (1065 words)LI'L ABNER
Reprise! Broadway's Best, Freud Playhouse, UCLA, Los Angeles,
($70-$75), 310-825-2101, closes tomorrow
ORSON'S SHADOW
Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena, Calif.
($32-$65), 626-356-PLAY,
closes Sunday
SATELLITES
Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley, Calif.
($40-$42), 510-843-4822,
closes March 2
Los Angeles -- If you know who Al Capp was, you're probably reading this review through bifocals. "Li'l Abner," the comic strip about hillbilly life that Capp wrote and drew, ran in newspapers across the country from 1934 to 1977. For much of that time it was enormously popular -- enough so that it was made into a musical in 1956, which in turn was made into a movie in 1959. But defunct comic strips have a short shelf life, and "Li'l Abner" had already lost most of its audience by the time Capp retired, in part because the student protests of the '60s turned him into a grouchy old reactionary who lost touch with the changing world around him. Today Abner Yokum and his beloved Daisy Mae, unlike Charlie Brown or Dick Tracy, are no longer part of the common stock of pop-culture reference, and Dogpatch USA, the Arkansas theme park that celebrated the imaginary hamlet from which they came, is now a boarded-up wreck. As for the musical, it hasn't played Broadway since the original production closed in 1958.
So why is Reprise! Broadway's Best, the Los Angeles-based musical- comedy troupe led by "Seinfeld"'s Jason Alexander, reviving a half- forgotten show based on half-remembered comic-strip characters? On paper, at least, I can think of two good reasons: Johnny Mercer, who needs no introduction, wrote the score of "Li'l Abner" in collaboration with Gene De Paul, whose list of hits includes "I'll Remember April" and "Teach Me Tonight." But neither man had much theatrical experience, and the songs they cranked out for the show are dramatically static and musically flat. The book is flawed in a separate but equal way, for it was so closely pegged to the strip that those not old enough to have followed "Li'l Abner" in the funny papers will likely find it hard to follow.
As New York's Encores! series of musical-comedy revivals at City Center has proved repeatedly, a stylish staging can make a B-minus musical look and sound better than it is. Alas, this production falls far short of the standards set by Encores! and Connecticut's Goodspeed Musicals. Too often it reminded me of a competent but dull college show: The direction was unmemorable, the choreography unoriginal, the sets uninteresting, the cast uncharismatic. Only the onstage orchestra, led by Darryl Archibald, was noteworthy. Everything else about "Li'l Abner" was provincial -- a word I rarely have occasion to use in connection with regional theater. I don't know what Los Angeles audiences expect when it comes to musical comedy, but if "Li'l Abner" is typical of its work, then Reprise! Broadway's Best, for all its good intentions, is not yet capable of mustering the slickness and savvy that East Coast audiences take for granted.
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Pasadena, Calif. -- Pasadena Playhouse knows a thing or two about celebrity. The list of stars who first shone on its handsome 1925 proscenium stage includes Dana Andrews, Raymond Burr, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Preston and Gig Young. That makes it a suitable place to see "Orson's Shadow," in which Austin Pendleton takes a real- life encounter between Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier (who met when Olivier invited Welles to direct a production of Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" in 1960) and spins it into a bitterly witty theatrical meditation on the self-destructive impulse that frequently goes hand in hand with great gifts.
I'm sorry to say that Pasadena Playhouse's revival, unlike the brilliant Off Broadway production of 2005, never catches fire. Part of the problem -- for which Damaso Rodriguez, the director, may be to blame -- is that Bruce McGill plays Welles not as a genius whose character has been warped by frustration but as a blustering joker who somehow stays afloat in spite of everything. This interpretation trivializes "Orson's Shadow," changing it from a dark elegy for failed promise to a bitchy backstage comedy about the foibles of famous actors.
I had similar reservations about Charles Shaughnessy's Olivier, which seemed to me more flamboyant than felt. Sharon Lawrence and Libby West, on the other hand, were fully believable as Vivien Leigh and Joan Plowright, Olivier's second and third wives. As for the play itself, I'm still as sure as I was three years ago that "Orson's Shadow" is a first-rate piece of work that is more than capable of rising above stagings which, like this one, don't quite come off.
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Berkeley, Calif. -- Two of California's top theater companies, the Aurora Theatre Company and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, are conveniently situated next door to one another in Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco. I went to the Aurora this week for the West Coast premiere of Diana Son's "Satellites," whose 2006 off-Broadway run I missed. Ms. Son stirred up her share of buzz in 1998 with "Stop Kiss," then dropped out of sight to have a baby and write for "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." "Satellites," her first play since "Stop Kiss," is a glib, preachy dramedy about a biracial yuppie couple (he's black, she's Korean-American) who move into a run-down brownstone in a soon-to-be-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood and discover that life in the real world is more complicated than they'd thought. Up to a point "Satellites" is bracingly honest about the deep-seated problems of can-we-all-get-along multiculturalism, but in the end it goes soft, letting everyone in the cast off easy -- except, of course, the white guy. While not all happy endings are phony, this one gives off a distinct whiff of postmodern series TV at its most gratingly earnest.
I have nothing but praise for the Aurora, whose repertory for the 2007-08 season is impressively wide-ranging (among other things, the company just revived Mae West's "Sex"). No matter where you're sitting, the 150-seat performance space puts you within a few yards of the six-person cast, all of whom give strong, emotionally credible performances that are deftly directed by Kent Nicholson. A really fine little company, in short -- one that I look forward to revisiting.
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Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, blogs about theater and the other arts at www.terryteachout.com. Write to him at [email protected].
