Music by Tom Kitt
Book and Lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Directed by Michael Greif
Choreographed by Larry Keigwin
Produced by Broadway in Chicago
New Musical Examines Complications of Adult Life
Thirteen years ago, Avenue Q perfectly captured the hopes and fears of recent college graduates, and it remains a perfect portrait of early-to-mid twenty-somethings to this day. But those people who first saw themselves in the hapless Muppets are now on the cusp of middle-age, and having significantly shaped the paths their lives will likely unfold on, they might be wondering whether any decisions they are likely to make will still have massive impacts on their futures. For those people, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s new musical If/Then, now in its first national tour, offers a reflection on where they are now. The story, which depicts two alternate timelines, is one of the more interesting concepts to come from a Broadway stage recently, and this tour features two of the leading Broadway actors of their generation: Jackie Burns, of the tour of Wicked, and Anthony Rapp, who played Mark Cohen in the first Broadway production of Rent.
We meet Charles Ignatius as he is posing for Gainsborough. His first words to us are naughty speculation on what King George III wears to bed, since it obviously isn’t the gold finery in his portrait by Allan Ramsay. A valet to a duke has no business being modest, he declares, particularly not when he has a story to tell. Charles Ignatius was born on a slave ship. His mother died birthing him he supposes, and his father killed himself when he saw he was to be a slave. And at this point the narrator is no longer so jocular, for despite his friendship with abolitionist priests, it is a cruel theology that damns a man for such an act. But the boy was picked up by a nobleman, and sent to England as a literal pet for three spinster sisters. The weird sisters, as he calls them, punished him for touching books, but they thought it amusing to dress him up and have him perform in plays. Thus he appeared as Sancho Panza in a Don Quixote adaptation. His moving performance, for as a child, he did not realize that his scene partner was not really dead, and cried real tears, won him the affection of a duke. Thereafter, his new patron’s family protected him and surreptitiously taught him to read Cervantes, Shakespeare, and all the other masters. The fabulous Charles Ignatius Sancho was born.
But life turns out less than fabulous for a freedman in eighteenth century London. In the latter part of the play, Joseph introduces us to Sancho twelve years later, after having been freed/fired for developing a limp, and with a rather unexpected wife and seven children. The economy is hard on a gentleman-grocer, and he no longer finds fops as amusing as when he was one. He still peppers his speech with Shakespearean allusions, but his verve has faded. And either he is getting less resilient, or racism is getting worse, because hearing people viciously argue against abolitionists is deeply disheartening to him. But this is what Sancho’s life has truly been leading up to; there is no secret ballot at this time, and voting is done by mob action. To cast his vote will require extraordinary courage and conviction. But underneath his campiness, there’s a man who knows the horror of slavery, and has always insisted on being recognized as what he’s worth.
It’s remarkable how Joseph nearly plays two characters: the younger, brasher, and older, wiser Sancho, and how he is equally convincing and magnetic as each. The real Charles Ignatius Sancho was hobbled in his acting career by a speech impediment which Joseph chose to interpret as a lisp; but in Joseph’s mouth, it’s an extraordinary tool for conveying subtlety as well as emphasis, wit as well as poignancy. In a time when Europe is agonizing over multiculturalism, Joseph wrote this play in part to demonstrate that London has already been a multicultural society for hundreds of years. For Americans, the story is a reminder of the importance of the right to vote, and the dignity intrinsic in exercising it. In case it’s not obvious already, Paterson Joseph is wonderful company, and some lucky audience members may even get an opportunity to dance with him. It’s a pity he’s here for so short a time; there are only six performances of Sancho: An Act of Remembrance in total. Hurry before he’s gone.
It is possible that Frankel’s music didn’t come through at its full potential at the performance I attended because the speakers were placed in the audience’s walk-way and were in sorry condition by the time the second act started. But his style is still a very particular taste which doesn’t do a whole lot to elevate Far From Heaven’s social issue soap-opera content, although playing it straight as melodrama may have been worse. Bill Morey’s costume designs are colorful and fun, but Grant Sabin’s sarcastic scenic design, which sets the play in a rudimentary doll house, lacks the superficial charm of Eisenhower suburbia, and the show doesn’t compare favorably with Ibsen. Far From Heaven checks off the full list of 50s social evils, but at this point of removal, without dynamic characters and dialogue, it’s hard to care a whole lot. Fans of the movie may still enjoy it, though, and fans of this kind of music will admire Smart’s voice.