Marra’s book and Steinhagen score suffer from casting that finds few players who can sing. That spells trouble for a musical. True that Joseph Stearns and Vincent Lonergan adequately deliver their clever tunes and Courtney Jones sings her ballads with heart and an adequate voice, but the rest of the cast can’t sing well enough to do justice to Steinhagen’s score.
This refreshingly engrossing and compelling musical contains all the humor, pain and tragedy of the 1922 O’Casey masterpiece, Juno and the Paycock while effectively presenting the music and lyrics of Blitzstein and Stein with a first class cast of actor/singers who add layers of heart and humanity to the story’s emotional range
With all the fine technical features together with a excellent orchestra and a game cast doing an iconic well-know piece, there is no need to add bland new music or lyrics – just trust the material and do it with verve and class. This production, when it does the ‘old material,’ mostly does a fine job making the production worth seeing.
This Broadway musical has not held up after more than fifty years and it is seldom produced in Chicago because the material is mediocre and the book comes off as more goofy than satirical despite Rob Lindley’s correct choice to play all the corporate types larger-than-life. There are laughs, terrific energetic choreography (by Brenda Didier) and several terrific performances but the shows seems to be trying to hard to land such out of date material.
Jackson Evans , as Princeton and Leah Morrow, as Kate Monster were among my favorites from a cast of accomplished troupe of talents that sang well, delivered laughs and won the hearts of the audience. Adam Fane, as the flaming queen Rob was a hoot!
As the flashbacks demonstrate the pressure the steel companies face from a dwindling marker for steel, union pressure to save jobs and the stress from undermanned steel mills, a tragedy became more likely. Sprinkled throughout are the Widows who expound on the conventional grieving they experience after their loss.
This flawless production does everything right. From the opening scene that finds the nuns changing in Latin to Maria (Jenn Gambatese) soaring as she sings the title song on a set that screams Alps, we instantly become enchanted into the world of Salzburg, Austria in 1938.
Chronicling Charles Darwin’s discoveries was nicely and effectively presented due to Gmitter’s fluid writing upon Collette Pollard’s suggestive set. Director Jessica Thebus’ staging underscores the ambitious storytelling effectively. The combination of telling Charles’ amazing rise to fame as the most controversial writer of the 19th Century and his lifelong romance made for an engaging play.
Lay Me Down Softly is essentially a memory play centered around the patchwork family of Roadshow. The action and metaphors are sports references and the on-going boxing matches. We see how hope and dreams were stiffed as this group laments through melancholy their lost dreams. Each character depends on the Roadshow family for sustenance, companionship, and recognition.
Emma lives in a world of tea parties, gossip and social snobbery. Emma proves to be a disastrous matchmaker and only her confident (and secret admirer) Mr. Knightley (Ben Muller) will tell her the blunt truth. Filled with clever romantic twists, nice period music and dance, nicely choreographed in period authentic English dances by Mady Newfield and Tammy Ravitts Bretscher, Emma has the potential to be a worthy comedy of manners but a critical element mars the production.