Barrington Stage Company takes theatre very seriously, indeed. The company, led by Juliane Boyd, also has a sense of humour and knows that balance is essential: passion and drive face off against risk and reach-for-the-stars. Evidence of this equation is immediately hand with the recent Sweeney Todd on the Mainstage and the recent premiere of another musical, Pool Boy, on Stage 2.
The two musicals defy comparison, since the Sondheim piece is operatic in scale and composition and the new musical, written by Nikos Tsakalakos (music and lyrics) and Janet Allard (book and lyrics), is compact and a likely candidate for cabaret and small stage settings. What does apply to both of these projects is that each has had to endure the process of development, rewriting and more rewriting before revealing the finished results in front of a paying audience. And while Sweeney is he stuff of legend – after its premiere more than thirty years ago – it’s only fair to point out that its creators hadn’t (and haven’t) had an unbroken string of hits.
Pool Boy, the new show-on-the-block, isn’t aspiring to the same heights as Sondheim, Wheeler and Prince. Still, the writers and the entire creative team at BSC have invested themselves in the future of this smaller, more manageable “baby”. That it doesn’t spring to life is the unhappy news, but the fact that BSC takes these risks and continues to devote its energies to new play/musical development supersedes the specifics of a single project gone wrong.
Pool Boy is inspired by Tsakalakos’ 3-year stint as a pool boy at Hollywood’s Hotel Bel-Air. And while he is clear that the characters and events are not strictly autobiographical or anything more than conflations, the current results point to the basic fact that a story with little purpose, no matter how well produced, is still no story. Tsakalakos and Allard have embraced clichés and passed them off as truths that they want their characters and, by extension, their audience, to care about And learn from. The story of a naïve young man who goes to L.A. intent on “making it” in the music business and who meets one obnoxious power broker and his loathsome wife, a hotel manager who wields his own power as a way of covering his racial insecurity, a Middle Eastern potentate-on-training, a sweet young woman who, by the play’s end, chooses to see the wider world rather than being buried in L.A. is just too much. At the same time, it is not much at all, since the scent of the formulaic has already done in the writers’ efforts to breathe life into the misadventures of the hapless group of seven.
As for the writing itself, a lack of overall purpose and focus serves only to frustrate the discussion. The music is not especially distinctive, but the banality of the lyrics makes any attempt at assessing the music impossible. When characters sing for no particular reason and without adding insight to themselves or their situations, it’s difficult for the listener to hang in. And when the problem is exacerbated by having seven people sing lyrics that are interchangeable, one character with the next, it’s even worse. Adding to these problems is the fact that the writers want the tone to be satirical one moment and genuinely human the next. Such shifts of tone require dexterity and maturity, neither of which is in evidence here.
And yet, in spite of material not yet ready for public consumption, BSC has produced Pool Boy with great care. The set, designed by Brian Prather, makes the most of the tiny stage without ever trying apologizing for lack of space. It’s a smart arrangement of sliding panels and moveable furniture that carries us from to scene to scene. The other design elements also reinforce the world of the story with care and good attention to detail. However, why the actors need body mikes is bewildering. Stage 2 is small, and the musical accompaniment is modest. The sight of microphone cables taped to the bare backs of characters is both distracting and ugly, and the value of what could be an acoustic evening – in itself a major achievement – is lost to someone’s idea of trendy sound design.
Finally, the company of actors and singers commits to this work as they should – the writers are tremendously well served by an ensemble that sings as though every lyric counted. They are also well served by a professional ensemble that gives as much life to the characters as one can imagine them possessing. As Tsakalakos and Allard proceed with Pool Boy, their current cast will have contributed enormously to the musical’s future. For that, the cast and all those associated with the BSC Musical Lab are to be thanked.