AISLE SAY Massachusetts

TEN CENTS A DANCE


Music by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics by Lorenz Hart
Conceived and Directed by John Doyle
starring Malcolm Gets and Donna McKechnie

Williamstown Theatre Main Stage August 11-28

Reviewed by Joel Greenberg

 

Ten Cents a Dance is the new Rodgers & Hart songbook musical, conceived and directed by John Doyle, currently running at the Williamstown Theatre Festival Main Stage. Doyle staged Sweeney Todd and Company, among other musicals, with actors and singers who played an array of musical instruments. More than merely playing instruments, Doyle’s productions have integrated the use of instrumental work into the staging and the heart of the projects he has produced.
 
I saw his production of Company on Broadway before I saw the touring company of Sweeney Todd a few months later. I was impressed by the level of skill that the ensemble demonstrated, though I found the upbeat numbers rather hobbled by people wheeling double basses and women in heels skittering about playing saxophones and other less-than-delicate bits of brass. But musical virtuosity is Doyle’s signature and it has certainly worked for him often enough.
 
The two Sondheim shows cited are unqualified masterpieces of musical theatre. Each has a strong narrative line and characters whose motives are never less than crystal clear. I think that the sound structure of these musicals allows for the flights of fancy that Doyle has undertaken. Ten Cents a Dance, like all songbook shows, is something else.
 
In many anthology musicals, a collection of songs is bundled together by theme or by time. There are also a number of shows that write a loose structure in which the songs can be placed so that a story is imposed where no story ever existed before to knit the musical selections. There are also composer-lyricist tributes that are more concert-based than anything else – songs are selected and performed with or without some connecting narration to set up or define what was sung and what is yet to come.
 
For Ten Cents a Dance, Doyle has chosen about three dozen songs from the Rodgers & Hart canon and he has grouped them into five episodes entitled “The Blue Room”, “Isn’t It Romantic”,  “Manhattan”, “Ten Cents a Dance” and “Quiet Night”.  Delivering this catalogue of songs, Doyle has cast Malcolm Gets as Johnny and Donna McKechnie, Diana DiMarzio, Jessica Tyler Wright, Jane Pfitsch and Lauren Molina as Miss Jones 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1, respectively.
 
Set on a stage that is surrounded by art deco-inspired panels, scrims and a massive floor-to-ceiling circular staircase, designed by Scott Pask, the six performers are onstage throughout the 90-minute intermissionless programme. A grand piano sits on a revolve that gets plenty of action and scattered on risers that frame the stage is a wide assortment of musical instruments almost all of which get strummed, bowed, blown or plucked.
 
But the basic structure of this particular revue appears to be in its early stage of development. The male character sits at the piano for much of the evening (and Gets is certainly an ideal singer-musician who gets to demonstrate his extensive vocal and instrumental range before the final curtain) angsting over the five women who coo, berate, tease, taunt and flirt in his direction. For their part, the women, who are dressed in variations of the same dress and the same hairstyle, deliver the majority of their songs as though they were enduring some kind of cathartic therapy. It is more than slightly bewildering to spend time with the work of Rodgers and Hart and to feel almost punished by the relentless downbeat tone that refuses to abate.
 
The staging of the songs is equally baffling. The women descend the enormous staircase as though they are wisps of a dream long past, and the chiffon-like fabric of their dresses plus the reverb in the sound design reinforces the imagery. However, once they get down those stairs they are effectively without any individual personality and they float and drift from one position to another. And when they are not on the stage to sing and/or play numbers, they cross to one of many platforms, climb stairs and access the instruments that lie in wait. The aggravating fact is that there are also stairs for the women to descend when they are done with their accompanying. There is a lot of traffic on the stage, what with all those stairs and all those instruments and all that needless desire to show off just how many instruments any number of people can play. And since no one, aside from Gets, is allowed to show off real mastery of musicianship, it’s a case of more-is-more. Instruments are used because they are available and the performers can, to varying degrees, play them or, at the very least, appear as though they can. By the time we reach the final number, and every woman is clutching a violin, we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns.
 
What a bizarre notion this show is and when, I wonder, were such great music and lyrics used to less effect.

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