Book and Lyrics: Cheri Coons;
Music: Michael Duff
At: Northlight Theatre,
9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie
Phone: (847) 673-6300; $34-$46
Runs through: June 22
Dorothy Parker once said (of a novel she was reviewing) that it was 'not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown aside with great force.' That same quote could be applied to Cheri Coons book for this musical portrayal of the intellects that made up the famed Algonquin Round Table in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly the triumvirate that founded the New Yorker magazine: Harold Ross, Jane Grant, and the prickly New York Times theater critic, Alexander Woollcott. At Wit's End, which is slick, polished, and entertaining to a fault, is also the kind of work that would have probably raised the ire of most of the people it seeks to dramatize. Coon's book has taken the famed acerbic wit of some of the twentieth century's greatest artists and intellectuals and defanged and declawed it. The show tries too hard to be cute and crowd-pleasing, never something scribes like Parker or Woollcott would have attempted. One has to wonder what either of them would have to say about the sanitized, dumbed-down portrayals of them here. Whatever they would say, it's safe to assume, I think, it would be much more caustic than anything found in At Wit's End.
Although she is not central to the play, a good example of how Coons has twisted history to fit the mold of heartfelt musical theater, is Dorothy Parker. Woollcott himself referred to her as 'so odd a blend of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth.' Yet none of Parker's dark side emerges; she's kind of a smiling, happy soul with the only hint of a dark side the black clothing in which costume designer Kristine Knanishu has clothed her. Coons attempts to work in some of Parker's more memorable lines fail; they seemed forced or just plain wrong (for example, her famous line about Katherine Hepburn running the emotional gamut from A to B is changed to refer to Helen Hayes, ostensibly because Hayes is a character in the play, albeit transformed into the dumbest of blondes. When Parker runs up against Tallulah Bankhead who urges her to precede her, saying, 'Age before beauty,' Parker was alleged to have demurred, quipping, 'Pearls before swine.' The actual encounter may or may not have taken place, but if it did, it was with Claire Booth Luce).
And that's the problem core to this very competent production (ably directed by Joe Leonardo, with a knock-out set harkening back to the glory days of the Algonquin, in all its red crushed velvet glory): it's precious. Even Woollcott, who could be a mean, extremely manipulative bastard, closes the show with a cloying, sentimental ballad to Jane Grant, the woman he wronged, called 'Remember Me,' and ends their relationship by leaving her a little stuffed pig. Awww … At Wit's End is simply not up to rendering the dark and complex personalities it wants to portray, going instead for easy laughs, easy solutions, and pat situations. The music of the show, by Michael Duff, displays the same kind of commercial appeal that the book does, sometimes completely belying what it's trying to say (the chirpy, bouncy 'Vicious Circle,' for example). In spite of its appeal, At Wit's End is a show that, unfortunately, truly personifies the end of wit.
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