Playwright: L. Bernstein ( music ) , H. Wheeler ( book ) ,
Latouche, Wilbur and Sondheim ( lyrics )
At: Porchlight Music Theatre at
Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont
Phone: 773-327-5252; $37
Runs through: Nov. 2
From the day Candide premiered on Broadway in 1956 everyone knew Leonard Bernstein's score was brilliant. The problem always has been the book, which 50 years of revisions haven't fixed. Bernstein's own 'final revised version' has been revised several times since his death.
Voltaire's 1759 novella, Candide, or Optimism, is doubly difficult as musical comedy material. First, it's a picaresque series of disjointed episodes built on situation rather than character. Second, its social satire which savagely undermines the notion that life is rational, orderly or good. The heroically naive title character is beset by war, seduction, rape, natural disaster, corruption, disease, social prejudice, religious hypocrisy, thievery, fraud, swindle, greed and cruelty ( then things get rough ) and always makes the same mistake.
Lillian Hellman's 1956 adaptation turned Candide into an impossibly grand history pageant while Hugh Wheeler's more modest rendition reduced it to burlesque, or at least vaudeville with baggy pants comedy. Wheeler's pleasingly vulgar version in one long act ( approaching two hours ) certainly makes Candide breezy and amusing, and L. Walter Stearn's lively, fast, in-the-round staging plays the farce elements very well.
The real difficulty with Candide, however, isn't the structure. It's that Voltaire, Hellman and Wheeler wrote satire ( and/or burlesque ) but Leonard Bernstein did not. Voltaire and Wheeler mock their subjects, while Bernstein's lavish and grand score pays homage to its numerous sources—Mozart, Richard Strauss, Gilbert & Sullivan, Rossini, Beethoven—in brilliant but respectful parody. Ergo, there is a fundamental disconnect between the music and ALL versions of the script. In those few moments when the music and lyrics grow solemn, including the majestic finale in C Major, emotions materialize from thin air and seem out of place. One of Bernsteins' most ravishing melodies, The Ballad of El Dorado, is cut from this version because the tone simply doesn't fit the burlesque style. There's nothing any producer can do about this, so you present Candide as you can for the sake of its genius-level music.
Porchlight musical director Eugene Dizon is on top of his game with incisive orchestral reductions for seven musicians who—placed stage center—participate in some of the action. By now, his players certainly will be past a few opening-night stumbles with Bernstein's chromatically and rhythmically difficult music. But their general excellence can't disguise that this is a symphonic score, some portions of which demand a thick orchestral sound seven players can't achieve.
Stearns and Dizon, as ever, have cast extremely well with Abercrombie-type Ryan Lanning as Candide, Caitlin Collins as oft-ravished Cunegonde, David Girolmo as Pangloss driving the narrative and musical patter and Kristen Freilich as the half-assed Old Lady. They are supported by a full-throated ensemble of 10, all dressed in Bill Morey's colorful, fun, polyglot costumes.