Authors: William Finn ( music and lyrics ) and James Lapine ( book ). At: The Edge Theatre, 5451 N. Broadway. Tickets: 773-999-9541 or ChicagoTheatreWorkshop.org; $32.50-$42.50. Runs through: June 4
There's something very savvy on paper about Chicago Theatre Workshop's Chicago premiere production of Little Miss Sunshine, a musical retelling of the 2006 indie movie. Director Maggie Portman and Music Director Nick Sula make the most of an intimate stage and a small cast, but something about the boredom and bitterness that haunt the film's characters so effectively gets lost in translation when they must sing their innermost thoughts.
If you missed the source material, the musical does a decent job encapsulating what made the road movie so awkwardly lovable. There's no vacancy at the Hoover household when Richard and his wife Sheryl and their two kids welcome Richard's father and Sheryl's brother Frank in from the cold. ( Grandpa is kicked out of his retirement home and Frank has botched a suicide attempt. ) By some stroke of luck, youngest daughter Olive is invited to sub in for a disqualified pageant winner and compete for the Little Miss Sunshine Crown. But there's absolutely no way they can make it, money's tight, it's all the way in California and they can't leave any—ah, screw it, everyone in the van!
Sharyon A. Culberson is a pillar of strength as Sheryl, doing the vocal and emotional grounding that tends to go unnoticed as the men in her family loudly implode. Likewise, Kyle Klein II conveys a changing Dwayne through just facial expressions, in a misguided attempt to keep his family at bay. George Keating flits about the family with sardonic remove as Uncle Frank, but he hardly gets a satisfying musical moment to himself.
The musicality of this family is the code that authors William Finn and James Lapine haven't cracked. With some great voices at this production's disposal, it's a shame when their musical moments don't land with a bigger bang. Ken Rubenstein gets to have a little fun as Grandpa sings the kids some valuable sex advice, and Sophie Kaegi deftly implores us to shake our badonkadonks as Olive takes the pageant stage, but both moments are saddled with too much story ( and expectation ) to be what they should be: spontaneous. Greg Foster gives us a transcending moment as Richard, singing an ode to his father in 'What You Left Behind," a song so touching and simple you'd think it was out of another score.
Little Miss Sunshine is a bit of a mixed bag, but if you have to wrangle your own motley crew of angsty, ornery or impressionable theatergoers, it may be just the mixed bag for you.
