By: Jerry Herman, Jerome Lawrence and R.E. Lee
Circle Theatre, 7300 W. Madison, Forest Park
Phone: ( 708 ) 771-0700; $22-$24
Through March 5
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
Circle Theatre deserves a medal for producing the Broadway musical flop Dear World. That's not a prize-winning medal, but the kind you pin onto soldiers for bravery or sustaining war wounds.
First produced in 1969, Dear World was supposed to be a big hit. Tony Award-winner Angela Lansbury starred and the score was by Jerry Herman ( best known for what critic Ethan Mordden calls 'Big Lady Shows' like Mame and Hello, Dolly! ) .
What failed with Dear World was its inappropriate adaptation of its source material, The Madwoman of Chaillot. Jean Giradoux's 1944 absurdist comedy about a madwoman staving off corrupt businessmen from destroying Paris for oil-generated profit is full of the delicate French whimsy which is almost impossible to translate into English ( let alone brash American ) .
Tarting up Giradoux's wispy soufflé into a big, brassy Broadway behemoth was a massive mistake. Oh sure, book writers Jerome Lawrence and R.E. Lee tried very hard to make a statement about a single person making a world of difference. Also, Herman's score is often enchanting, especially the cabaret-destined songs 'I Don't Want to Know' and 'Each Tomorrow Morning.'
Dear World just doesn't work as a satisfying musical. A revision of Dear World's script by David Thompson in 2000 was better ( which I saw at Utah's Sundance Summer Theatre in 2002 with Maureen McGovern performing ) , but still was unsatisfying and was riddled with problems.
Circle Theatre's well-intentioned resuscitation of the 1969 Dear World is no doubt a timely allusion to America's greedy addiction to oil. ( It also allows cult fans of the original cast recording to see the show's incongruities up close. )
The first act takes a while to get going, or to get audiences to care with the inane dialogue provided by the café customers ( including a deaf-mute mime! ) and the madwoman's lame introductory song, 'Through the Bottom of a Glass.'
Luckily, as the madwoman Anita Hoffman gets much better songs for the delusional Countess Aurelia to expertly wax nostalgic and pour on the schmaltz. Dear World also picks up with the arrival of Sara Minton and Mary Redmon respectively as Constance, The Madwoman of the Flea Market and Gabrielle, The Madwoman of Montmartre.
This talented trio charm and sing wonderfully together in their second act 'Tea Party Trio.' Also deserving honorable mention is Rus Rainear, who makes quite a character as the ever-clever Sewerman ( though he is saddled with a yucky list song called 'Garbage' ) and John Milewski as the evilly blasé President.
Unable to fully illuminate such bad dialogue and musical numbers that feel forced, director and set designer Bob Knuth instead pours plenty of lovely effort into his detailed Parisian production designs, which make Dear World attractive to the eyes at least. Circle Theatre's Dear World contains many lovely little bits; they all, unfortunately, don't add up to a meaningful or entertaining whole.
So go ahead and give Circle Theatre its medal for trying Dear World. They gamely went into battle already knowing they were on the losing side.