Playwrights: Sean Grennan, Leak Okimoto
At: Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire
Phone: 847-634-0200; $42 ( plus tax )
Runs through: Sept. 2
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Many shows about marriage—perhaps plays more than musicals—focus on how and why marriages founder and disintegrate. Married Alive! takes the opposite course. Alternating between gentle mockery of marriage and gentle sweetness, it chooses instead to suggest how and why marriages stay together, sometimes seemingly in spite of themselves. It's a charming, small-scale musical with a superlative cast, and yet it feels as if it wants to be a little bit more than it is.
The book and lyrics by Sean Grennan are laugh-out-loud funny. Consider a lyric such as, 'I've seen a lot of weddings, You'd think they'd be a blast, I'd rather watch beheadings, At least the pain is fast.' Or a throw-away line such as, 'These pants are safer than Superman's wallet.' Grennan and composer Leah Okimoto cover such familiar topics as weddings, romantic love, credit-card debt, babies, adolescents, in-laws and sex in the first, fifth, 10th and 25th years of marriage. The subjects are standard-issue, but the scenes, lyrics and pop melodies have a pleasant freshness to them at least in the hands of this particularly skilled cast.
Married Alive! contrasts newlyweds Erin and Paul with middle-aged Diane and Ron, who are approaching their 25th anniversary. In the hands of, respectively, Kelly Sullivan, David Larsen, Kathy Santen and Gene Weygandt the romantic songs soar and the comedy numbers bubble merrily, and the knock-about physical scenes—especially in Act II—are deftly executed. All is well under director Vicky Bussert, a very sharp musical theater cookie who began her career in Chicago before going on to national prominence. Her long-overdue return to Chicago is most welcome.
Still, Married Alive! is a thematic sketch comedy show with songs rather than a vehicle with a strong storyline and well-developed characters. There are moments that scream for a larger cast, such as the rollicking pseudo-gospel number about pregnancy—Oh, Knocked Up!—and there are moments that might allow greater depth in the writing. With only 13 musical numbers ( a typical musical has 18 or more ) , there seem to be fairly simple—or at least obvious—opportunities for Grennan and Okimoto to expand the show, perhaps not to Broadway-size but at least to mid-size. Even the instrumental forces are intimate. Instead of an orchestra, two baby grand pianos are built into the corners of the set, at which Roberta Duchak and Kevin Disch are the accomplished keyboardists.
Married Alive! is ingratiating, but seems to have been programmed as a small, modest and relatively inexpensive show to precede the huge, elaborate regional premiere of The Producers, coming to the Marriott next month. Still, it's always good to see Chicago's largest musical theater producer take a risk on new work.
