Playwright: book by David Thompson, music & lyrics by Harry Connick, Jr.
At: Circle Theatre, 730 W. Madison St.
in Forest Park
Phone: ( 708 ) 771-0700; $24
Runs through: July 10
In a certain kind of musical, smiling lovers express their mutual affection by tap-dancing in Central Park on crisp spring days. In another kind, they stand frozen-faced on opposite sides of the stage and soliloquize in atonal recitative. And in yet another kind, they cling to one another in the darkness, swaying in sensual despair. Some musicals have gaudily dressed revelers bouncing in a gleeful conga, and others have black-clad wraiths striking sinuous poses. For some musicals, we are invited to become emotionally involved in the plot development, and for others, to observe it with ironic detachment.
Broadway veterans Susan Stroman, David Thompson and Harry Connick, Jr., have obviously seen all these kinds of musicals, but they never decided which they wanted theirs to be like. The results are a hodgepodge of contradictory narrative and orchestral styles: the story attempts to transpose Thérése Raquin—Emile Zola's 1873 shocker about a husband murdered by his unfaithful wife and her likewise obsessed paramour—to 1947 New Orleans, where the customers at Madame Raquin's jazz café swing-dance in the sultry climate, locating us immediately and indelibly. But then the score and text proceed to jerk us from one genre to another in a pastiche of melodic motifs recalling Tin Pan Alley, Bertolt Brecht, Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel and Roger Miller, so that by the time the drowned husband's ghost ( chortling like the emcee from Cabaret ) returns to exult over the survivors' remorse, we are too disoriented to care.
Flaws that would have been intolerable on a big stage can be muted to mere annoyance on a small one, however. Kevin Bellie's catalogue of choreographic tricks makes for dazzling dance numbers, from dream-ballets to quasi-Bob Fosse masques, featuring a refreshing variety of faces and physiques. The Circle Theatre auditorium's acoustics amplify Connick's exuberant deep-south ditties to excellent advantage, while softening his often lead-footed lyrics. And if Eric Lindahl, Jenni Sumerak and Marc Pera are straitjacketed by their characters' catawamptious progress, Anita Hoffman's vocal prowess—both singing and speaking—commands the stage in the role of the formidable Mme. Raquin.
Stay awake for the songs and dances. Sleep through the rest. Or wait for the all-music Revue.