Hey, Look Me Over!
Conceived by Jack Viertel; directed by Marc Bruni
Performances February 7-11, 2018
New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, New York, NY
nycitycenter.org
Vanessa Williams (center) in Hey, Look Me Over! (photo: Joan Marcus) |
City
Center’s Encores has as its mission to resurrect obscure or unjustly forgotten
musicals for a week’s worth of semi-staged performances. And for the first show
of its 25th anniversary season, we got something called Hey, Look Me Over!, a look at shows
that even Encores has passed over for whatever reason—it’s 2-1/2 hours of
excerpts from nine musicals that opened on Broadway between 1957 and 1974, but have
been (mostly) unheard of since their short runs.
The show’s
conceit is that Bob Martin—of Drowsy
Chaperone fame—comes onstage as our MC of sorts, introducing the
performances and giving us some context, along with some hoary (and a couple of
amusing) theater and political jokes. But despite the creakiness of the
concept, there is the music and the performances, which is why we are all in the
theater in the first place.
To be
sure, a lot of what is excerpted for Hey,
Look Me Over! is not top-drawer—it’s easy to hear why Cy Coleman’s Wildcat (which includes the evening’s
title tune) or Charles Strouse’s All-American
have remained obscure—but even when the material isn’t top-notch, the performers
are. Take Vanessa Williams, who dazzles in two numbers from Jamaica, a show with music by Harold
Arden that was a vehicle for Lena Horne. Or Bebe Neuwirth, who snarls spectacularly
as the jaded cruise hostess Mimi in Noel Coward’s witty Sail Away, which was written for Elaine Stritch (whom I saw in a 1999
Carnegie Hall concert version).
Clifton
Duncan kills it in “Never Will I Marry” from Frank Loesser’s Greenwillow, Judy Kuhn and Marc Kudisch sing
an appealing “Shalom” from Jerry Herman’s Milk
and Honey, and Alexandra Socha takes center stage for a thrilling “Look
What Happened to Mabel” from Herman’s Mack
and Mabel, a flawed but lively musical I saw at Canada’s Shaw Festival in 2007
and which definitely deserves a second life somewhere on a New York stage.
Although
the finale—“Give My Regards to Broadway” from George M., with sensational tap-dancing and a surprise guest—is anti-climactic, Hey, Look Me Over! remains a delightful evening of sheer
entertainment, skillfully directed by Marc Bruni, choreographed by Denis Jones
and conducted by Rob Berman, whose Encores Orchestra is, as always, the evening’s
true highlight.
Hey, Look Me Over!
New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, New York, NY
nycitycenter.org
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