(Im)perfectly Frank: ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ thru Blank Theatre Company / ‘Catch Me If You Can’ thru Surging Films and Theatricals
Christopher Johnson, Brittney Brown, and Dustin Rothbart. Photo by Eli Van Sickel/Cap Images.
Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s cult musical Merrily We Roll Along is one I admire more than adore, and it takes a lot for a production to nudge itself into the “yea” column. (Blank’s is a “yea”, but I’m building up to that.)
In the piece’s favor, it’s a piercingly trenchant dissection of friendship, particularly as to whether they’re doomed to entropy from the get-go or if they take some spectacular doing to break. (Or, to quote Glen Berger, “As soon as a relationship is built, we carry around the codes to atomize it.”) In this way, its reverse-chronological structure—which means we begin with adulthood acrimony and peel back to youthful optimism—is a plus.
Concerning a trio of friends—composer Franklin Shepard (Christopher Johnson); playwright Charley Kringas (Dustin Rothbart); and novelist Mary Flynn (Brittney Brown)—the musical follows them all the way from Fifties shoestring Greenwich Village revues to Eighties poolside Hollywood while their artistic integrities shift and bump up against each other like tectonic plates. Spoilers (or maybe not, given that reverse order): Frank sells out, giving up music for producing box office-banking movies; Charley sticks to his principles, but not without blowing down their friendship in a helluva huff ‘n’ puff; and Mary just plain gives up, drowning her ambitions (and her torch for Frank) in neat gin.
I think its showbiz milieu is what holds it back. For one, at commercial theatre prices, the stakes are seldom lower than “artistic integrity.” For another, Merrily is one of those works that takes it for granted that Hollywood is synonymous with vapidity while Broadway is an inherently virtuous realm, a lowly yet insidious cliché. For yet another, it’s taken on faith that the sundering of Frank and Charley’s songwriting partnership was a regretful loss, though we only get fleeting glimpses of the Shepard-Kringas duo in action. One song, really—Sondheim ingeniously stretches one tune of theirs across thirty years and different styles. Mary for her part doesn’t even get that consideration; the novelist’s life doesn’t lend itself as easily to song.
What Merrily needs, then, is a whiz-bang trio that can bring a whole lotta lived-in chemistry, all the fire and bite of the martini that Furth’s book serves. Rothbart, a Blank company member, makes for a solid Charley, a man whose shlubbiness belies the fire in his gut. Blank was also lucky to secure Johnson and Brown. The former exudes “doer,” a man who will say “yes” and get things done even when self-doubt and common sense say “no”. The latter, meanwhile, makes a feast of what is arguably the most “female lead” of all Sondheim’s female leads and gets to kick off the show with sloshed bravado. All sing like champs, and all shed their jadedness to bittersweet effect by “Our Time,” the irony-steeped finale.
Directed simply in a minimalist, John Doyle-ish vein by Danny Kapinos, Blank’s Merrily is solid proof that this musical’s troublesome past is only opening a door to a brighter future.
Merrily We Roll Along runs through July 23rd at the Reginald Vaugh Theatre, 1106 W. Thorndale Ave. For tickets or more information, please visit blanktheatrecompany.org.
UPDATE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining performances will be held at City Lit Theatre, 1020 W Bryn Mawr Ave.
The Company. Photo by Pat Rigg.
In the interests of disclosure, Ian Rigg, who plays a supporting role in Catch Me If You Can, is a former contributor to this site.
Since the publication of his memoir Catch Me If You Can, journalists and biographers have called out Frank Abagnale Jr.’s streak of jet-set con artistry as a lie in nearly every particular. Alas, those journalists and biographers weren’t quick enough to get in front of the Steven Spielberg movie the memoir inspired, nor the Broadway musical that took several cues from that film. Frank: 1; the facts: 0.
As ever since the days of old Methuselah, folks just love a good bamboozle-ah. If the bamboozler can get one over on the ever-so-deserving, and perhaps spin a sympathetic story, our consciences can also be assuaged.
The thing is, even a good bamboozle, like a good musical, needs rules to rope in its audience. Catch Me If You Can doesn’t stick to its own rules.
Bookwriter Terrence McNally (with uncredited assistance from Brian Yorkey) had a solid-enough notion: At the end of the line, surrounded by FBI agents, and with nowhere else to turn, Frank Junior pleads his case in the form of a Sixties TV variety show, with solid Cahn/Van Heusen pastiches (for which composer/lyricists Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman are more than qualified), comedy stooges, and leggy chorines galore.
However, this slick presentation of Frank the antihero begins to clash with naturalistic scenes of Frank the lovable rogue, and neither approach wholly gains purchase. Frank is no J. Pierrepoint Finch—a stinker who happens to be surrounded by worse people—and he certainly isn’t a Robin Hood—the banks from which Frank steals some two million dollars are well-insured faceless entities.
To his credit, in his program note, Billy Surges, the director of the production now playing at the Edge Theater, fully acknowledges the dilemma that is mounting a musical that is in effect a gloss on a gloss on a gloss. (And he casts well: Casey Huls as Frank Junior is a stinker, but damn, he puts on a show.) And, to the degree to which the material allows, he and his company lean into it in their own way: what precisely is real or fake? Closely watch the ensemble in any given group number for some clues in how they react. Surging Productions’ gift thus far in the shows I’ve seen from them has been lively and freely given ensemble energy, something that you might kill to see from more established companies with more resources.
Surges also ably co-stars as Hanratty, the FBI agent tracking Frank who then becomes an off-brand father figure—the square who cares, if you will. Also a far better father figure than the genuine article, Frank Senior (Ian Rigg), Junior’s guru in the art of smooth operation. If there was any cue to take from Spielberg’s film, it was the fathers-and-sons angle, and Huls and Rigg make a fine duo, at least until the latter’s demons seep through the cracks.
“Fathers and sons,” I say pointedly—Catch Me If You Can is resolutely a show for its men. Its kickline of Pan Am stewardesses is unapologetically straight out of any mid-Sixties “tired businessman” show. (This is a reflection of material, not performance—it’s a fine kickline Surging has.) And as Brenda Strong, a late-appearing love interest-slash-obstacle for Frank, Amanda Donohoe is effectively the lucky woman plucked from the chorus. She gets the socko sob song “Fly, Fly Away,” and Lord knows she risked doing structural damage to the Edge while singing it, but hers is a character that’s a tad too late to the hullabaloo to register.
It’s all unapologetically retro, and it flies—it certainly gets off the tarmac. But even if they couldn’t outpace the fiction entirely, those old Pan Am planes could certainly outpace this musical, even if the latter is in Surging’s capable hands.
Catch Me If You Can runs through July 23rd at the Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway. For tickets or more information, please visit surgingtheatrics.com.
For more reviews on these or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.