Review: Encores! Off-Center's GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER Stresses The Importance of Being Earnest

The team of composer Alan Menken and bookwriter/lyricist/director Howard Ashman will forever be known for their second musical, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, which ran for over five years Off-Broadway, was adapted into a beloved film and became a mainstay of high school and regional theatres before hitting Broadway in 2003.

But while their first musical, GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER, a 1979 Off-Broadway offering based on Kurt Vonnegut's 1965 novel, wasn't anywhere near as popular, it was one of those quirky, adventurous pieces that hinted at greater success to come. Two of those greater successes were the film scores of "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty And The Beast."

Sadly, Ashman's career was cut short by AIDS at age 41, while the pair were in the middle of creating the score for "Aladdin," and GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER, getting a terrific concert mounting via City Center Encores! Off-Center this week, remains their only collaboration aimed strictly at adults.

Soaked in earnestness and a James Thurber-like softly satirical tone, ROSEWATER treads on the old theme that anyone who acts selflessly for the greater good must be crazy. The title character, Eliot Rosewater, is a sweet and lovably awkward chap who, by birthright, is president of the Rosewater foundation and heir to an $87 million dollar estate. (In 1979, that was a lot of money.)

After being declared "untreatable" by his psychiatrist, and an incident at the Metropolitan Opera House where he yells at Aida and Radames to stop singing in order to preserve oxygen while sealed in a tomb, Eliot suddenly runs away from New York and settles in the family mansion in financially barren Rosewater County, Indiana, a place where, as he sings, "The railroad hasn't run through here for ages, / And the factories are automated, too, / So the pretty people leave this town at twenty, / As does anyone with much of an I.Q."

As Eliot, the versatile and detailed Santino Fontana, already established as one of Broadway's fine rising stars, follows-up his excellent performance as John Adams in the Encores! concert staging of 1776 with another exceptional turn as an everyman exuding an empathetic, neurotic edge.

Much to the consternation of his senator father (Clark Johnson) and his wife (Brynn O'Malley), a socialite with a habit of donating money to questionably good causes, Eliot makes it his mission to revitalize Rosewater County by setting up a suicide hotline and writing out checks to anyone in need.

Since such generosity surely cannot be the act of a reasonable person, a crafty lawyer (an insanely funny cartoon performance by Skylar Astin), tries having him declared mentally unfit to run the company so that he can earn a sizable fee by having the estate transferred to a distant cousin and his wife. Kevin Del Aguila and Kate Wetherhead are great fun as the hapless couple lamenting their lot in life with "The Rhode Island Tango."

James Earl Jones makes a brief appearance as eccentric science fiction novelist, Kilgore Trout, whose work Eliot is obsessed with. He's also heard as a "voice not unlike God's" introducing the two acts.

The swift and solid production is directed by Michael Mayer and choreographed by Lorin Latarro, with music director Chris Fenwick leading the 14-piece ensemble playing Danny Troob's orchestrations.

Two acts may be a bit much for GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER, as there doesn't seem to be enough story to keep the evening from seeming a bit padded, but Ashman's irreverent intelligence and Menken's attractive mix of musical styles - dominated by Americana-style folk and blues - makes this an excellent example of a lost musical that any fan of the genre needs to get to know.

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