BWW Reviews: Tex Avery-Inspired ON THE TOWN Really Cooks

The inspiration for the original 1944 Broadway production of On The Town goes back to cartoon images in an art gallery; Paul Cadmus' controversial painting, "The Fleet's In!" The kinetically dazzling and raucously animated new Broadway revival gets its inspiration from the cartoon images of Tex Avery, whose fast, furious and wise-cracking way with animation proved that cartoons weren't just kid stuff.

A breathtaking debut for four of Broadway's best, On The Town represented a combustible mixture of American art forms growing further and further from their European roots. Betty Comden and Adolph Green's book and lyrics sprang from the irreverent style they developed writing sketch comedy and satirical songs for their downtown nightclub troupe, The Revuers. Leonard Bernstein's jaunty symphonic jazz score must have irked the scalps of long-hairs who were grumbling against jazz's acceptance into the classical repertory. The story was a more innocent variation of Fancy Free, a Bernstein-composed ballet where Jerome Robbins twisted a traditional dance form by placing it in a contemporary story of three sailors in a New York bar trying to pick up women. (It was Robbins who saw the Cadmus painting and noticed how nicely navy uniforms complimented the male physique.)

Wartime audiences understood that On The Town's trio of sailors had no idea if they were going to survive the war and that their 24 hours of freedom that sets the musical in motion represented an attempt to squeeze a lifetime of fun into one day. And if the women they meet are maybe more willing to show them a good time than a good girl ought to be, well, it's all in the name of doing something for the boys.

In the new transfer from Pittsfield's Barrington Stage Company, director John Rando (his best work since Urinetown) and designers Beowulf Boritt (sets and projections), Jess Goldstein (costumes) and Jason Lyons (lights) have turned the classic musical into a 1940's Warner Brothers style live-action animated feast, featuring a metropolis rendered in inky dark blue hues accented with blasts of bright colors.

The frantic pace of the city is recreated with projections that whisk by, highlighted by a hilariously staged bumpy taxi ride. But the projections never overwhelm the actors, who, in varying degrees, play familiar cartoon images of the time. (But rest assured that nobody's eyes pop out of their sockets when seeing a pretty girl and nobody momentarily defies the laws of gravity after running off a cliff.)

But when the musical slows down for moments of sincerity, such as the heart-tugging ballads "Lonely Town" and "Some Other Time" and choreographer Joshua Bergasse's gorgeously moody interpretive ballets, On The Town smoothly glides into realistic adult emotions involving longings and regrets. (Bergasse also does some very clever work in the musical's comical dance moments.)

The sturdy center of the twister is tough-guy song and dance man Tony Yazbeck as Gabey, the love-struck gob longing for the elusive "Miss Turnstiles," this month's "average girl" whose pic graces a subway poster. Yazbeck's singing voice and muscular way with dance bring great sincerity and suppressed passion into the role. Perky Megan Fairchild plays the woman he longs for, Ivy, both as a real person and as his fantasy of her. In what's primarily a dance role, Fairchild matches chipper charm with some strikingly athletic prowess and ethereal physicality.

As Gabey's two buddies who try and help him find Ivy, but get sidetracked when they meet dates of their own, Jay Armstrong Johnson as the nerdy Chip and Clyde Alves as self-styled ladies' man Ozzie are fine singing and dancing comics, but the juicier roles go to the women they meet. Elizabeth Stanley is a hoot as the man-hungry anthropologist, Claire de Loon, and Alysha Umphress is a sexy charmer as taxi driver Hildy, belting out a storm with the swing standard, "I Can Cook, Too."

With a Carol Burnett wig and comic chops to match, Jackie Hoffman gives her most hilarious Broadway performance as binge-drinking voice teacher (practically an audition for anyone smart enough to cast her as Annie's Miss Hannigan), a morbidly bluesy nightclub singer and a manic Latin songstress. Seasoned Golden Age Broadway comedy done right.

Also lending fine and funny turns are Michael Rupert as the cuckolded judge, Allison Guinn as Hildy's flu-ridden roommate, the powerfully-voiced Phillip Boykin who thrillingly (and comically) opens the show with a bellowing dirge about the desire to sleep late, and Stephen DeRosa, a very talented but perpetually underused Broadway performer who plays an assortment of New Yorkers.

Robert Cary and Jonathan Tolins are credited with writing additional material; unnecessary, but pretty much in the Comden and Green style. Also, this may be the first major production of the show that makes it clear that two of the couples had sex shortly after meeting.

Oddly, the orchestrations go uncredited, but music director James Moore's 28-piece orchestra, seated appropriately in a traditional pit, sounds quite glorious.

On The Town may be seventy years old, but few musicals retain their innovative youthful spirit so well.

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