Midtown Festival Showcases New Musicals

 

Anyone who cares about theater has probably at one point or the other—or many—over the last couple of decades bemoaned the state of the musical. This once-glorious American art form has been in critical condition for some time, and we need new musicals and musical-writing talent, stat! This year one of New York City's summer theater festivals is trying to do something about it. The Midtown InterNational Theatre Festival, in residence on West 36th Street from July 14 to August 3, is focusing on new musicals—the first time the festival has had a "theme."
 

 

The MITF was founded four years ago as a less "downtown" complement, in terms of both geography and the nature of its plays, to the Fringe Festival. It's using two stages in the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex for its 23 productions, with performances starting at 4 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. on weekends. New musicals hold court on the main stage (although they're only a portion of the works in the festival).

 

So, what possibilities are emerging for the musical theater fan? I've seen four of the new musicals at the Midtown Festival, and my foremost observation is that composers are finding inspiration in a variety of sources. One of the shows comes from a children's book, another is a traditional musical with some basis in history, one has a completely original (and futuristic) story, and the other is abstract and esoteric.
 

 

Of the MITF musicals I saw, I'd consider The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen the most commercially viable, and the most enjoyable. Based on a 1991 children's novel by acclaimed fantasy writer Lloyd Alexander, Prince Jen has music by Seth Weinstein and book and lyrics by Brian Vinero (the two previously collaborated on a musical version of Thackeray's Vanity Fair that's been workshopped around town). Prince Jen is a fictional young Chinese monarch who embarks on a journey of personal growth and enlightenment, making friends and enemies along the way—not unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, especially with the lesson learned at the end. The musical is performed at the festival as a concert staging, with scripts held and some props pantomimed but in full costume, including several beautiful robes. In the style of Chinese opera, the show employs masks for some roles, fans and parasols—and a narrator whose comments address the audience as well as frame the story (he requests cell-phone silence via a Confucius-like adage).

 

 

Prince Jen is at a disadvantage on MITF's small stage since the show needs space to depict the prince's wanderings and to give the attractive costumes and props their due attention. But it's buoyed by the immensely affable cast, particularly Arthur Delos Santos as the prince's goofy wiseacre friend and Timothy Huang as an erstwhile bandit. The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen needs to be shortened, but it's full of color and magic…and it scores one for cultural diversity on stage. Disney came to mind as a potential producer, given its penchant for elaborately detailed productions and tales of youngsters asserting their individuality.
 

 

At the other end of the "commercially viable" spectrum I'd put Waiting for the Glaciers to Melt, a four-person musical by Brian Lane Green, 1989 Tony nominee for Leading Actor in a Musical (Starmites). If you've seen a lot of off-off-Broadway theater, well, it's basically like that with music. That is, a gay-themed biographical odyssey with quasi-metaphysical musings…I think…it got a bit abstruse at times (great title, though).

 

Two stories play out in Glaciers, that of Garrett's psychological crisis following his lover's death and that of Simon, a young man literally paralyzed by guilt over a childhood trauma. I'll just go with the producers' description of them as "different personas of one man's tortured psyche" and a sign that Garrett's either "delusional or on a path toward peace," because I didn't find the narrative gripping enough to glean such meaning from it. As for the score, melodic highlights like "I Know" demonstrate Green's talent as a songwriter, though he's included too many numbers that sound like dialogue that is sung but then trails off back to speech.

 

In contrast to Glaciers, The Winner: A Brooklyn Fable—another new musical in the Midtown Festival—is old-fashioned musical theater. The songs by schoolteacher/musician Stanley Glick are quite pleasant too, even if some border on generic. The Winner takes place in 1957, the Dodgers' final year in Brooklyn, and centers on an Italian-American barber's efforts to keep his beloved team and his upwardly mobile daughter from leaving town.
 

 

The play is performed at the MITF in staged-reading format: no scenery, all actors seated on stage, scripts in hand while performing. Someone should announce the setting for each scene, as it changes from home to barbershop to train station and so forth, not always clearly. But a bigger problem with The Winner is the book (cowritten by Ines Basso Glick and Annmarie Fabricatore). Apparent plot points—such as a girl's crush on her best friend's suitor, and one man's socialist proclamations—are abandoned after early scenes; without further development, they're at best unnecessary and at worst perplexing. Characters' fervent disagreements get resolved through a single conversation or song. The feelings and motivations underlying the generation-gap subplot could be better fleshed out. And just how crucial the protagonist's winning the Irish Sweepstakes is to his campaign to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn is fuzzy: He uses his $140,000 prize to bankroll the protest, but it's not specified what he spends the money on—and in reality, fans fought the move without special "funding."
 

 

Peppered with ethnic flavor, neighborhood nostalgia and youthful romance, The Winner does have charms that are inhibited by the cramped staging at the festival. But here is one concern about this show: It would appeal most to Brooklyn Dodger fans, but even those who were kids when the Bums abandoned Flatbush are now in their fifties, so this isn't exactly creating a musical theater audience for tomorrow.
 

 

 

The Overdevelopment of Scott, on the other hand, is a forward-looking musical. To begin with, it's set in the year 2103. And you're not likely to have seen an ensemble like this before: The characters are human lab rats. Each "rat" has been raised in constant exposure to a pernicious element, such as smoking, overeating, casual sex, violent TV—all of which happen to be common human foibles. The play has potential for either satire on our bad habits or just broad comedy about them, but it virtually ignores the former option and uses the latter only sporadically. Instead, too much of the play—especially early on—is devoted to the unrequited love story between lab technicians. Scott takes a while to get going, and in the end it doesn't really say anything about self-destructive behavior or the arrogance of science or any other possible theme.
 

 

The Overdevelopment of Scott was created by Sharon Fogarty, who runs a performance company dedicated to what she calls "anti-musicals." But a song about hating Broadway musicals is the extent of Scott's assault on the genre, and the show comes off more like a "half musical" than an anti, since there are long gaps between songs after the lively opening number. As a "new generation" musical, The Overdevelopment of Scott vaguely recalls Urinetown in its unsavory subject matter and mockery of traditional musicals, but it needs to shore up the storylines for those rats. The excellent cast deserves it, too, as they nimbly capture mannerisms and tics to match their characters' addictions.
 

 

Other musicals in the Midtown InterNational Theatre Festival include Thrill Me, based on the Leopold and Loeb case and directed by Annie lyricist Martin Charnin, and The Colonel's Wife, an Argentinean-tinged cinematic piece by Nine adapter Mario Fratti. There's also a slate of comedies, dramas and solo shows. For more information, go to www.midtownfestival.org.

 

Photos: The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen, top; The Overdevelopment of Scott, bottom.