Review - A Catered Affair: Very Inviting

Every so often a musical comes to town that we're told, "Breaks all the rules!," and "Changes Broadway Forever!" That's nice. Usually this has something to do with having rock music, weak story-telling and an advertising campaign that convinces you that it's like nothing else Broadway has ever seen.

A Catered Affair will most likely not change Broadway forever - heck, not even Show Boat did that - but bookwriter Harvey Fierstein and composer/lyricist John Bucchino have broken a major rule here with positively gorgeous results. While most musicals play on an elevated reality that makes the story sing, the realistic tone of A Catered Affair demands that the music speak. Director John Doyle's quiet and underplayed production contains the kind of naturalistic acting rarely seen in musical theatre, made possible by a delicate score, elegantly orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick, which seamlessly weaves sung lyric in and out of spoken dialogue. It's ambitious, daring and completely captivating from start to finish.

While the authors take a few liberties with Gore Vidal's screenplay for the 1956 motion picture The catered Affair (based on an earlier teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky) the setting remains the 1950's Bronx tenement apartment of Aggie and Tom (Faith Prince and Tom Wopat), who were rushed into marriage twenty years ago when their son Terrence was conceived. As the story begins the financially struggling couple is expecting a large government check after their boy was killed in Korea. Cab driver Tom wants to use the money to take advantage of an opportunity to buy a taxi medallion, but when daughter Janey (Leslie Kritzer) announces that she's going to quickly marry her boyfriend Ralph (Matt Cavenaugh) because a friend needs someone to drive her car out to California and the couple can work it into a cheap honeymoon, Aggie insists on changing all plans and using the money to give her the lavish wedding day she never had and Janey doesn't want.

Overseeing, advising and generally sticking his nose where it doesn't belong is Harvey Fierstein as Aggie's brother, Winston, the type of fellow they used to call a "confirmed bachelor," who lives with the three, sleeping on the couch. Though his large role is only peripheral to the plot, the character's (and the actor's) charm and optimism provide necessary wisps of lightness to the generally somber proceedings.

Bucchino's music is more about emotion than melody. Writing for characters who repress their feelings and, especially evident in Doyle's staging, do not communicate well with each other, his light chamber sound underscores dialogue until characters start singing on the same understated level of realism as they speak. There are few applause breaks in the intermission-less 90 minutes and most of the songs (with the composer's conversational lyrics perfectly matching the bookwriter's urban non-poetry) fluidly alternate singing with speaking. Even when Tom lets his bottled-up anger loose with "I Stayed," a wounded man's reminder to his wife that he has always been there for his family, the devastating finish comes with a spoken line, and quite a perfect one at that.

Wopat is just superb in the role, his gruff, disinterested demeanor hiding a nearly-beaten man whose personal tragedy has brought him to The Edge of modest success, only to risk losing it by succumbing to his wife's desires. Prince, as the woman living out her fairy tale dream through her daughter, has never been so subtle and so fragile. Some of the season's best acting comes in a scene where she explains the unromantic details of her own wedding and then, left alone, sings of the wedding she envisions. Kritzer is just wonderful, playing the daughter with a hard, sensible exterior that gradually peels away once she gets caught up in the excitement, exposing her to the hurt that comes when plans go awry. (In one telling scene her best friend says she can't be matron of honor, or even attend at all, because she and her husband don't have the money for a dress and a suit.)

Matt Cavenaugh provides a sturdy presence in his less developed role as the groom and the trio of Lori Wilner, HEATHER MAC RAE and Kristine Zbornik add touches of light humor in various roles, most prominently as gossipy neighbors watching life through their apartment windows.

Set designer David Gallo's Bronx streetscape, Zachary Borovay's photo projections, Brian MacDevitt's shaded lighting and Ann Hould-Ward's costumes all provide realistic, appropriately unromanticized visuals.

While nobody would mistake A Catered Affair for the feel-good musical of 2008, you might just leave the Walter Kerr feeling good about the future of intelligent, adventurous musical theatre. I found it exhilarating.