Review - Our Town & Fade Out-Fade In

"Exciting" is not a word normally associated with productions of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Heartwarming? Sure. Chilling? When its climax is done well, certainly. But director David Cromer's non-traditional take on the play - which remains completely faithful to the author's text and themes - is one of the most exciting theatre events of the season.

Wilder's gently experimental 1938 classic, where issues of love, marriage, community and our purpose in the universal scheme of things are presented through the everyday life occurrences in the unremarkable town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire is perhaps the most familiar of all American dramas, being studied in public schools and performed by student and community theatres for decades. And while the countless number of times this play has been produced makes it impossible to guess if Cromer's vision is a completely untried idea, I think it's safe to say you're not likely to run into another Our Town that so vividly connects contemporary audiences with material from over seventy years ago.

And as the author makes clear in the script, this Our Town uses the traditional setting of a bare stage with nondescript tables and chairs serving as scenery. (It may seem like scenic designer Michele Spadaro hasn't much to do, but trust me, she earns her paycheck with this one.) The actors, as usual, mime their props while going about their daily routines of housework, homework and playtime. But while Cromer's production still takes place in the early years of the 20th Century, the director utilizes simple, but clever ideas to make a modern Manhattan audience feel a part of this sleepy little rural community. Customers at the reconfigured Barrow Street Theatre are seated on three sides of the small playing space, with wide room between the first and second rows where scenes are also played out. Costume designer Alison Siple dresses the company in contemporary clothing, though avoiding anything that may be distractingly modern, blending the appearance of those on stage with those watching. Lighting designer Heather Gilbert even keeps the house lights on for the first two acts.

The evening often feels more like a town hall meeting than a night at the theatre, emphasized by the decidedly non-actory performance of Cromer, who plays the narrating character Wilder calls the Stage Manager. He sets the scenes and comments on the action with the terse, emotionless delivery of an actual theatre stage manager simply laying out the facts for you. The early scenes echo his emotional distance as we witness the daily morning clockwork in the homes of newspaper editor Charles Webb (Ken Marks) and his neighbor, Dr. Frank Gibbs (Jeff Still). Their wives, Julia Gibbs (Lori Myers) and Myrtle Webb (Kati Brazda), are machinelike in their routines of waking up the children, preparing breakfast and tending to their husbands; both of whom seem significantly older. In a town where "women vote indirect," nearly everyone is a member of the same religion and political party and 90% of the high school graduates stay put to live out their lives, Myers and Brazda nicely communicate the frustration their characters must feel with the sameness of their lives. Myers' Mrs. Gibbs seems especially acerbic toward her husband, a man who ignores her dream to visit Paris in favor of yearly vacations to the famous battle fields of the Civil War.

That same sense of dissatisfaction is evident in young Emily Webb, played with aggressive no-nonsense authority by Jennifer Grace. Despite being the smartest student in school, her Emily no doubt sees little future for herself beyond being someone's wife, so when neighbor George (played with thick-headed shyness by James McMenamin) reveals that he's set to inherit a farm after graduating high school she gradually softens her approach to this nice, but intellectually inferior guy who can bring her financial security.

All of this may seem a bit cold by description, but Cromer's interpretation perfectly leads to Wilder's third act warning to truly value the simple everyday things in our lives. And while it's perfectly acceptable to remind readers that this act has the now deceased Emily, who died in childbirth, accepting a chance to visit one day in her past, you'll have to experience for yourself the surprising and oh, so perfect way the director utilizes at least four, if not all five, of the audience's senses to pack an extra wallop into the play's climatic scene.

With Donna Jay Fulk's chirpy Mrs. Soames, Jonathan Mastro's acidic Simon Stimson and Wilbur Edwin Henry's amusingly dry Professor Willard among an outstanding ensemble, this Our Town is mixes great character-driven humor, decent heart-tugging sentiment and stunning theatricality into a production that is truly - gotta say it again - an exciting event.

Photos by Carol Rosegg: Top: David Cromer; Bottom: (in chairs atop tables) Jennifer Grace and James McMenamin

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For a show that's now considered a Broadway flop, Fade Out-Fade In got some pretty serious raves from the critics when it opened at the Hellinger in 1964. For many weeks tickets were scarce for the Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical spoof of 1930s Hollywood and it could be argued that its star, Carol Burnett, gave the best reviewed musical theatre performance in a season that boasted Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl and Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! The original Broadway cast recording (featuring co-stars Jack Cassidy, Lou Jacobi, Tiger Haynes Dick Patterson and Tina Louise) reveals a bright, peppy score filled with sock-o musical comedy numbers.

So what went wrong? In short, everything. The intended 1963 opening was delayed when Burnett got pregnant, sending Styne off to work on bringing Funny Girl to Broadway before the show's rescheduled 1964 opening. However, production delays and the need for out-of-town revisions pushed the Streisand vehicle's opening to just two months before Burnett's show, leaving little time for the composer to work on improving some of the score's less-effective material. While the reviews were great, it's been said that Burnett wasn't completely happy with the score, especially when compared with Funny Girl, and when the star began missing performances because of a neck injury suffered when a cab she was riding in stopped short, audiences weren't completely happy when offered a chance to see understudy Mitzi Welch. When Burnett's doctor insisted she would need an extended leave from the show in order to heal properly, the producers rushed Betty Hutton into the star's role. Ill-prepared and too old to be playing a fresh-faced kid who gets a crack at Hollywood fame, Hutton lasted only a week before the producers decided to temporarily close the show until their star could return. But when Burnett started making weekly television appearances as co-star of The Entertainers (produced by her husband) it took legal action to get her back on Broadway. After a 3-month hiatus and little money left for advertising, Fade Out-Fade In struggled on for two months before closing for good.

The funny thing, however, is that during that three month period the authors made cuts and revisions that made Fade Out-Fade In a better musical during its final months than it was during the sold-out beginning of its run. And as presented by The Opening Doors Theatre Company - those greasepaint-in-their-veins kids who have quickly established themselves as a valuable part of New York's musical theatre scene by mounting clever and energetic and pocket-sized productions of rarely seen shows like Bring Back Birdie and The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public - Fade Out-Fade In is a funny and delightful charmer that bubbles over with that Comden and Green sense of fun and the Broadway pizzazz of Jule Style. Fans of the show will notice that Opening Doors uses the newer version of the script, which omits the belty blues number "Go Home Train," but the opening "Oh, Those Thirties" has been retained, though now it's used as an ensemble number. The only other major change is that the dream ballet, which combines Freudian psychology with frolicking wood nymphs and fairies - and would never fit on the tiny stage of The Duplex - has been understandably cut.

Instead of casting an out-and-out comedienne for the lead role of Hope Springfield, the young usherette who, by way of a wacky mix-up, is flown to Tinseltown as the personal "discovery" of movie mogul Lionel Z. Governor, director Suzanne Adams has opted for Sarah Lilley, a spunky ingénue type with a silly side. Since the performance I attended was her first in front of an audience, I imagine the silly side will get a bit sillier as Lilley grows into the role, but on opening night her Hope was still a loveably awkward, starry eyed kid who can deliver energetic tunes like "It's Good To Be Back Home" (a terrific charm song about America's familiarity with Hollywood through movies and fan magazines) and the mock-seduction, "Call Me Savage," with a startlingly strong mezzo belt.

As self-centered matinee idol Byron Prong, Rob Ventre hilariously oozes cheap charisma and puts his rich baritone to good use in the comic gem, "My Fortune Is My Face." Warren Freeman sings and acts with geeky appeal as the film exec who falls for Hope's wholesome attractiveness and Hector Coris is a blustery hoot as the bombastic producer who fears that one of his executives (all of whom are his nephews) is out to take over his studio.

Lawrence Street nails Comden and Green's most critically satirical scene, playing a role based on film actor Lincoln Perry (a/k/a Stepin Fetchet), a professional, well-spoken black man who was regulated to playing comic stereotypes of his race. Later on he and Lilley provide the evening's song and dance showstopper, spoofing Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the mock-optimistic "You Mustn't Be Discouraged," which reminds us that whenever you think you've hit the bottom, "there's always one step further down you can go."

There are fun performances all throughout the cast, including Sarah Cooney as a painfully droll gossip columnist, Jean McCormick as a sex-obsessed Viennese psychiatrist, Lexi Windsor as an air-headed sexpot starlet-to-be, Brian DeCaluwe as a smarmy executive and Patrick John Moran as his spineless colleague.

Choreographer Christine Schwalenberg has little room to work with, but she and director Adams keep the funny visuals coming at a bright and peppy pace. Fade Out-Fade In is one of those shows that musical theatre geeks just love. And if you're not one already, the enthusiastic joy that propels the Opening Doors production just might make a musical theatre geek out of you.