Review - Rooms: a rock romance & Guys and Dolls: a musical fable of Broadway

He's Led Zeppelin and she's Carly Simon.

He's rock and roll and she's bagels and lox.

The opposites attracting plot is probably as old as romantic comedy itself, but even if Rooms: a rock romance follows familiar paths, the Paul Scott Goodman (book/music/lyrics) and Miriam Gordon (book) two-person musical is such a buoyant, funny and upbeat affair that the clichés of the story are conquered by the cleverness and exuberance with which the story is told. Under Scott Schwartz's swift and breezy direction, the 90-minute one-act scoots the audience along on an immensely enjoyable ride.

Beginning in Glasgow, 1977, the show traces the professional, then romantic, partnership between sullen recluse composer Ian (Doug Kreeger), who has no direction in his young life, and ambitious lyricist Monica (Leslie Kritzer), who is determined to do whatever it takes to be a star in the music business. Meeting cute in this case means that Monica quickly needs a composer to set a lyric she wrote to music for an upcoming bat mitzvah gig. (Her only other option is a guy heavily into Jethro Tull, so all his music has to have flute parts.) Naturally, their differences create friction at first (she's an upper middle class Jewish princess and he's a gritty Catholic rocker from the poorer part of town) but they manage to bond over the bombing of their first collaboration; a very funny ditty called "Scottish Jewish Princess" that reveals more about the personal life of the 13-year-old guest of honor than her family would have liked to hear.

Goodman's score, which mixes conversational sections with pull-out songs, sets a musical difference between the two by having Ian express himself in a sound resembling acoustic, protest folk while Monica's influence is the strong-woman pop sound of the late 70s. But as they feel an attraction for each other Ian's sound becomes catchier, with more hooks, while Monica starts revealing harder edges. Another fun feature of the score is how Goodman has the characters occasionally quote popular song lyrics as part of their normal conversation, illuminating how the songs that touch you become a natural part of your language. It subtly adds texture to the two when Monica mentions riding in a "Big Yellow Taxi" and Ian quotes "Within You Without You" when confronting her about their relationship, but we can use some further explanation as to how Ian came up with "Every Day A Little Death."

When the New Wave hits Britain, the persuasive Monica ("She could sell condoms to the pope.") convinces Ian to go with her to London, where they reinvent themselves as punk rockers and start climbing the charts. ("Lick my bum, we're number one!") But Ian's fear of leaving the safety of his room drives him to alcoholism just as the duo has a chance to make it big in New York. (Monica, by the way, is bulimic, but her vomiting is never a plot point. It's referred to as more of a controllable diet plan than an addiction.)

It's been 8 years since New Yorkers first heard that some unknown kid was giving a sensational turn starring in Paper Mill's production of Funny Girl. Now finally, after getting mere tastes of her abilities from featured roles on and off Broadway, Manhattan has a vehicle that displays Leslie Kritzer's substantial musical comedy talents in full force. One moment her crisp clarion vocals are filling the house with thrilling power and imaginative lyric phrasing, and the next she's tearing your heart out with the quiet sincerity with which she keeps her chin up as her character's dreams dissolve. Her comic sense is downright diabolical; capable of inducing roars of laugher with the slightest vocal infection, an unexpected physical reaction or just the wild abandon with which she models the overtly trendy getups costume designer Alejo Vietti concocts. The night I attended she brought down the house with one perfectly timed spit.

But though co-star Doug Kreeger has the less-flashy role, he is still the sturdy anchor of the evening, capable of making Ian a sympathetic character through his dark deadpan humor even as his irresponsibility destroys his lover's dreams. Their chemistry together is solid, particularly as they spoof angry punkers via Goodman's satirical licks and Matt Williams' outlandish choreography.

Adam Koch's set is a wooden floor that might resemble a club stage before the beer and vomit stains have set in. There are two chairs, but the most prominent set piece is a doorway on wheels which Schwartz effectively uses to keep scenes in motion. Herrick Goldman supplies the space defining lighting and the 5-piece band stationed upstage is led by Matt Hinkley.

It's getting late in the game, but I believe we have a new contender for the best new musical of the season.

Photos of Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger by Carol Rosegg

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Back in ought-two, as you may recall, director Trevor Nunn brought his Royal National Theatre production of Oklahoma! 'cross the Atlantic to Broadway, assuring us Yanks that this innovative new mounting wouldn't be the same old Broadway classic we were used to. Instead it would be closer in spirit to the musical's source, the Lynn Riggs play, Green Grow The Lilacs. And while his intimate, rewritten, naturalistic mounting looked great though the probing eye of a television camera when it was video-recorded, on stage his forth-wall vision was continually at odds with the large, robust spirit of the book and score written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Oklahoma! is simply not Green Grow The Lilacs.

Now we have Des McAnuff's attempt to put some unnecessarily new life into Guys and Dolls, frequently regarded by connoisseurs as a perfectly written and composed musical comedy, by going back to its source, the short stories of Damon Runyon. Though the director assures the Broadway community that his new concept comes with the blessing of Jo Sullivan, the widow of the Frank Loesser - who wrote what is arguably the greatest musical comedy score ever to hit town - I've heard no mention of approval from descendents of the show's bookwriter, Abe Burrows, whose exceptional work bears the brunt of the new production's changes.

Yes, Jo Swirling contractually receives co-authorship credit for the book, but it's widely reported that Burrows came into the project to replace Swirling and that the two never collaborated. It wouldn't be the last time that Abe Burrows, who gained a reputation as Broadway's premiere play doctor, was called upon to either punch up or completely take over the writing of a theatre project. But though this was his first piece for the stage, he was already very comfortable with the show's setting, having been head writer for the long-running and very Runyonesque radio program, Duffy's Tavern.

The most obvious change (and none of the revisions are credited, by the way, leaving newcomers to the show to believe they're seeing what the authors wrote) is McAnuff's decision to remove the musical from it's carefree, post-war prosperity 1950 setting to mid-Depression 1935. This necessitates a couple of lyric revisions (a reference to television and a recollection of 1938) but the unchanged mentionings of air-conditioned trains and Howard Johnson's restaurants - things that did exist but were not exactly as common in the mid-30s as they were 15 years later - stick out as somewhat anachronistic. And while a certain Westchester town was surely around in 1935, when slick gambler Sky Masterson describes missionary lass Sarah Brown's dream of the perfect man as "a Scarsdale Galahad," it brings up an image of suburbia that really wasn't popularized until after World War II.

And speaking of Sarah Brown, doesn't it seem odd that a Depression-era Times Square missionary never makes any mention of soup kitchens or bread lines? In fact, nobody in Des McAnuff's vision mid-30s Gotham seems all that affected by the lousy economy.

The second major change was that decision that, since the show now takes place during Damon Runyon's lifetime, the short story author should appear on stage in a reimagined version of the musical's opening sequence, "Runyonland." As originally written and staged, "Runyonland" is a danceless ballet that introduces us to the colorful atmosphere of a Times Square populated by two-bit swindlers, shapely floozies and hotshot gamblers. It's now seen as a walking tour of the city Runyon (Raymond del Barrio) takes to clear his writer's block. In his travels he stumbles onto a bank robbery, a fixed boxing match, an underground card game and bit of gunplay, giving him ideas for the stories he would write that would inspire the musical we'll soon be watching. The only trouble is that city sights he stumbles upon have nothing to do with the next two and a half hours of musical comedy.

No, I take that back. They have one thing in common: a grim depiction of a colorless New York lying beneath bright, intimidatingly hulking lights of Broadway. Robert Brill's set, framed by the steel supports of elevated trains and costume designer Paul Tazewell's appropriately plain collection of suits and showgirl outfits are certainly consistent with the director's vision, but they don't reflect the spirit of material subtitled, "a musical fable of Broadway."

Then there's Dustin O'Neill's downright ugly scene-setting video projections that continually upstage the actors. Yes, I understand... New York City is a vital, kinetic character in this production. But could you please have the city hold still a moment while the romantic leads are singing the final notes of "I've Never Been in Love Before"?

And that brings us to the actors, who I shall deem blameless because when this many professionals look that bad it's usually not their fault. (I seem to be writing that sentiment a lot lately, don't I?) McAnuff's production, which inspired mildly amused chuckles from time to time the night I attended, seems staged with a near complete lack of understanding of what makes this material funny. Sky Masterson's big "cider" punch line is barely understood because there's a whole damn Salvation Army band marching in front of him as he says it. Big Jule's (Glenn Fleshler) reaction to learning that Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide have been engaged for 14 years is reduced to nothing. The director does try and get his own laughs by tinkering with the wording of Sarah's funniest line and switching one location from a newspaper stand to a hot dog to facilitate a sight gag, but he's no match for Burrows.

Lauren Graham plays Miss Adelaide with a deep, flat voice and a stilted speech cadence that sounds like a near-illiterate trying to read a grammar book aloud; a character choIce That sabotages her comic delivery. Loesser's comic masterpiece, "Adelaide's Lament," has little impact here because it's staged and sung with no emotional build. The nightclub where she performs, The Hot Box, is determined by the director to be a depressing sort of burlesque house with a floor show. Men up front hoot and whistle at her and the chorus girls as they perform "Take Back Your Mink" and "A Bushel and a Peck." One of them even hands Adelaide a dollar tip as she dances; which in this production means she does a lot of shoulder shakes and half-turns while the others dance around her.

Oliver Platt's Nathan Detroit is a lumbering lummox who occasionally slips into a voice somewhat akin to Jackie Gleason's snooty Reginald Van Gleason III character. While playing a couple who have been engaged for 14 years, he and Graham seem like total strangers in their scenes together. There is also a noticeable lack of chemistry (yeah... chemistry) between Craig Bierko's smirking, lackadaisical Sky and Kate Jennings Grant's strident, but bland Sarah.

All four sing acceptably, but without taking advantage of the rich score's many opportunities for a vocalist to relish the lyrical textures and clever phrasing.

Tituss Burgess, blessed with an exceptional vocal range, is normally a very charming showman, but the humor of Nicely-Nicely Johnson is beaten to the ground because he spends most of the night wearing a sour expression as if he were playing an actor who left a great role in a long-running hit show to take a gig in a misdirected revival where he has to wear an ill-fitting fat suit. Mary Testa, a gifted comic performer, has no solo in her role as the stern General Cartwright, but she speaks her dozen or so lines like she's trying to hit every note on a five octave range from syllable to syllable. And while it has become commonplace to play up the gospel potential in Nicely's "Sit Down, You're Rockin' The Boat," the number has been overdone into a showstopper in the most vulgar sense of the word; serving no purpose but to show off the versatility of Burgess' voice and to give Testa a comical moment where her character throws away inhibitions and starts slapping her butt in self punishment for being a bad girl. The two actors do their jobs well but the staging has nothing to do with Runyon, Loesser, Burrows or anything McAnuff has presented up to that point.

So what's good? Sergio Trujillo delivers athletic tough-guy choreography that matches the style of Michael Kidd's legendary work in the original production, but still pops with its own spirit; especially in the knock-out leaps and rolls of "The Crapshooter's Dance." Bruce Coughlin's 1930s style swing-based, supper clubby orchestrations - replacing the Broadway brass 1950 sound of the originals by George Bassman, Ted Royal, Michael Starobin and Michael Gibson - carries plenty of movement, commentary and subtext. And the thickly-New York accented Steve Rosen show sharp comic skills and sings up a musical comedy storm as Benny Southstreet; making the bold choice of not going for something different. Just something that works.