Richard Cory: Something to Talk About

I suppose I wouldn't really be spoiling the ending for you if I said right off the bat that Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head. I mean, even if you don't know Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem on the subject, Paul Simon's popular song based on it or A.R. Gurney's previous stage adaptation, composer/lyricist/bookwriter Ed Dixon quotes the original in its entirety at the beginning of the latest stage incarnation, Richard Cory. So please don't get upset with me for spoiling the ending.

In sixteen simple lines, the poet Robinson tells us Richard Cory was a handsome, educated, wealthy, respected and well-liked man who apparently didn't see much to live for. Gurney's 1976 play told us he had a wife and family, women at the office who adored him, and that he made a clumsey attempt at keeping a mistress and was pretty bad at telling jokes.

Now Ed Dixon tells us something else about Richard Cory. He couldn't sing. In this otherwise sung-through musical the leading man cannot sing, no matter how hard he tries. And that's all any musical theatre lover needs to know in order to understand the emptiness and blocked emotions that would lead him to end it all.

The very fine singing actor Herndon Lackey is cast in the title role, and a very odd thing happened the evening I attended. After the other characters establish the reality of the show by singing in both choral and conversational scenes, Cory himself enters and speaks his first line; a simple response to someone wishing him a good morning. And people in the audience started laughing. There's more singing conversation, then Cory speaks another simple line and the audience laughs some more. I've sat in audiences with people who may not have attended many musicals who start laughing when at first the actors start singing, but I've never before heard audiences laugh at the absurdity of someone speaking. It was truly a unique moment.

Dixon's score, played expertly by solo pianist and music director Lawrence Yurman, is a mixture of several musical styles meant to define particular characters, but there is very little in the way of traditional songs or even rhyming. Much of Gurney's 1976 text is set to music, with the score giving color and texture to dialogue. You may not find tunes to hum on the way out, because it's difficult to spot repetition of melodies, but nevertheless there is a simple and beautiful artfulness throughout.

The characters are commonly known types, not especially fleshed out, which makes the piece seem a bit like a fable without a moral. Lackey has a strong, manly presence as Richard, but speaks with a humble politeness. When he enters a diner -- a scene scored in honky tonk -- the sassy waitress (a dynamic Cady Huffmann) and her rowdy customers quit their horseplay and joking so as not to offend him, despite his insistence that they go on with whatever they were doing. Later on, Cory returns to the diner, excited that he has learned a joke and anxious to try it out. His desperation to be liked instead of revered is touching.

Christeena Riggs acts and sings with a lovely Rodgers and Hammerstein earnestness, as scored by Dixon, playing the young secretary who becomes Cory's midlife crisis. His other female admirers include an understatedly comical Catherine Cox as his secretary and a passionate, operetta-singing Maureen Moore as a secret admirer. Lynne Wintersteller, as the wife he's growing further apart from, sings beautifully in a contemporary opera style; an excellent choice to show where their marriage is going as it is perhaps the least accessible style used in the score.

Director James Brennan fills the small bare stage with swift movement played with a tragic coldness, perhaps to keep the audience feeling as detached as the title character. The costumes by Michael Bottari and the lighting by Kevin Hardy emphasize an icy blue.

In an art form that thrives on warmth and optimism, Richard Cory may not be a musical to fall in love with. But it's one to admire and respect. And certainly something to talk about.