Tarzan: Swing For Your Supper

Remember M. Butterfly? Wasn't that a terrific play? John Lithgow falls head over heals for B.D. Wong, but he doesn't know that B.D. is really a guy. They should bring that one back to Broadway. Hey, I bet Lithgow and Wong can still play the same parts. Wouldn't that be great?

Golden Child was another good one. Some very lovely playwriting there. And ya know, Face Value should get another chance. It had its problems, sure, but it has some good points to make about a lively and controversial issue.

Could someone please stop David Henry Hwang from writing musicals and get him back to playwriting? No wait, I take that back. What I mean is, could someone please stop David Henry Hwang from writing musicals that are a) revisions of existing musicals, or b) for Disney.

Because I truly believe, when working on projects that come out his own creative soul, with scores written by people who are actually alive, Hwang has it in him to write some pretty terrific musicals. You know what the first spoken line is in his latest effort? It's, "I'm going to call him (beat) (beat) Tarzan." This must stop immediately.

I suppose it's too late to just display models of director Bob Crowley's set designs and a few of his costumes in some art gallery with a plaque reading, "Someday we hope someone will write a good musical utilizing these." No, like the hot looking, but vapid, date who insists on talking throughout dinner, two and a half hours with Tarzan is enough to make you swear off pretty things forever and vow to spend your theatre-going dollars looking for a show with a good personality.

And at first, Tarzan really is kinda pretty to look at. Impressive visuals by Crowley, matched by Natasha Katz's lights, John Shivers' sound and Pichon Baldinu's aerial design depict the shipwreck and near drowning of our hero's human parents before they're washed up ashore, only to be hunted down by a panther. Their orphaned infant is then adopted by the motherly ape, Kala (Merle Dandridge), who had just lost a child of her own. After a couple of sight gags involving projectile pee, Tarzan (That's what she called him, remember?) grows into an energetic and acrobatic young lad (Daniel Manche and Alex Rutherford alternate performances) and eventually into a sensitive Chelsea twink with beginner abs teenager (Josh Strickland). His growth into twinkhood is shown through an extended shadow puppet show. I'd rather not discuss it.

Shuler Hensley plays Kerchak, the gruff and protective patriarch of the ape society who is distrustful of humans and has a richer vocabulary than any character Hensley has ever played on the New York stage.

Said apes, by the way, wear fur costumes that make them look a bit like the bogeymen in March of the Wooden Soldiers and swing back and forth a lot on green ropes meant to represent vines. During one song they make an aerial formation that seems lifted from a high school cheerleading competition. In the Act II opener, choreographer Meryl Tankard – I swear I'm not making this up – actually has some of them swing dancing. Leading the simian chorus is Chester Gregory II as the wisecracking Terk, who impressively sings full out while hanging upside down above the audience, and even more impressively, squeezes a few laughs out of some atrocious material. ("Do you know how many apes are lost to unripe bananas? It's a silent epidemic!")

If there were a Tony Award for keeping one's dignity, Jenn Gambatese would most assuredly be this season's favorite. As Jane, the nerdy Edwardian twit botanist who is so enraptured with Bob Crowley's flora and fauna that she doesn't realize she's trapped in a giant spider's web ("Oh, excrementum!" she exclaims in horror.) Gambatese is rather entertaining in her attempts to civilize Tarzan before realizing (message here) that it's humans that need to be civilized.

Tim Jerome and Donnie Keshawarz play Jane's professor father and his hunter assistant, but really, the only important thing about their scenes is that they give the chorus apes some time to catch their collective breath between vine-swinging routines.

Phil Collins' music and lyrics are so lightweight I was forgetting the songs while they were being sung. Honestly, by the time someone was singing a bridge I had totally forgotten the A section.

On my way out of the Richard Rodgers Theatre, I caught a glimpse of the lobby portrait of the great composer the house was named for. Maybe it was just the way the light was hitting it, but I swear I saw a tear trickling down his cheek.

Photos by Heinz Kluetmeier: Top: Stefan Raulston (left) and Andy Pellick

Center: Jenn Gambatese and Josh Strickland

Bottom: Sean Samuels