BWW Dance Review: I MARRIED AN ANGEL at New York City Center Encores

When the Rodgers and Hart musical, "I Married An Angel," opened in May of 1938, choreography by way of Mr. George Balanchine, Brooks Atkinson, the critic of the New York Times, rained applause down: "...George Balanchine has designed his most gorgeous ballet patterns...the central part of the Angel is played by Vera Zorina, whose grace as a dancer is informed with imagination and awareness.

John Martin, the Times' dance critic, chimed in--famously: "Given the ideal conditions under which Balanchine has worked previously (the Rodgers and Hart musicals On Your Toes and Babes in Arms) he would seem to have found in the musical comedy field a more fitting outlet for his particular talents than those loftier fields with which he has been chiefly associated heretofore. His philosophy of the dance, as enunciated two or three seasons ago makes of it a medium of purely sensuous appeal without any attempt at deeper implications of subtler import."

You should hear the rest!!!!!!!!

It took a few years, but Martin made a feast of his words later on. I wonder what it tasted like.

Ok, so how was Sara Mearns as the Angel in the Encores production of a musical that's been rarely seen in the past 80 years? Slightly better than wonderful!!! Since I'm not reviewing the entire production, but only the choreographic portion, I will leave the rest to my colleague to comment upon it.

When Ms. Mearns makes her first entrance, she resembles a very glamorous Carole Lombard. This is the 1930s after all. She's all dressed in white; she wears pointe shoes and sports wings. And why is an angel there? Because Wily, a prominent Hungarian banker, has declared that he is through with women and will only marry an angel.

Presto, she arrives, not too bright, very sweet, and naive as hell. Willy falls instantly in love, takes her off to Paris for marriage and a great night of conjugal bliss, and her amazement to find she's lost her wings the next morning. Still, she's well, dumb. This is not someone that can sing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend."

Don't you wish your life was as easy as this?

If you read current gender politics and current events into this musical as others have, you're going to be disappointed. It's setting is 1938 Budapest. If you want to think about anything, then remember the Anschluss, the hacking of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain, the New Deal going bonkers, the California Okies, the Rhineland, Kristallnacht, even the search for someone to play Scarlett O'Hara on screen. You get my drift.

At least, I hope you do,

Joshua Bergasse, who directed and choreographed the entire production, is Ms. Mearns' husband. He's won the Emmy Award for Best Choreography on NBC's Smash, as well as directing other Broadway and television shows.

So is he a good fit, especially for Ms. Mearns?

Depends on how you would like to judge it. Bergasse has a wonderful grasp of the musical comedy vernacular, especially tap dancing, but I have a feeling that he has not been confronted too often with the ballet vocabulary. I don't want to criticize that too harshly, because here it doesn't matter. It's all a showcase for Ms. Mearns; just as Balanchine's original choreography was a showcase for Zorina. Rereading John Martin in his 1938 review: "Zorina is not called upon to expand herself as a dancer; she is so generally fetching that it would be a sheer waste to ask more of her."

Perhaps I expected more of her than just lovely dancing. Mearns is an excellent comedienne; she knew how to deliver lines. Was I looking for something else? More...something that you just can't put into words. Yes, but I soon realized that this was a musical comedy, period, so why not sit back and enjoy the show.

"The Ring Cycle" it's not, or even "Hamilton."

The first significant dance number, the Honeymoon Ballet, where Angel and Willy go around the world, is probably as exciting and sweet a dance as any you can find on a Broadway stage today--or should I say around 50 years ago. It is more character delineation than anything; we get glimpses of different locales--Scotland, China Russia--all ending up in a blizzard in the North Pole. Bergasse makes sure that Mearns is highlighted in every part of this extended 15-minute number: she is nimble, she is soft and alluring, she is funny. She knows how to make points through sheer dint of her personality, which is not as strong as many of us have seen at New York City Ballet, where she can sometimes overtake the stage and her partner. Here she is controlled; she gives of herself, but she seems more comically attuned to her material. If comedy is to be dropped in this environment, the dance will fizzle. Luckily, it doesn't. Was it more Mearns than Bergasse, or the other way around?

The last big ballet, the Roxy Music Hall, is wildly entertaining but comes out of nowhere. One of the characters says that New York is unlike any other city in the world, and before you can say Jimmy Walker and Betty Compton, we are at the Roxy Music Hall, where each of the leading characters gets a chance to perform an act on the bill.

So we get a rousing tap solo, two chorus girls definitely out of place in the line, a Milwaukee beer man, a strongman and, best of all, an updated Magritte like take on Othello. Or is it a new Massine ballet in striking multi-colors?

It makes no sense, and why should it? It's the Roxy Music Hall, "where they change the lights a million times a minute, and the stage goes up and down when they begin it, it's a wonder Mrs. Roosevelt isn't in it."

I'll bet that got a huge laugh in 1938. Here it went over like a stone thud. Does anyone remember Eleanor Roosevelt?

It gave every member of the company a great time to stand out. I applaud every one of them. They made me laugh. Ms. Mearns, thanks for being such a good sport about this. You were also fantastic, but you shared the applause with everyone else.

So yes, it is an old fashioned musical, and it could never be written today. Still, it was nice to visit.

Reading about two playwrights who were trying to "purge" the musical's libretto to clean up any sexual or gender references, I have this to say.

Is this another Stalinist age? If so, I will keep my suitcase near the door.

Photograph: (© Joan Marcus)

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