Review: J2 Spotlight's BACK TO BEFORE at AMT Theater Is Spot-On

J2 Spotlight Musical Theater’s one-night-only cabaret of songs by composer Stephen Flaherty (who was in the audience) and his longtime lyricist partner Lynn Ahrens did NOT include their song “Close the Door” from the stage score of Anastasia, but actual doors closing and opening was a constant occurrence during the splendid program.  The participants were on the stage set of the AMT Theater on West 45th Street, dominated by doors, designed for J2’s (then-)concurrent run of a revival of the writers’ musical Lucky Stiff.  It’s a high-energy farce using the genre’s tradition of frequent comic moments with characters encountering or just missing each other as they enter or exit through various on-stage doors.  Although I’m not privy to what happened during the “closed door” planning sessions for this cabaret, obviously someone thought, “The doors will be here.  Why not take advantage of them for the singers’ comings and goings?”  And so they did.    

Knock, knock: Who’s there? The billed director and host Charles Kirsch didn’t open the show, but as music director/pianist Michael Lavine was chatting with a performer after an opening song, from backstage, a knock was heard.  “Who could that be?!?” he asked, in mock surprise —- and through the center entrance came our beaming master of ceremonies.

As the night went on, he kept going in and out of those bright turquoise doors, sometimes exchanging comments with the performers and coming back out afterwards, with a “Here I am again… Did I miss anything?” look.  (In J2's April Comden / Green / Styne tribute show, a chair was on stage for him to talk and watch from, but there’s not a lot of space.)  After efficiently eliciting or delivering information, as he does on theatre podcast Backstage Babble, backstage went Mr. K. each time, ready to turn the knob and turn to the next segment as he slid or bounced back in.  Of all the musicals of A&F, My Favorite Year is Kirsch's favorite, and one of my favorite performances on this night of May 7 was something from it: "If the World Were Like the Movies," poignantly rendered by the young star seen in this photo below (Bravo, Bryan Eng!). 

Abandoning his doorman duties, courteous Kirsch at one point appeared suddenly from the audience entrance ramp, to sing, right on cue for the second half of “Alone in the Universe,” begun by Brian Michael Hoffman.  Both fellows captured the necessary wistfulness and audience sympathy.  It was one of the numbers from the prominently represented musical Seussical, with characters from the children’s books of Dr. Seuss.  This selection let Mr. Hoffman revisit the role of Horton The Elephant, which he’d played on tour.  

Other Seussical veterans were part of the night, too, with two who earned frequent flyer miles in the role of the bird Gertrude McFuzz.  Birds of a feather flock together, but performed separately, as Janine LaManna (who created the part on Broadway) and Garrett Long (the bird of the tour) came in from the wings to very charmingly present the character’s songs.  Also shared were personal memories and facts about the show.  Stuart Zagnit, who was in Seussical as well as earlier productions of Lucky Stiff nimbly stepped back into the latter show’s showpiece about shoes (should I say “shoepiece”?) that had been mostly cut from the score.  Other alumnae of Ahrens & Flaherty projects adding to the pleasures of the evening were Erin Davie (The Glorious Ones), Jenny Lee Stern (Rocky), and Andrea Frierson (Once on This Island).   

On a night off from Lucky Stiff, two members of its cast (in addition to the aforementioned Miss LaManna) brought their theatre and cabaret chops to the night with fine work.  Eric Michael Gillett was spot on with a multifaceted, nuanced and gripping “I Was Here” that had all the needed drama and authenticity.  Quinn Corcoran was strong with storytelling skills and emotion in bringing the audience into a moment of witnessing history with “The Night That Goldman Spoke at Union Square” from Ragtime.  Perhaps surprisingly, the night didn’t otherwise sample the well-regarded Ragtime score, even though the cabaret event was titled Back to Before, one of its most memorable songs. J2’s other cabaret night this spring had the same condition of omission, with the potentially misleading name Make Someone Happy.  But why quibble or question or quarrel when there were even more terrific talents and treats – even more talents than the ones mentioned above — gracing the material of the versatile musical Theatre Partners, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens, with pianist Michael Lavine adroitly adding color and the contagious vim of Charles Kirsch who could probably make doing laundry or the history of cardboard sound interesting. 

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Header photo of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens by Bruce Gilkas

Learn more about the J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company on their website.

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