BWW Reviews: SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS is a Dance Festival on Stage at Dutch Apple

If SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS seems as if it's been around the better part of forever, that's because the film has been. One of the classic MGM musicals, the Stanley Donen film starring Jane Powell and Howard Keel has always been popular. It's been so popular that it doesn't seem as if it took until 1978 to put it into a stage version (lacking, alas, the dancing talents of Jacques d'Amboise and the gymnastics of Russ Tamblyn, which is no doubt why there's no true equivalent of the Barn Dance scene in the stage musical).

With a book by Lawrence Kasha and David Landay, music by Gene dePaul, Al Kasha, and Joel Hirschhorn, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer (responsible for the film), Al Kasha, and Hirschhorn, and being based on the film, which was itself based on a short story by Stephen Vincent Benet ("The Sobbin' Women), it reeks of classic. Alas, the story itself reeks, and always has - it's not only sexist but misogynistic, it suggests that kidnapping is likely to make you beloved to attractive women, and... well, obviously high schools that perform it have never thought through the actual implications of keeping fourteen young people snowed in for an entire winter on a mountain. The more emphasis on the chaperoning, after all, the more lampshading of the reasons it's needed. It really is a lot less wholesome than it looks on first glance.

On the other hand, it really is pretty doggone funny. And, better yet, it's a dancer's vehicle, so anyone who likes old-fashioned musical dance extravaganzas has a very good reason to see it.

It's at Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre right now, directed by Prather veteran Dean Sobon and choreographed by Kerry Lambert, who is responsible for some of Dutch Apple's best dance routines. Interestingly, while the movie musical is considered one of the great MGM scores, the stage musical's music is weaker, partly because some of the great movie music is lacking and the added songs are simply not dePaul and Mercer. But that doesn't stop this cast from delivering an all-out performance of one of the better dance shows on stage. Justun Hart, though recently out of school, delivers a solid Adam, responsible for the best known song in the show, "Bless Your Beautiful Hide," while on a mission to find a wife in the fastest time possible (concealing his six other single and even more uncouth brothers from his potential mate), and Kate Marshall, a Dutch Apple veteran, is an even more solid Milly, Adam's new wife and unwitting sister-in-law of six younger, badly behaved mountain boys, all with alphabetical, Biblical monikers (even Frank, whose real name is "Frankincense"). She's got a beautiful voice and even more perfect singing diction.

Gideon (Max King, played on opening night by understudy Glenn Britton, who did the part justice despite short notice) and his would-be girlfriend, Alice (Megan Godin, from the Prather FIDDLER ON THE ROOF), are an adorable pair in this show - as the youngest brother and the youngest of the town girls, these two performers make the most of their onstage chemistry, to audience delight. Gideon's trio with Adam and Milly, "Love Never Goes Away" (not in the original film) is an outstanding performance by the three singers.

But why do we watch the show? For the group dancing. The Harvest Social scene is the ensemble dance replacement for the film's Barn Dance, and while it lacks the pyrotechnically-charged dancing and acrobatic moves of the several top professional dancers that graced the movie, it's nonetheless a fine piece of choreography, nicely executed by the crowd, and well worth being the reason for seeing the show.

Ignore, if you can, the excrescences of "Where Were You," a solo by Adam that's as offensive to a woman as a non-rap song gets, and "Am I Stubborn?", another of Adam's songs to which the answer can only be "that would be putting it mildly," and focus on his vocal work in them, minus words. Better yet, pay attention instead to the ensemble work in "We Gotta Make It Through the Winter". And, of course, to Adam and his brothers in the classic film song, "Sobbin' Women," which is the triggering plot point for the crisis in the second act that leads to the winter's difficulties. That's another very fine piece of choreography by Lambert, though it's confined inside the Pontipees' barn.

Drew Stark, a Dutch Apple veteran, performs as Benjamin, Chris Kane (recently seen in BRIGADOON) as Caleb, Matt Casey as Daniel, Joel Duke as Ephraim, and Will Leonard (who was in the Prather tour of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF) as Frank make up the rest of the brotherly contingent, while their would-be brides and their town-boy suitors make up the bulk of the ensemble behind them. Local director Jim Johnson is amusing in a minor part as the preacher who marries everyone.

At Dutch Apple through May 11, it's a classic show for fans of musical theatre dance. The choreography here shouldn't disappoint. Call 717-898-1900 or visit www.dutchapple.com for tickets.

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