Review: AN EVENING WITH PLAYHOUSE 615: BROADWAY MUSICAL REVIEW

Sometimes, when life is getting you down, there is nothing more pleasing than hearing some showtunes performed by a game and capable lot of performers with the intent of nothing more controversial than lifting your spirits and entertaining you in the way they know best. And that, my friends, is exactly what's on order in the appropriately entitled An Evening With Playhouse 615: Broadway Musical Review.

"Designed, conceived and produced" by Ann-Street Kavanagh and Joel Meriwether, the fledgling company's co-founders, and performed at their location in a strip center along bustling Lebanon Road in Mt. Juliet, An Evening With Playhouse 615: Broadway Musical Review is clearly good for what ails you. Thanks to musical director Noah Rice and his eight-person ensemble (which includes the vivacious and charming Street-Kavanagh), audiences cannot help but leave the performance space without a song in their hearts and a spring to their step after hearing the octet deliver some delightful songs (several of which I count among my most favorites, if truth be told).

There is nothing serious or necessarily provocative about the program of songs delivered - and why the hell should there be, I ask rhetorically (before explaining just why their selections are so wonderfully suitable) - and instead they are designed to entertain and thanks to the eager troupe of women and men onstage, that is exactly what you get. The evening also affords one the opportunity to see longtime theatrical friends take the stage once more, while offering introductions to new talents heretofore unknown.

The program begins with the opening strains of "Aquarius" from Hair, delivered with confidence by pianist John Todd and percussionist Rick Malkin, after a gracious welcome from Jessica Heim (last seen far too long ago on local stages - if memory serves, it was at least ten years ago when we saw her in Nine at the erstwhile Boiler Room Theatre), who brings on the rest of the ensemble on to set the evening's tone with a sense of lyrical grace that pervades the next hour-and-a-half which offers respite from the craziness of the post(?)-pandemic world. From there, the ensemble takes audiences on a tour filled with musical theater highlights, ranging from Christian Redden's "What Do I Need With Love?" from Thoroughly Modern Millie, to Em Genovese's "Climbing Uphill" from The Last Five Years and Heim's "Johnny One Note" from Rodgers and Hart's Babes in Arms.

And that's just act one, which also includes Jonathan Wilburn's "Sorry/Grateful" from Company, Paul Wieslisbach's "If I Were A Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof, Diane Bearden-Enright's "Big Spender" from Sweet Charity and Samuel Stalker's "Out There" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Street-Kavanagh puts her own ever-so-sassy stamp on the always popular "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now" by Fats Waller from Ain't Misbehavin'.

The high points of the show's second stanza include Stalker's spirited rendition of "Modern Major General" from The Pirates of Penzance, Wilburn and Bearden-Enright's cheeky duet to "Master of the House" from Les Miserables and Genovese and Redden team up for a riotous take on "The Song That Goes Like This" from Spamalot. Perhaps most noteworthy about the show's selection of musical numbers is how each represents a particular style of musical and the unique time and place in the world of theater that led to its creation.

Wisely, Rice brings all eight of his singers together for appropriate finales of each act, with Wietlisbach giving us the full Harold Hill treatment for act one's "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Man and the entire ensemble delivers a moving "One Day More," the rousing anthem from Les Miserables that proves just as emotional when performed in the intimate confines of a storefront theater in a small town in Tennessee as when it was first performed forty-some years ago on the expansive stage of Paris' Palais des Sports.

As a result of the enthusiasm with which the numbers are performed and the notion that every song has its purpose (not the least of which is to remind every member of the audience of the power of musical theater to transport and transform through the magic of live performance), An Evening With Playhouse 615: Broadway Musical Review seems a perfect way to welcome audiences back to the theater after far too long an absence and to ensure we want to see more.

An Evening With Playhouse 615: Broadway Musical Review. Designed, conceived and produced by Ann Street-Kavanagh and Joel Meriwether. Musical direction by Noah Rice. Presented by Playhouse 615, 11920 Lebanon Road, Mt. Juliet. Through June 26. Running time: 90 minutes (with one 15-minute intermission).

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