'Call Me Home' at MBA's Paschall Theatre

The world premiere of a new musical is always cause for excitement, whether the stage is on Broadway or in Nashville, and it was with great anticipation that we approached Call Me Home, by Rick Seay and Kevin Fogarty, at Montgomery Bell Academy's Paschall Theatre. Unfortunately, our anticipation was misplaced: Call Me Home was a disappointment on so many levels.

Credit must be paid, however, to Seay and Fogarty for their ambition and their determination to bring an original work to the stage. It's no small feat, particularly in this day and age with so many other things clamoring for attention in day-to-day life, to conceive, write and then mount a brand new musical.

Call Me Home has as its central character a house built in 1831; its geographic location is never named, but given some of the dialogue, you assume it's set somewhere in the South (but more about that later). As the house becomes a home to a variety of people throughout its lifetime, we are given glimpses into their lives and the role that "home" plays in providing them with roots and a connection to their time and place. An ensemble of eight actors portray the individuals who call the house home for over 170 years, with one performer (Misty Ayres-Miranda) personifying the house itself. Ayres-Miranda is given the title tune, which is sweetly realized, to perform during scene transitions that expresses the universal love of home and hearth.

It's an intriguing concept, certainly, and there are dramatic and musical possibilities to be found in Seay's original concept, but what he delivers in Call Me Home is so bereft of emotion that those possibilities cannot be realized. Fogarty's music and lyrics, some of it very nicely performed, just doesn't fit into the musical theatre mold; rather, it's more like an oratorio. And his lyrics are so endlessly wordy that it makes it near impossible to follow them. In musical theatre, characters sing because their feelings become so much bigger than life that the only way emotion can be adequately expressed is through song. In Call Me Home, the emotion falls flat and the music, which should soar, very plainly does not.

It doesn't help that the music seems to be a mishmash of styles and genres. For example, you hear inspiration from such musicals as Shenandoah, The Secret Garden and Les Miserables, with some Sondheim influences thrown in for good measure. The entire production is presented with such dour earnestness and a complete lack of humor that it comes across more like Red, White and Blaine, the musical staged in the Christopher Guest film Waiting for Guffman. Available on the dvd for that movie are some musical scenes cut from the film that seem eerily similar to the tone expressed in Call Me Home. And that's not really good.

The play opens as Nathaniel (Chase Altenbern), the builder of the house, welcomes guests for the first time, including his soon-to-be wife Lucinda(Keri Pisapia), his mother (Caroline Davis), his best friend (Gregg Colson) and his wife (Meghan Backes). Nathaniel is justifiably proud of his handiwork and the love he has poured into the new homeplace, so it makes sense that he would think of the house as a person and show it such love and devotion, as it represents in a tangible fashion his love for family and friends.

Lucinda is a city girl, however, and her sister Kathleen (Jennifer Coke) is determined to upend the planned marriage by inviting a former suitor (Riley Bryant) to join them at the new home, threatening to expose a secret Lucinda is keeping from Nathaniel. The dramatic potential isn't realized; Lucinda's secret (she's barren, thanks to a riding accident years earlier) seems better suited to a Harlequin romance and Bryant plays her would-be suitor as fey and foppish, a character so melodramatic that he should be twirlling his moustache as he ties Lucinda to the rails. (Note to Bryant: putting your hands in your pockets doesn't make for a dramatic characterization, it's just distracting.)

Act 1, Scene 2 fast forwards to 1864, in the midst of Civil War, as the women of the neighborhood prepare for the homecoming of a solder from the war. It's fairly predictable, although a bit implausible since the soldier has been shot and has traveled by train with an untreated gunshot wound to the back. However, the scene does provide two strong musical moments: "The Prayer," sung by Davis and the ensemble, is quite nice and very evocative; and "Until I Come Home," an exquisite duet for Backes and Christian Sawyer, as young lovers whose wedding is felled by that errant battlefield bullet. Sawyer is quite the surprise in this song. He has an extraordinary voice that gives Call Me Home its most memorable moments. For Sawyer, it's a much-need reprieve: in the first scene, he plays a 12-year-old boy, one of the show's hammiest moments (save for Sawyer's later scene as a UPS messenger).

In Act 2, the action moves ahead to Christmas 1932, with the house chopped up into apartments since its upkeep is too expensive for the current owner, now played by Pisapia (as the 85 year old character previously played by Backes in Act 1, Scene 2). The second act opens with a trio by Davis, Backes and Coke called "Trim the Tree," (vaguely reminiscent of something by the Andrews Sisters or the Boswell Sisters) which has a lot of unrealized potential.

Again, Fogarty's lyrics are largely to blame, although the movement (where's a choreographer when you need one?) contributes to that. It's during this scene that Seay makes some attempts at humor. But it's contrived, predictable and old-fashioned humor. There are some references to the Depression and Herbert Hoover, the New Deal and FDR, but Annie did that already and the lines miss their mark. Colson and Davis are the primary focus in this scene as a young couple about to become first-time parents who find out on Christmas Eve (yes, Christmas Eve) that he has lost his job and they are being kicked out onto the street. Davis is quite believable as her character and Colson, as always, is the consummate song-and-dance man. However, Call Me Home doesn't give him the opportunity to strut his stuff; his performance is too musical theatre-centric.

We are brought to the present, well actually next October, in Act 2, Scene 2, during which a young couple are considering buying the house in an effort to re-start their troubled marriage. It seems that Mike (Bryant) has cheated on Kristina (Coke) and is trying to make amends by finding the perfect home for her, as a way to show her in a tangible way that he's contrite and really loves her. There's an entertaining trio to open the act ("Buy This House") and all the play's loose ends are nicely tied up by the finale ultimo. But why would Seay cast Bryant and Coke, arguably two of his weaker actors, as the characters who close the show?

The musical's very premise seems emotionally manipulative, of course, but perhaps if the play's final scene actually bookended the play's action, it would work better overall. With each scene, we are forced to get to know-and hopefully care about-a whole new set of characters. But the characters aren't real enough to elicit much empathy. Sure, they're nice enough people but they aren't particularly interesting. There is, of course, the house itself (played quite nicely, actually, by Ayres-Miranda) as the connecting tissue, but that, too, fails to satisfy.

Seay's direction may be at fault. Frankly, I think a director who is not so closely tied to the project's creation might have had a more balanced eye toward the stage. The blocking is static and uninspired, often the actors are spread out on a parallel line, and there is a lack of attractive visual moments in the play. Choreography, or the lack thereof, does nothing to help engage the audience.

The four member orchestra, under Fogarty's direction, provides a very strong musical accompaniment to the onstage action and there are some very nice technical elements to the production, particularly Chris Reynolds' sound design and Zach Sternberg's lighting design. Will Joyce's set design is too literal; a more abstract recreation of the house could work better here; the heavy furniture is distracting and clumsily brought on- and offstage.

June Kingsbury's costumes are well designed and lovingly created, but I do have a quibble: During wartime, those folks were awfully well-dressed. In 1864, in the South--which is where I assume the play is set given some of the dialogue, but I could be wrong since the dying soldier appears to be wearing a royal blue uniform (which could make him a Yankee or a Confederate Zouave)--people didn't have the wherewithal to be so fashionable. And poor Ayres-Miranda is forced to wear costumes that evoke the house's interior decoration. During the Civil War era sequence, she looks like she's wearing a costume inspired by Scarlett O'Hara's "I saw something hanging in window and just couldn't resist it" green gown, only the house's dress looks like wallpaper and upholstery fabric.

 

--Call Me Home. Music and lyrics by Kevin Fogarty. Concept and book by Rick Seay. Directed by Rick Seay. Music direction by Kevin Fogarty. Produced by David Arnholter. At Montgomery Bell Academy's Paschall Theatre, Nashville. July 24-August 2. Visit the website at www.calllmehomethemusical.com

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