BWW Reviews: Doyle's ALLEGRO Played in Cut Time

It gets forgotten as time passes, but when Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II brought Oklahoma! and Carousel into the world, they were experimental musicals; highly popular Broadway entertainments that were crowning achievements of a decade-long movement towards integrating singing and dancing seamlessly into storytelling dramatics.

But it's their 3rd collaboration, 1947's Allegro, that still plays like an experiment today. Taking inspiration from both Thornton Wilder's Our Town and Greek tragedy, Hammerstein created an original story about the first 35 years of Joe Taylor, Jr., the son of a small town doctor who becomes a doctor himself and compromises his principles to please his wife by taking a fancy job in a big city hospital and then must confront his life choices.

As in Greek tragedy there was a choral community that commented on the action; sometimes through singing and sometimes through unison speaking. And, as with the Greeks, a great deal of dancing and pageantry (supplied on Broadway by director/choreographer Agnes de Mille) added depth to the storytelling.

Some would call Allegro ahead of its time and others would call it a heavy-handed morality musical. Its nine month Broadway run was greatly helped by a very large advanced sale. One standard came out of the score, the snazzy "The Gentleman Is a Dope," but Rodgers and Hammerstein were more concerned with writing for characters than creating hits and quality songs like "A Fellow Needs A Girl," "You Are Never Away" and "So Far," like Allegro itself, fell into obscurity.

New York has seen at least two Off-Off Broadway productions and Allegro was produced by City Center Encores! back in the days when they did simply staged readings, but the city has yet to see another high-profile production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's full text. Unfortunately for those who would wish to see Allegro as the authors wrote it, the new Classic Stage Company production directed by John Doyle cuts the running time down to a Spartan 90 minutes by shaving the text and eliminating all the dancing. The director also uses the technique he's most known for, that of using new orchestrations (these are by Mary-Mitchell Campbell) written for a company of actors who also play musical instruments.

The resulting show fares no better than a highlight reel, softening the Greek tragedy context for which the material was created. The shortened scenes lack textures and the musical responsibilities limit acting choices. The otherwise appealing Claybourne Elder, as Joe Jr., barely connects with Elizabeth A. Davis as the childhood friend he eventually marries. Davis is made to seem like a cold, controlling shrew right from the start, so the audience has no reason to be invested when their relationship cracks.

Malcolm Gets, always a plentiful source of male sensitivity, fares fine as Joe Sr., as does Alma Cuervo as the boy's protective grandmother. The supporting players sing well but, perhaps because of the obtuse staging or perhaps because of the necessity to cast people who can play instruments, the acting frequently settles for being serviceable. (Though definitely not always the case, this is a common occurrence in Doyle's actor/musician productions.)

Allegro may not be a great musical, but it was written but two of musical theatre's greatest artists, and the opportunity to see their flawed work as they created it is a far more interesting prospect than seeing a contemporary artist's attempt to fix it.

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