BWW Reviews: SOMEWHERE IN TIME is Enchanting... But A Bit Too Long

Time travel is one of those themes that come back over and over in American literature and drama. From Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to Jack Finney's Time and Again to movies like Back to the Future and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and of course H.G. Wells's classic The Time Machine. My personal favorites are the 1979 film Time After Time, which sent Wells to chase Jack the Ripper in modern-day San Francisco, and Ken Grimwood's wonderful 1983 novel Replay.

Somewhere in Time is a lot of people's favorite time-travel story. Richard Matheson's 1971 novel became a 1980 film with Christopher Reeve as a failed playwright who visits the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, and becomes enamored of a 1912 photo featuring a young actress (played by Jane Seymour). He wills himself back to 1912 and falls in love with her.

I have to admit I've never seen the film, but I've heard plenty about it. (I grew up in Michigan, and visited the Grand Hotel many times in my youth.) So I came to Portland Center Stage's musical version fairly fresh. The book is by Ken Davenport, music by Doug Katsaros, and lyrics by Amanda Yesnowitz, and all have done fine work to clarify the story and make fans of the film happy. The music is lush and romantic, befitting the mood and the time period.

For me the story took a long time to get started. An opening number fills us in on the background of playwright Richard Collier (Andrew Samonsky): promising playwright at his college graduation, already attracting the attention of agents, with a brother in his corner and a girlfriend who swears eternal love. An old woman shows up, a stranger who gives him a pocket watch and slips away. The next fifteen years pass quickly: failed plays, failed relationships, and a terminal illness. Richard runs off to the Grand Hotel for some solitude, and sees the photographs of actress Elise McKenna (Hannah Elless). And then he begins trying to find a way back to 1912.

Of course, the whole point of the show is what happens in 1912, yet it takes the musical all of Act One to get us there. We get to know Richard well; Samonsky projects a rumpled charm, a quirky sense of humor, and a fine singing voice, though his Richard doesn't seem upset or bitter about the many failures in his life or the illness that gives him such terrible headaches. The only other character who makes any impression in the first part of the show is Arthur, an elderly bellhop at the Grand, played by David Cryer, who makes the most of his one big number. I can remember seeing Cryer as Sweeney Todd at the Michigan Opera Theater some thirty years ago, and he's still got a thrilling voice; sadly, these days, he's best known as the father of Two and a Half Men star Jon Cryer.

Finally, at the end of Act One, Richard makes it back to 1912, which is brought home to us with the one bad number in the score ("A Trip to the Grand"). He meets Elise and her manager, William Robinson (Marc Kudisch). Of course he's already in love with her, and she's drawn to him, but she's already promised to Robinson.

Act Two alternates between scenes in which Richard tries to get Elise to fall in love with him, and scenes in which Robinson tries to intimidate Richard into leaving her alone. Robinson's motives jump around from scene to scene and never make any sense, but Kudisch, a three-time Tony nominee, has a nice manner and a fine voice; he gets one of the score's best songs ("Long, Long Way to Indiana") and tries to humanize a character that's written as a one-dimensional villain. He looked rather sour during his curtain call; I couldn't tell if he was staying in character or just annoyed at being stuck in such a bad part.

The enterprise rests on the two leads, and if you don't buy the love story, Somewhere in Time isn't going to work. Samonsky works his tail off to make us believe, but Hannah Elless just isn't magical enough to pull it off. The script doesn't help her; we never really get to know anything about Elise except that she's going to be a star, and neither the dialogue nor the songs define the character. She's just a generic beauty who's there for the hero to fall in love with, and Elless tries hard, but I couldn't imagine a man walking across the street for this woman, let alone jumping back seventy years in time.

Beyond the four leads, Somewhere in Time has a solid ensemble, all of whom jump around playing multiple roles in two eras, changing costumes and wigs in a flash, moving set pieces and singing the big group numbers. I particularly noticed Lizzie Klemperer as a frustrated librarian, Tad Wilson as a scientist who believes in time travel, and Erik Liberman as two different (but equally snobbish) desk clerks. But none of them gets much time to create an impression, and they're saddled with the script's lame attempts at humor.

Director Scott Schwartz and choreographer John Carrafa have done wonders in making the tale fit on a stage. They use projections, flying set pieces, and a turntable to keep the story moving from location to location, and the scenery never stops moving, but the actors are too often stuck in a semicircle around the leads. With all the resources available at their disposal, they never give us a chance to relax and figure out where we are, what year it is, and who the ensemble is playing at any given moment.

Of course, the big romantic moments at the end are there, and they're solid, and the audience oohed and aahed at the right times. So did I. The lush music, the period costumes, and Andrew Samonsky's performance kept me involved. There's some trimming to be done, and some rewriting, and maybe it will work for fans of the movie. But there could be so much more.

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