BWW Reviews: SMT's SWEET CHARITY Fails to Engage With Its Story

Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields and Neil Simon's "Sweet Charity", currently playing at Seattle Musical Theatre, is not a perfect musical. There's plenty that it has going for it but it's loaded with plenty of extraneous things as well. The story is fairly depressing, the book is too wordy and there are some songs that just plain don't need to be there. So in order to get it to engage it has to be done just right. Well, unfortunately I still haven't seen a production that was there.

Now I've only ever seen one other live production of this story of a dance hall girl in the 60's hoping for love and a better life and unfortunately that was a touring production starring a way too old for the part Molly Ringwald (the other girls looked like they were doing a show with their Mom). Everyone's fairly age appropriate in the SMT version but they fail to connect with the characters and fully convey the story which, as I said, is a bit of a downer. I mean Charity (Megan Tyrrell) has herself stuck in a dead end job and has had a succession of horrible boyfriends (the most recent of which stole all her money and threw her in a lake). But she still somehow manages to keep her spirits up and hope alive. And so when she meets nice guy Oscar (Doug Fahl), she sees someone else who can take her away from this life.

That's one of my big issues with the story, that Charity is supposed to be this strong woman but she's constantly depending on someone else for her happiness. I won't go all Dr. Phil on the character's mental state but in order to make her likable an engaging she needs to have an infectious optimism. Unfortunately Tyrrell didn't seem to connect with that and played her not so optimistic and came across as dumb. And that doesn't help convey the story when we cannot connect especially when the entire story is her. Tyrrell manages to come alive a little bit in Act Two after she meets Oscar but by then it was too late as we need to be on her side from the beginning.

Director Harry Turpin manages some good musical numbers in the show, the "Rich Man's Frug" and "Rhythm of Life" worked well but the pacing in the show is so slow and plodding that it's difficult to care about what they were saying. And without that pacing and engagement the show lacks much story and becomes of succession of lines waiting for the next musical number.

There are a few bright spots in the show. Fahl manages a sweetness to Oscar that keeps him likable right up to the end (where the story rips that away). Roxanne De Vito and Larissa Schmitz work well as Charity's gal pals from the club and totally sell their numbers. Especially Schmitz who was so likable and present that I wondered why she wasn't Charity. Matthew Lawrence is dashing and quite fun as the international movie star Charity runs into. And Evan Woltz completely sells his Daddy character and makes "The Rhythm of Life" number a complete joy. Unfortunately that's his only number and it left me pining for more of that show.

So there are some decent moments here but not enough to pull this show and this story together and convey it well. And because of that, with my three letter rating system, I give the show a MEH+. Nothing that wowed me but a few numbers that saved the evening.

"Sweet Charity" performs at Seattle Musical Theatre through March 1st. For tickets or information visit them online at www.seattlemusicaltheatre.org.

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