Shaw’s Foss ean bargain
They don’t write ’ em like that any more, not in fact since 1966 which is when Sweet Charity debuted on Broadway. It was the last of a line: the last American musical that unabashedly celebrated New York, and the last moreor-less traditional score to achieve wide popularity outside the theatre, the last whose songs were liable to turn up, out of context, on TV variety shows. (Remember them?)
It also marked the end of a line for Bob Fosse, Sweet Charity’s original director, choreographer and guiding spirit; it was he who conceived the idea of making a musical of Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, with the heroine changed from a Roman hooker to a Manhattan dancer. It was the last Fosse show in which cynicism was just one colour in his palette rather than an all-enveloping and rather pretentious wash. It also contained some of his very best work. What’s extraordinary about the Shaw Festival’s production is how well it works without the Fosse staging. I won’t pretend that I didn’t miss the original choreography, in numbers like “Big Spender” and “The Rhythm of Life,” but Sweet Charity still emerges as a terrific show with a sizzling score and a solid and involving book. It also has a fine central performance and a new and distinctive visual signature.
The joy of hearing Cy Coleman’s music again can hardly be overstated. This isn’t his masterpiece; that would be his previous show Little Me, a glorious parade of elegantly cockeyed treasures adorned with peerlessly funny lyrics by the great Carolyn Leigh. Dorothy Fields’ Charity lyrics aren’t in the same league of wit, but they’re trenchant and flavourful; Coleman always worked best with smart lady lyricists. He was also the true heir of George Gershwin and Harold Arlen in the matter of bringing a jazz pulse to the theatre: his rhythms are irresistible, sweeping the story along, though they can also turn poignant or passionate. There are Latin sounds, too, and electrical ones; the rock musical hadn’t yet arrived, but when it did it produced nothing this sophisticated or ingratiating. Paul Sportelli and his musicians are playing, as far as I can tell, the original Ralph Burns orchestrations, and they sound as if they’re having a ball.
Neil Simon wrote the book which, like his other musicals, is better than most of his plays; his gag-writing talents are put here to their best and most economical use, and he tells the story with feeling but without sentimentality. Sweet Charity may celebrate New York, but it doesn’t glamorize it. Charity Hope Valentine’s job as a dance-hall hostess (“you don’t dance, you defend yourself to music”) is, as she recognizes, just a step above prostitution but she insists, fiercely, on the significance of that step. In her private life she passes from one exploitative man to the next, until she meets a shy fellow who seems different. In Morris Panych’s production we travel through her bumpy (not to say grindy) life by underground rail. Ken MacDonald’s set, one of his very best, goes through all kinds of versatile variations, but its ground zero is a subway platform, with Cameron Davis’ projections giving us some awe-inspiring views of the surrounding system. This is the New York that everybody loves and hates.
Julie Martell as Charity inhabits this world, and her character, with absolute conviction; she’s hopeful (it’s not her middle name for nothing), desperately affectionate (ditto, her last name), battered, resilient because she has no choice. Kyle Blair is delightful as the buttoned- up claustrophobe whom she meets in a stalled elevator; what starts as a cartoon romance acquires surprising, even troubling, depth. Jay Turvey is ideally cast as the dance-hall manager with the slave-driving manner and the sweet singing voice, and Mark Uhre is outstanding a role that could easily be a disaster, a Mastroianni movie-idol who gives Charity her one brief taste of the high life.
The nightclub of their encounter occasions the best-staged, best-danced and (by Charlotte Dean) best-costumed number of the evening, “Rich Man’s Frug.” Second best is Charity’s triumphant “I’m a Brass Band,” with her applauding chorus costumed not as bandsmen but as commuters; the actual steps are nothing special but the concept connects most satisfyingly with that of the production as a whole. Other bits of Parker Esse’s choreography seem messy or hemmed-in. Martell’s dancing, in a role created for Gwen Verdon, is less than her acting and singing; when she teams up with her two best buddies and confidantes for “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This,” it’s hard not to agree with the song-title, while “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” her hat-and-cane specialty, never takes off. But her personality carries her through, all the way to a conclusion that Panych has staged with exemplary tact. The original production ended with a gag; the movie (Fosse’s, not Fellini’s) ended with syrup. This one goes for honesty, expressed in a lovely closing image of wistful defiance. All along, Charity has been asking for respect. She finally gets it.
Sweet Charity plays in repertory until Oct. 31.