Lippa’s ‘Party’ full of affection, mischief
Andrew Lippa’s songbook is at once mischievous and full of pathos, boyishly wholesome and downright dirty.
Yet, varied as those tones are, a common force animates much of his musical theater canon: characters who love too strongly. The mother in “John & Jen” can’t help but mortify her baseball-loving son. Queenie in “The Wild Party” loves Burrs so much she both withstands the pain he inflicts and tries to wound him by gallivanting with other men. Edward in “Big Fish” is so in love with storytelling that he betrays his son Will’s trust in order to make his tall tales taller.
When the Tony-nominated composer and lyricist himself performs his songs in “The Life of the Party,” a musical revue of his work now in its
American premiere at TheatreWorks, there’s yet another deep love: Lippa’s own affection for being in front of an audience — an affection so contagious you can’t help but requite it.
Lippa is not a world-class singer, straining on many of his sustained notes, but he’s lovely on gentler passages, and his stage presence mostly makes up for any quibbles with his singing voice; he commands attention just in the way he marches onstage and seizes a position.
Moreover, he’s supported by veterans of Broadway and London’s West End who are world-class singers. Damian Humbley has a melodic, effortlessly confident tenor that makes comic and dramatic tunes alike feel lush, resplendent. Sally Ann Triplett’s whispery, jazzy rendition of “Love Somebody Now” is so full of soul, it feels a bit dangerous. Teal Wicks, best known in the Bay Area for her 2009-10 performance as Elphaba in “Wicked,” excels both as an ingenue — in “Time Stops” from “Big Fish,” she finds aching humanity in that stock character type — and, later, as a dominatrix.
Lippa’s oeuvre often delights in the deviant and the morbid — hence much of the humor of “The Addams Family,” one of his biggest hits — and a special treat of “The Life of the Party” lies in watching Lippa’s reaction after these songs, especially “Christ Almighty,” which was ultimately cut from his 2006 musical “Asphalt Beach.”
It features a nun, played by Humbley, who sings things like, “I like the feel of ethnic cleansing.” After the final notes, Lippa turns from the piano and stares blankly at the audience for a few moments, as if to say, “Please pity the imagination disturbed enough to come up with these songs.”
Lippa co-conceived “The Life of the Party” with his director, David Babani, and the pair try to give some narrative shape to the revue by grouping together songs from the same show. That’s only occasionally successful. With just a few songs or less from each musical, there’s not enough substance to get much sense of character or situation; usually you can glean only tone or feeling.
What works better for “The Life of the Party” is when Lippa takes a cabaret approach, sharing anecdotes about how particular songs or musicals came into being. His story about the creation of “I Am Harvey Milk,” which San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus commissioned and then premiered in 2013, makes his performance of “You Are Here” into an anthem not just about the San Francisco hero but also about Lippa’s own maturation as an artist and human.
Don’t think he’s that mature, though; in one of his encores, though in his lyrics he addresses “the god of Broadway musicals,” the choreography suggests he selfmockingly thinks of himself thus.