NYMF Roundup #3

[Ed. Note: This is the third of three TheaterMania review roundups of shows in the second annual New York Musical Theatre Festival.]

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Nerds:// A Musical Software Satire

A few of the merry men closely associated with The Bomb-itty of Errors, that take-no-prisoners gloss on Shakespeare’s comedy, are up to some fancy calisthenics again. Nerds:// A Musical Software Satire is welcome proof that librettists-lyricists Jordan Allen-Dutton and Erik Weiner and director Andy Goldberg aren’t flashes in the Off-Broadway pan. But this time, instead of ribbing the Bard, they’re joshing the fabulously moneyed folks of today’s technology sector, including Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, Paul Allen, and Steve Wozniak.

The resulting show, which features catchy music by Hal Goldberg, is a mock history of computer research and development over the past 30 years. Though it’s rough around many of its edges, it will amuse computer-friendly audiences and may even elicit broad smiles from the computer-resistant. Allen-Dutton and Weiner are by no means overly smitten by what they know of Gates and Jobs, the former being their idea of a nerd with hard drive and the latter an opportunistic hippie.

As the protagonists move along separate trails to heights that occasionally overlap, we see Gates coaxing an all-important operating system from an easily gulled former associate and Jobs appropriating credit for Apple achievements from partner Wozniak. (Presumably, lawyers for the writers have looked over these and other contentions and declared them safe; one assumes also that Allen-Dutton, Weiner, and their colleagues aren’t courting legal trouble by hinting that IBM mogul Tom Watson has an eye for male tour guides.) Neither Gates, whose wife Melinda doesn’t figure into the action, nor Jobs do well by the computer-geek ladies whom the authors put in their paths.

The writers might want to eventually decide whether to depict Gates as a misguided dweeb or a calculating aggressor. Still, Nerds is all in good fun. No small credit goes to the performers, guided by Goldberg with energy to spare. Sean Dugan, who has a string of naughty puns to deliver with a poker face as Gates, and Anthony Holds as the rockin’ Jobs head the eight-member, chameleon-like cast. They all sing the show’s cheerful ditties and execute Dan Knechtges’ dance steps with far-from-nerdlike brio.

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You Might As Well Live

In one of those economical poems of hers, Dorothy Parker told the world that her nose and thumb were inseparable. The cynic’s cynic, Parker fine-tuned her dyspeptic attitude after harsh childhood knocks from which she never fully recovered. She was further thrown off balance by smoking and drinking throughout her adult life, her favorite libations being scotch neat and rye on wry. Karen Mason, realizing that she could rouse herself to a dandy impersonation of Parker, has collaborated with librettist-composer Norman Mathews on You Might as Well Live, a solo piece that resuscitates the one-time Vanity Fair, New Yorker, and Esquire fixture.

Over the course of two acts, Parker stalks the confines of set designer John Scheffler’s take on the Volney hotel flat where the writer spent the later years of her life, cracking wise and cracking up. The dilemma that Parker faces, as Mason and Mathews see it, is whether to accede to ex-hubby Alan Campbell’s request that she join him in Hollywood to co-write a screenplay for Marilyn Monroe or, alternatively, to remain yoked to her art. While deciding which row to hoe, she reviews her life with a heavy emphasis on her poetry, which Mathews has musicalized. (Christopher Denny is at the keyboard.)

In one way or another, Mathews gets in most of the lines for which Parker is famous. One way is to have the inveterate word-juggler express dismay at being remembered for “Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses.” She much prefers such achievements as Ladies of the Corridor, a serious play that folded on Broadway after six weeks in 1953 (but which is currently being revived by the Peccadillo Theater Company). Parker’s poems are stressed for the obvious reason that they’re more easily set to music than her prose. The only time we hear a musicalized short story, “The Waltz,” it becomes something of a stage wait.

This foray is a decided change of pace for Mason, who usually struts her bravura stuff in cabarets and whose last appeared on Broadway as one of the brash ladies in Mamma Mia! Here, displays her considerable talent by almost never belting her songs. Only towards the end, when she sails into the moving “Nocturne,” does she set out to ring rafters. Otherwise, she is edgy, angry, worried, sophisticated, and very funny. With Guy Stroman directing her, Mason is everything that Parker appeared to be, which is all to the good. Dorothy Parker’s name is no longer on everyone’s lips as it was in the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table habitués, so this affecting turn isn’t for all audiences. But for those who still relish the lady’s intelligence and wit, it’s a tart after-dinner mint.

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Tom Jones: The Musical

Thanks to good old public domain, anybody who gets the irresistible urge to do so can turn a classic like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones into a musical. Indeed, I’ve heard of several such treatments, one of which is actually titled That Jones Boy. An especially promising one is Tom Jones: The Musical, written by Paul Leigh and George Stiles, in collaboration with Daniel D. Brambilla, and Vera Guerin, based on a concept by John Doyle (director of the current Sweeney Todd revival).

I’m guessing that it was Doyle’s ideal to bring Jones and his high-spirited associates to the stage in a story theater piece in which the actors not only play the characters but also narrate the action and provide all the sound effects. It’s a crafty strategy and one that works like a charm in this version, which has been imaginatively directed by Gabriel Barre and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli. Also highly imaginative are Pamela Scofield’s often diaphanous costumes and the cotton-candy wigs that Gerard Kelly has spun for Fielding’s 18th-century ladies.

This tale of randy Tom (the persuasive David Ayers) wooing and eventually winning Sophia Western (the winning Angela Gaylor) to the chagrin of his nasty brother-by-adoption Blifil (the always superb Jeremy Webb) remains bristling with interest during the first act, which ends with “Sir!”, a Mozartean musical sequence that couldn’t be improved upon. If this Tom Jones has a problem, and it does, it’s that there’s too much remaining story to pack into Act II. As a result, the show becomes rather wearying before the jovial conclusion. Having done so well with Act I, the creators ought to be able to trim the bloated second act and make the entire enterprise an awe-inspiring firecracker — but no one should be allowed to subtract even a syllable from the role of Lady Bellaston as long as tall, imperious Candy Buckley is playing it.