Review: Wonderful Town, an Encores! Revival of an Encores! Revival

New York City Center Encores! rarely does repeats. In its 31-year history, it has only revisited three shows: Fiorello!, Call Me Madam, and now Wonderful Town. Kathleen Marshall’s 2000 mounting of the Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green musical comedy, which starred Donna Murphy, became the organization’s second Broadway transfer (my, how times have changed), and it was an effervescent delight of a revival that I still look back on fondly.

After needing a last-minute replacement for Michael John LaChiusa’s Wild Party, it’s not surprising that City Center would return to a reliable chestnut like Wonderful Town, with an all-hits score and a quirky, touching script (by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov). But where Marshall’s staging intrinsically understood the delicate line between the show’s sincerity and camp, this 2025 edition, directed by Zhailon Levingston (recently of Table 17 and Cats: The Jellicle Ball), slips off that tightrope from the very beginning and never regains its footing.

Wonderful Town is based on stories by Ruth Sherwood and a play by Fields and Chodorov called My Sister Eileen. In it, two sisters from Ohio—Ruth (Anika Noni Rose) and Eileen (Aisha Jackson)—move to New York in 1935 with big dreams. They land in a dingy basement apartment in Greenwich Village that used to be occupied by a prostitute and that is now constantly shaking from underground explosions as the subway gets built.

Ruth has dreams of being a writer, but as magazine editor Robert Baker (Javier Muñoz) points out, her stories don’t feel natural. Meanwhile, Eileen wants to make it as an actor, and she’s so alluring that she has to fend off the whole of the NYPD. There’s a conga line of Brazilian sailors, an illiterate football hero posing as an intellectual (Fergie Phillipe), and everybody manages not only to make their dreams come true, but also to somehow fall in love.

In short, Wonderful Town is a trifle, a cartoon that might have faded into obscurity were it not for Bernstein’s brassy score and the astonishingly witty lyrics by Comden and Green, which still outshine much of today’s musical theater. (“Good neighbors, good neighbors, remember our policy; good neighbors, I’ll help you if you just help me!” remains a masterclass in wordplay, and its only rival is “Why, oh, why, oh, why, oh/why did I ever leave Ohio?”) The songs are excellently played by Mary-Mitchell Campbell’s orchestra, performing the symphonic Walker-Ginzler-Ramin orchestrations. And while I wouldn’t normally tell anyone how to spend their money, the chance to hear this score played live is reason enough to buy a ticket.

I’m disappointed to say that’s the only reason to see this production. Levingston has his actors playing it for real, and it just doesn’t work: the jokes fall flat, and the performances are lost in a sea of clever costumes (the ever-reliable Linda Cho) and busy, but not show-stopping, choreography (by Lorin Latarro and Ayodele Casel). Everyone is a certain degree of miscast, and while certain actors make it work better than others (Phillipe, in particular), Rose is glaringly ill-served by a role that was written for a dame, a complete opposite type than what she is.

But it’s unquestionably well-sung, and like I said, perfectly played. I just wish this production did for newcomers what Marshall’s did for me.