Theatre in Review: Allegro (Classic Stage Company)

	Claybourne Elder. Photo: Matthew Murphy

Among the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Allegro is the ugly duckling, a promising original that never managed to shed its feathers and take flight. One of only two R&H shows not adapted from a novel, play, or film, and one of the team's rare disappointments, it was an ambitious, innovative flop--some say it was the first concept musical--making it the kind of show that musical theatre fans obsess over. Among other things, the young Stephen Sondheim worked as a production assistant on it, perhaps planting a seed that would lead to Company, Follies, and Pacific Overtures.

As we continue to ransack the musical past for lost classics, it was inevitable that somebody would turn to Allegro. The job has fallen to John Doyle, who won acclaim for his vest-pocket stagings of three Sondheim shows--Company, Sweeney Todd, and Passion (the latter at CSC)--featuring performers who double as musicians. Doyle has done something similar with Allegro, slimming down a show that was pretty gargantuan at birth. The 1947 original featured a cast of 78, complete with Greek chorus, an abstract set with platforms on multiple levels, and an early use of projections, all to tell the story of Joe Taylor, Jr., son of a small-town doctor, who grows up hoping to emulate his father, only to end up rich and lost in the big city. Doyle streamlines Hammerstein's libretto from two acts to one, eliminates the show's ballets, and, once again, deploys a cast of actor/musicians. In this case, however, the cure may be worse than the disease.

Doyle's set, with a painted wood backdrop depicting a prairie stretching out into infinity, makes a nice impression that continues when the cast appears, looking great in Ann Hould-Ward's '30s-era suits and dresses, selecting musical instruments from the arrays of them located upstage right and left. (The orchestrations, by Mary-Mitchell Campbell, based on Robert Russell Bennett's originals, are heavy on strings, including guitars, and they often have a pleasingly countrified sound.) The opening scenes, depicting the birth of Joe, Jr. and his early childhood, are charmingly staged, with everyone taking part in the tribute to toddlerhood "One Foot, Other Foot." Claybourne Elder, gifted with an angelic smile and a profile right out of an old Arrow Collar ad, is immediately winning as the younger Joe.

But even here there are warning signs. With its extra-theatrical devices and fond view of old-fashioned values, you may be put in mind of Our Town, but where Thornton Wilder saw the skull beneath the skin of small-town life, Hammerstein was busy stitching up homey samplers suitable for hanging in grandma's parlor. The characters are cutouts from Norman Rockwell illustrations, except for Jenny, Joe's sweetheart, who is so grasping she may as well have dollar signs pasted on her forehead. Jenny (a sulky, gimlet-eyed Elizabeth A. Davis) keeps trying to get Joe to drop medicine for a career in her father's coal and lumber business; when that fails, she connives to get him a position at a top hospital in Chicago, where he spends most of his time on cocktails and golf games with the trustees.

With the predictability of a Sunday sermon, Joe marries Jenny, and, with that damned chorus egging him on every step of the way, he suffers in the big city, until, discovering his wife's infidelity and fed up with a life of ministering to wealthy screwballs, he finds the strength to go back home. I'm not used to giving away so much of a play's plot, but Allegro lacks a single moment of surprise. From the first downbeat, Joe's trajectory can be predicted several scenes in advance.

Indeed, this is the R&H musical where the corn really is as high as an elephant's eye. When Joe prepares his move to Chicago, he frets about leaving behind one special patient, a sickly young man who wants to be--wait for it--a priest. (You can bet the rent that, having been abandoned by Joe, that kid is a goner.) Later, he stands by in horror when Denby, the hospital's head, fires a nurse for lobbying for an eight-hour workday as opposed to 12. Denby practically smacks his lips while doing in the poor woman--who, by the way, just happens to be the girlfriend of his youth. "There's nothing wrong with people just because they have money or live in the city," says Joe at one point, but don't you believe it. The choice here is between a wholesome rural Eden and a gilded urban Sodom. The show also contains some of Hammerstein's most pedestrian lyrics ("You are never away/From your home in my heart/There is never a day/When you don't play a part") and, for once, Rodgers' melodies match him in banality.

Doyle's staging takes an already abstract, two-dimensional piece and flattens it even further. His choral staging is perfectly fine for the early scenes, but his handling of the book scenes is self-defeating. Half the time, the characters look out at us, not at each other, when engaged in conversation; face-to-face confrontations are usually staged with actors far apart on opposite sides of the stage. The line readings frequently had a deadened recital tone; it sometimes sounds like we're listening to the first table read of the script.

Given the extensive cuts that have been made, some of the play's relationships barely seem to exist. This is especially true of Joe's friendship with Charlie, his medical colleague, and with Emily, the nurse who loves Joe from afar. Emily, who alone recognizes that Joe is being eaten alive in Chicago, is arguably the most interesting character, and she gets the best song, the ironic, yet tender, "The Gentleman is a Dope," which features a minor-key melody reminiscent of Rodgers and Hart. It is nicely delivered by Jane Pfitsch--but why is it done with her all the way upstage on the piano, with Joe, seated downstage, staring at her. Not only does he block our view of her (for at least part of the audience), why is he there at all? The song is meant to represent her private thoughts. The score's other standout, the title tune, describing the frantic, fruitless pursuit of satisfaction in the city ("Brisk, lively/Merry and bright/Allegro!/Same tempo/Morning and night/Allegro!") is staged with so much meaningless movement that the lyrics are lost.

Throughout, Elder's performance goes a long way toward keeping us interested in Joe, and solid support is offered by Malcolm Gets as Joe's father and Jessica Tyler Wright as Joe's mother; the two of them do nicely by "A Fellow Needs a Girl," another of the score's brighter moments. Alma Cuervo is her ever-professional self, both as Joe's grandmother and the grandest member of the Chicago hospital board. I'd also enjoy a chance to experience Pfitsch in a more rewarding role.

There are some perplexing design touches, too. Jane Cox's lighting is often beautiful, but creates some very odd, and distracting, pulse sequences during the title tune. And Dan Moses Schreier's sound design is marvelously sensitive on the reinforcement front, but there is an overuse of reverb in the dialogue scenes, along with the sound of a beating heart to constantly remind us that this is a show about cosmic matters.

Allegro would probably benefit from some tightening, but Doyle's cuts are so deep that they damage the characters; his other changes don't really address the musical's manifold problems. No musical theatre fan will want to miss the chance to hear the Allegro score performed live, but this is a production that, I submit, offers little of interest to a general audience. The question, How do you solve a problem like Allegro?, remains unanswered.--David Barbour