Theatre in Review: Cagney (York Theatre Company)These days, you don't have to be a star to have a vehicle -- at least, if you're willing to create it yourself. The actor Robert Creighton, having noticed his resemblance to James Cagney, was the driving force behind this musical biography of Hollywood's favorite tough guy. You can see why: Creighton has the bantam profile, the cocky personality, and the dancing skills down pat. And Cagney, the musical -- thanks to choreographer Joshua Bergasse -- has any number of dazzling tap sequences, including a medley of George M. Cohan songs performed with such force that you worry that the talented company might drill right down into the theatre's foundations. At such times, Cagney, the musical, has a snap in its step and a glint in its eye that makes it all but irresistible. What Cagney doesn't have is a workable book. As the lives of Hollywood icons go, Cagney's wasn't especially rich with incident. A Broadway regular by the age of 26, he became a Hollywood star five years later, with only his fourth film, and he never looked back. He was married once, stayed out of trouble, and avoided the spotlight. When it was all over -- by his choice -- he retired to his farm and raised horses. In terms of providing grist for a librettist's mill, he has little to offer. Peter Colley's book trots out all sorts of ideas, none of which bear fruit. There's Cagney's longtime animus to Jack, first and foremost of the Warner Brothers, who reportedly frustrated the actor's efforts to grow beyond tough-guy roles, but there were worse movie moguls, and, really, being an unappreciated movie star isn't exactly the height of suffering. A fair amount of the second act focuses on Cagney's attempts to produce his own films, but having to face a string of box office performers does not a drama make. The show struggles to make something of Cagney being investigated by Congress' Dies Committee, a proto-Joe McCarthy witch hunt that, in the early '40s, sought out a fifth column in the film colony, but this development quickly proves to be a nonissue: The actor is interviewed and cleared of any suspicion. There's an entire number, "How Will I Be Remembered," in which Cagney frets over his legacy -- at which point, I wanted to say, that's all you've got? So weak are these efforts at ginning up some kind of conflict that it's no wonder that, time and again, everyone involved throws up their hands and goes into their dance. The show returns constantly to Warner as the source of Cagney's troubles; the studio head is given so much stage time that one occasionally wonders why the musical isn't named after him. But Cagney, the musical, would make a stronger case for this conflict if it had a firmer grip on the realities of golden-era Hollywood. In the opening number, "Black and White," Warner introduces some of the stars that he made famous, including Bette Davis and...Greta Garbo. Really? Garbo was the most cossetted star at MGM, the glossiest of the studios; she surely never went within a mile of Warner Brothers, a relative sweatshop devoted to cranking out hard, fast, and punchy pulp fictions. And while it's true that, for most of his career, Cagney felt typed as a mobster, almost from the get-go he turned out comedies like Hard to Handle and musicals like Footlight Parade; by 1935, he was playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, co-directed by none other than Max Reinhardt. (He should have tried his luck at a Poverty Row Studio like Republic, where he would have been forced to wield a tommy gun in perpetuity.) Furthermore, the musical never really decides if Warner is a satanic figure, purchasing souls at the lowest possible price, or a buffoon out of a vintage screwball comedy. There's a fairly lame setup in which Cagney, having won good notices in a play, is summoned to Hollywood by Warner as a replacement for John Barrymore, who has abandoned Beverly Hills for Broadway. That's like bringing in Lou Costello to replace Laurence Olivier; the net effect is to make Warner look like an idiot. It also leads to a scene in which Warner cackles over critical pans for Barrymore's Hamlet -- a strange turn of affairs, since Barrymore's Hamlet was the triumph of a lifetime. Warner is also given a handful of feeble Sam Goldwyn-style quips: "I know I said I wanted a spectacle, but, dammit, I wanted an intimate spectacle!" Neither are the songs, some by Creighton, some by Christopher McGovern, the show's strongest suit. "Black and White" gets the proceedings off to nicely sardonic start, and the eleven o'clock number, "Tough Guy," in which Cagney, making a comeback as the mother-obsessed mobster of 1949's White Heat, ruefully admits he can never shake his image, has its moments. Otherwise, they tend to pale next to the abundant serving of standards by Cohan, whom Cagney won an Oscar for impersonating. Still, when Bergasse and his talented company take over, Cagney becomes the engaging entertainment its creators must have envisioned. In "Warner at Work," the movie mogul puts an entire squadron of screenwriters to the task of grinding out a new Cagney vehicle; the scribes tap while seated, the noise of steel on stage mimicking the sound of typewriters. Cagney and his future wife, Willie, have a delightful high-kicking vaudeville routine, "Falling in Love," which, joined by the rest of the company armed with a set of luggage, expands into a raucous travelogue of life on the road. Cagney and Bob Hope take part in an electrifying challenge tap, as they did in the film The Seven Little Foys. These and other numbers, including the Cohan medley, confirm that Bergasse, whose Broadway credits include On the Town and Gigi, is one of the most inventive choreographers around. And, under Bill Castellino's direction, the entire cast sparkles. Creighton starts out slow, having to deal with a weak establishing number, "Mean," and a flat comedy routine in which, in his stage debut, he impersonates a Carmen Miranda Brazilian-bombshell type (a good 15 years before Miranda became famous), but once past these obstacles he comes into his own, capturing the character's self-doubting qualities as well as his knack for holding a grudge; he also mimics Cagney's distinctive dance style -- the way he curved his legs and held his arms out, a kind of human comma leaping around the stage -- and complicating it with some fast moves of his own. Jeremy Benton is affable as Bob Hope and as a vaudeville producer who gives Cagney his first break; he makes an excellent partner in the galvanic Hope-Cagney tap faceoff. Danette Holden is warm and appealing as Cagney's mother, although she overdoes it a bit as Warner's put-upon secretary. Josh Walden is appealing as, among others, Cagney's devoted brother, Bill. As Cagney's wife, Ellen Zolezzi comes on strong, but then has little to do but stand by her man, offering such comments as, "You're loved -- all around the world!" As Warner, Bruce Sabath is so assured that you wish his material was better and the script more consistent about his character; still, he does more than all right by his numbers, and whenever he can he inflects his lines with sly touches of his own. In general, this production would benefit from a slightly larger cast; as it is, there are some laughable incidences of doubling. An early scene set in a Manhattan worksite features an extremely unlikely (for 1919) instance of female construction workers; later, Sabath, covering a small role, appears as the oldest private in US Army history. The rest of the production is filled with clever touches. James Morgan's set frames the action in a sleek art deco proscenium with a surround of posters from Cagney's films. A series of deco panels on stage often serves as a surface for Mark Pirolo's projections of half-built skyscrapers, vaudeville bills, various Hollywood deities, and crowds of servicemen at a USO show. Amy Clark's costumes confidently and attractively carry the characters across several decades. Brian Nason's clutter-free lighting makes good use of sinister uplight when Cagney faces his Congressional investigators. Janie Bullard's sound design is tastefully discreet. In a funny way, Cagney reminded me of Yankee Doodle Dandy, the film in which the star played George M. Cohan. The film is a hash of Tinseltown clichés, most of which have little or nothing to do with its subject's life, but whenever there's a musical number, it's golden. Cagney is a rickety vehicle at best, but everyone involved knows how to sell a number -- and that's not nothing. -- David Barbour 
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