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WPCNR IN THE BALCONY. Review By John F. Bailey. July 15, 2005: If Westchester County has one venue where you can put on the ritz, go back in time when white tie was sublime and love trouble, money trouble, and crime trouble could be tapped-danced and sung away, it is Westchester Broadway Theatre.
Cue the flashy blonde belterress, Paige Price driving the imcomparable Cole Porter lyrics of You’re The Top, Blow, Gabriel Blow, and Friendship — cue a company that pours vintage Broadway wine like Anything Goes, into sparkling seltzer, smartly delivering the tasteful, still-funny-after-all-these-years one liners and Marx Brothers high-jinks that make Desperate Housewives and Sopranos fans and 20-somethings laugh, you’ve got Westchester’s summer hit, Anything Goes.
PAIGE PRICE and her Angels, reprises Ethel Merman’s Reno Sweeney role with gusto, style, panache and sex appeal, intricately building the end of the first act show shopper title tune that brought down the bravos with applause ringing into intermission. Photo by John Vecchiola, Courtesy Westchester Broadway Theatre
Anything Goes, WBT’s summer escapade, sends you back to when going to a show was your turn to paint the town red, your time to dine at a little bit of the old Stork Club, too, before you take a cruise on the SS America, stroll the decks, tap your feet to the dancing feet and listen to the lyrical cocktails of the immortal Cole Porter.
As WPCNR has noted in past reviews, WBT lives on bringing back proven Golden Oldies of Broadway recreating the escape of yesteryear and AG is no exception.
Robert Bartley as lovestruck Wall Street whiz kid, loving up Cristin Boyle, playing high faluting heiress, Hope Harcourt, singing to her It’s Delovely in an intriguing duet that Cole would have loved. Photo by John Vecchiola, Courtesy Westchester Broadway Theatre.
I tell you folks you see a show like AG and you start to cook up your own musical as you watch. Can you imagine how Anything Goes might have been created? Excuse me while I light up a Cuban cigar and tilt back my fedora.
So, listen here, Pallie. I got this great idea for a show. Wall Street boy loves uptown girl, see, she’s engaged to an English blueblood. The quail and English swell are going on a transatlantic cruise, see. But Wall Street boy just can’t get her out of his head, even though this slick show biz dame who’s a knockout – I’m seeing that lemontop Paige Price for the part, baby — is nuts for him.
Wall Street boy’s tipsy boss tells him to sell Amalgamated stock before boss sails. Wall street whiz kid goes to the ship to see his boss off, sees the girl he’s ga-ga about, and he can’t let her marry the swell. With me, Pallie? Two gangsters on the lam talk Wall Street boy to stowing away using their buddy Public Enemy Number One-who’s-a-no-show’s passport.
Meanwhile, the showbiz looker and high stepper is on the cruise. The heiress dame is on the cruise and Wall Street Boy decides to win her back, while he and the gangsters hide out aboard ship. I can get Paige Price for the part, we get Cole Porter to do the songs! Whaddaya say?
So you want to cruise the lifestyle of the rich and decadent of the 30s? Everybody wanted to back in the 30s. They longed for the life of the easy money, the tuxedo evening, the lure of the gangster. Cole Porter’s Anything Goes captures that and WBT brings it back.
The Way it Was Is Again.
Plot sound contrived? Sound difficult to follow? That was musicals in the 30s folks and you know what? It still works like a double shot Manhattan straight up with a shot of soda!
Setting that plot all up makes the first 10 minutes a little slow, but then the SS America’s big whistle blows, the company sings Bon Voyage and you know this is the start of something big because the Cole Porter standards just keep on coming.
The Beltin, Tough Talking, Good Lookin Angel Paige Price.
Paige Price as Reno Sweeney eased into the Merman role in the performance I saw. She is just a little tentative articulating all the fancy-schmancy Porter lyrics in You’re the Top, her first big number with the eager Robert Bartley in the Bing Crosby role of Billy Crocker, Reno Sweeney’s foil.
Mr. Bartley handles his singing well with Ms. Price. She dominates him, toys with him as those Merman songs were written for her to do. But the game, boyish Mr. Bartley saves himself and comes on strong in this classic answer song that has just got to be God-awful to sing.
It’s fast, requires explicit lyrical articulation of Mr. Porter’s $5.00 words. Bartley and Price will get better and better at their interplay. Hang in there, Mr. Bartley! May the syntax be with you. The couple are electric together and hey, Ms. Price is genuinely attractive, and they’ll conquer this most difficult of Porter songs.
Paige Price leading a revival on deck as Reno Sweeney, singing Blow, Gabriel Blow in Act II. Photo by John Vecchiola, Courtesy, Westchester Broadway Theatre.
The show’s a visual knockout like Ms. Price. You see it in the glamour gowns of Ms. Paige, Ms. Boyle and their bevy of dancers who make up the passengers on the S.S. America. Costume designer Brian Hemesath makes the women dazzling scene after scene, legs in stunning display, the leading men crisp, the sailors in impeccable whites. It’s the original “Love Boat.” The color of the costumes just works in visual harmony and pleasure with Andrew Gmoser’s lighting design that creates dawns and starry nights on the silvery sea.
The ocean liner set with its shimmer of sea on its cych and all-business smoke stack works. Even the whistle is genuine Pier 42. The clever creation of cabins appearing out of a wall and the transformation of the little stage into a promenade deck is believably created by Set Designer George Puello.
It’s all about the atmosphere, see?
I know the jokes are corny, but everybody laughs!
The book puts together absurd situations to set up songs, a Cole Porter musical trademark, which he used to explore the anxieties of the upper classes. Their major anxieties: money and love.
Throw in a gangster, the comic genius, Bob Arnold as Moonface Martin, a couple of Chinese guys, a moll with a heart of gold Erma, played by Linda Gabler, (who does a saucy delivery of Buddie, Beware), are the wranglers of the plot who pull off the sight gags, the absurd ruses that moved musicals along in the 30s. (The musical moves like that last sentence!)
Arnold as the gangster Moonface and Ms. Price’s Reno Sweeney really engage the audience with the buddy song, Friendship, another high moment.
And, Pallie, did I mention the dancing?
I gotta tip my fedora to that master of staged mayhem Michael O’Steen who with Director Charles Repole show Mr. and Mrs. Weschester what tap dancing is all about. When Ms. Price and the whole company come out to do the big blockbusta windup of Act I, Anything Goes, the whole stage is clattering with a staccato extravanganza of tapping, clicking flashing legs that brought out bravos, roars and spontaneous clapping from sophisticated Mr. and Mrs. Westchester.
The foist act, I’m telling you, Pallie, just knocked over the house. They applauded a minute into the intermission. Ya gotta see these kids do this material, Pal.
The slick sleight of shoe comes into play on Ms. Price’s other bigtime blow, Blow, Gabriel, Blow and their dancing makes the little stage of WBT look bigger than it is.
Corny Jokes? Yeah, Pal, but you gotta hear the way the audience laughs.
I mean, they have sight gags. Nobody laughs at sight gags anymore, right? They do! Pallie, they do!
Give you an example: guy and gal drop a bottle over the side of the ship. Then they go over to the rail in a few seconds. A splash is heard and the audience breaks up. A cartoon gag. I tell ya, the old jokes work, you gotta see it.
This guy who plays the Wall Street tycoon, Don Bovingloh as Elisha Whitney, he does a great drunk, and the audience laughs. His Eli Yale routines on old Yale songs yuk the audience up, and you know, he even gets laughs out of a stuffed bulldog. Who have I forgotten? The mother of course, Lorraine Serabian as Hope’s mother, milks great laughs from her hilarious pursuit of a rich husband for Hope.
Bob Arnold the veteran WBT performer gets more mileage out the Moonface Martin gangster role than any actor has the right to expect. He makes a machine gun funny. (Ya gotta see this gag.)
I tell you, Pal, you know the jokes that are coming, but you still laugh. I can’t believe it. This company really loves the material, you can tell.
Everybody works in this cast.
What’s there not to love? You got Paige Price the Harlowesque sweetheart in the Reno Sweeney role who plays that wisecracking showbiz broad to perfection. No man makes a fool out of her. She commands the stage, is just right for the sheaths and slinky gowns (I long for the days of the sheath dress!) that define her as the show goes by. Not every woman can wear a sheath like Paige Price can.
Price is good even when she’s not singing. She is particularly believable at showing piqued sensual interest and intrigued foil to Lord Evelyn Oakleigh’s transformation into a man she could love in Act II. (Hint: It’s “The Gypsy” in him!). She delivers the demanding Blow, Gabriel Blow, cruising with her lusty contralto on the chorus over the accompaniment of the entire cast. What a joyous delivery she gives this classic!
Two Swell Young Lovers
You got handsome leading man, Bob Bartley, conveying that puppy dog infatuation with the untouchable Christin Boyle as Hope Harcourt. Ms. Boyle’s beautiful soprano shimmers with Mr. Bartley on It’s DeLovely which has a great comic bit introducing it.
The two combine beautifully too on All Through the Night. Now I never have liked this song, but the way in which Mr. Bartley and Ms. Boyle make this an airy earthy dreamy sequence set against twinkling stars made me listen and feel the longing. They sung me into it.
Ms. Boyle’s little solo, Goodbye Little Dream Goodbye is another gem from the tiara of this jeweled crown of Broadway in this classic. (I think Walter got his start writing like that). Ms. Boyle’s pathos and command of this little short piece has just the right echo of regret, “love is not all peaches and cream,” she sings.
The Cole Porter lyrics and original book by P.G. Wodehouse & Guy Bolton supplemented by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, deliver great satire of their time that works just as well today. They feature a couple of fedora-d reporters stalking celebrities. They spoof the rich’s fascination with celebrity even Public Enemies. (For those time-warp challenged there used to be, before “America’s Most Wanted,” a “Public Enemies” list, which enjoyed great romantic fascination in the 1930s.)
Juicy Bits
There’s an hilarious ship’s brig scene when the gangster and Crocker plot to get out. A sendup of 1930s revival meetings is an extravanganza with Ms. Paige ready to revive you in a knockout ministerial robe that she drops to the stage with electrifying results.
One of the most demanding scores you can play in theatre (a Cole Porter score) is played live flawlessly by Musical Director John Bowen leading his seven players through the complex Porter music never overplaying, simply projecting under the singers.
So have you got it Mr. and Mrs. White Plains?
Anything Goes, is 71 years old and is “Still the Top.” It plays Wednesdays Through Sundays through September 2. You get dinner at WBT’s own “Stork Club” included in the price of a ticket. Forget Broadway, pal, who needs the hassle when you can see what Broadway used to be as good as new, and the parking is free.
Your own Stork Club. Photo, WPCNR StageCam
With WBT emcee Steve Callaran personally welcoming you to the show with his patter and elegant official jive, it’s a little like the Stork Club, your table/seat tastefully lit, and the expectation of something big. Cole would love it. Photo by WPCNR StageCam
For Ticket Information contact, 914-592-2222, or get full information at the theatre’s website, www.broadwaytheatre.com.
Just one of those things.
As my companion and I schmoozed at the after-the-show party, a tradition at every WBT Press Night Performance, we got to thinking about really good Anything Goes still is.
Press Agents, Actors, Actresses, Cast, Damon Runyan Characters and Mr. & Mrs. Westchester mingle at Opening Night Party. Photo by WPCNR StageCam
We agreed on how the old jokes, the barebones book and screwball musical plot of rich persons, lowlifes, and charmers, gorgeous legs and elegant costumes still plays and wins hearts today. Is it the Cole Porter songs, is this the real turtle soup or merely the mock, or simply critic shock?
It’s because Westchester Broadway Theatre works on every little detail of the show, delivering a different look and experience on its very tiny stage every show and reverently treating their great material.
They even have a recording of the great Cole Porter himself singing Anything Goes at the overture. That’s WBT style all the way, giving the theatre lover what you want, magic.
