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WPCNR STAGE DOOR. By John F. Bailey. December 3, 2004: Mr. and Mrs. Westchester, your holiday show has arrived. The trolley from Meet Me In St. Louis, the revival staging of the 1960 musical Broadway hit and 1944 movie, stopped officially for an 8-week run at the Westchester Broadway Theatre Thursday evening, and cast the spell of the optimistic American Family of one hundred years ago when family was close, husbands and wives worked things out, and young men wore vests and suits and would not kiss unless they were engaged. By the end of the evening everyone is singing along, and wishing they could go back to this gaslight era.
OPENING NIGHT DINERS OBSERVE THE GOOD OLD SMITH FAMILY BACKYARD IN OLD ST. LOU. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.
The 2-½ hours fly by. The creeky old and marvelous book (by Sally Benson) Meet Me in St. Louis makes you want to sing along, gets you to smile, lets you feel in love, remember your old family holiday dinners, feel sentimental, smile, and let the holiday magic warm your heart once more.
The Singers
And what singers: MMIS has the perky, belting little redhead, virtuous, virginal, mischievous and believable, Kristin Maloney as Esther Smith. The Esther role was iconized by Judy Garland in the 1944 movie. Always a tough act to recreate.
Maloney steps right up to the plate. She contraltos the brassy style, throaty moxie and vivid, smash enthusiasm the “signature songs” of Judy Garland require.
In her trifecta of terrific songs in ACT II, Maloney just nails the “The Trolley Song,” rolling out the long holds, getting higher and higher, and crescendos terrifically.
She spreads her wings, duetting and getting slung around by her beau, John Truett, the hunky Boy-Next-Door, played by Kyle McDaniel as they sing “You Are for Loving.”
She brings tears to cynical critics’ eyes and melts the audience with Christmas magic with the holiday classic, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. This was the song that Judy Garland sang to child star, Margaret O’Brien in the movie original in 1944. The two 2004 troupers, Maloney and Kimberly McGuire delivered and brought tears to this curmudgeon’s eyes.
She sings to one of her spunky little sisters, Tootie, played by Kimberly McGuire. And she sings to her. Something not all leading ladies do. I commend the diminutive Ms. McGuire, a former “Annie” in Westco’s Annie, who stayed in character terrifically in this scene while Ms. Maloney sung to her on Christmas Eve. You moms and dads out there are going to love this moment in the show.
The Return of John Raitt
Mr. McDaniel (think a young John Raitt), as Truett, Esther’s beau, (they were called beaus in those days), holds his own with Ms. Maloney, and creates a real innocent young lover electricity between them. McDaniel wheels her around effortlessly in his arms like John Raitt used to do with his leading ladies in his heyday. He’s on his way and McDaniel and Maloney handle their duet beautifully. You believe it.
McDaniel conveys the wonder of what redheads can do to a young man when he delivers Over the Bannister and the Diamonds In the Starlight number, when he contemplates Esther leaving for New York while he stays in St. Louis.
I liked his rendition of this lovesick ballad that lyrically creates exactly how a great girl makes you feel stars become diamonds in the starlight. Well, you’re going to hear it because well, you’re going to see the show right? He’s a leading man – the right age. Though I will say Esther (as played by Ms. Maloney), and Truitt (played by Mr. McDaniel) are a little older looking than 17-18 year olds.
Their boy-girl romance comes off though, and he matches Maloney’s confident joy in his love for her during this song with confidence and that sense of great feeling a man feels when he’s got the girl. You hear it in his voice and hers.
Da Kids
Kids? MMISL has four of them. WPCNR saw Kimberly McGuire as Tootie Smith, and Marissa O’Donnell as Agnes Smith Esther Smith and Rose Smith’s little sisters.
W.C. Fields once said about acting that you should avoid sharing the stage with children and dogs.
Tonight was no exception because Ms O’Donnell and Ms. McGuire were little scene stealers recalling Our Gang kids of 30s movie fame, in their ability to win your hearts, make you laugh, and make you remember when you were a kid again, or when your children were kids. Joanna DeRosa plays Agnes and Mikie Sakanaka play Tootie in alternating performances.
Even W.C. Fields Would Have Loved Them: Kimberly McGuire, left, at the Cast Party, played Toody Smith in MMISL on Opening Night, and her partner Mikie Sakanaka, right will play Toody Friday night. Marissa O’Donnell and Joanna DeRosa play Toody’s partner-in-misdemenors, Agnes Smith. Ms. McGuire remembered that she got started in theatre after she saw a show as part of her mother’s day care. “I watched a show that was a (Westco) workshop, and that got me interested in it.” She said she had a lot of fun in her evening’s performance. She said her favorite part in the show was performing in “The Cake Walk,” with Ms. Maloney. Ms. Sakanaka and Ms. McGuire do four shows a week each. Ms.Sanaka said she got started in theatre in Japan when she was taking piano lessons. Ms. McGuire and Ms. Sakanaka, her father J.P. said, learned their parts in nine days of rehearsal. Photo by WPCNR CastCam.
Family Therapy
The show takes you through about a year in the life of the typical extended family of the turn of the last century, the Smith Family who are all excited about St. Louis hosting the World Exposition of 1904.
Young ladies Esther and Rose are more interested in young men. Ms. Maloney and Jennifer Evans as her sister Rose (though a little old to be teens), create the teen and upper teen roles nicely getting their laughs and connecting with their situations. The audience is witness to the anxiety of young love in Rose’s long distance crush on Warren who lives in New York, and ride the roller coaster edge of Esther’s infatuation with the new boy who has moved in next door, John Truitt.
Crisis Management
Ms. Maloney’s first big solo is The Boy Next Door. She gets the wistfulness and warmth this song demands just perfectly that you’ll remember how you feel that old thrill when a new girl or boy moved into your neighborhood. But, lest you get the wrong idea, that is as risqué as this show gets.
This is so much a family show, you feel you want to have dinner together with your children tomorrow night. Not one unwholesome thing in this show, mind you. Not one.
The Original Family Sitcom
The Smith Family household could have been a pilot for every television family sitcom ever created from Father Knows Best, to My Three Sons, to The Addams Family to Frazier. You have the humorous Irish maid played by Nora Mae Lyng who keeps the household running. She sings a wonderful Mermanesque Danny Boy to cheer up Rose, whose phone call from New York has been thrwarted by father. Instead the makes the sisters cry. (This is a very funny moment in the show.)
Jeanne Lehman as Mrs. Smith looks like Jayne Wyatt in Father Knows Best, who tolerates her head-of-the-household husband’s pompous attitude. Mr. Smith is played by Bob Freschi. Freschi and Lehman team for the wonderful duet, You and I at the end of the First Act that presents an oh-so-corny but believable bond of husband-wife affection. Love is corny.
Doing a great turn as the wise Grandpa is Gene Jones, who has one of the great funny lines in the show to cheer up a heartbroken Esther when she does not have John Truitt to go with to the “last dance in St. Louis.” Grandpa, dressed in his tuxedo and tales, offers to take Esther to the dance because, “Suits are Like Men, They like to step out.”
Everybody steps out and cuts a rug in this show.
Producers Bob Funking and Bill Stutler (also the owners of theatre), have got a great cast here. Everybody is believable, chimes in on cue, and you’ve got a family that cares for each other. There’s melodrama, heartbreak, music you know, and a well-knit cast that engages one another.
Great work by the ensemble of singers too, all elegantly dressed in spiffy, sporty bowlers, boaters, vests, bustles, corsets.
Highlights
MMISL recreates an era of dances when they actually danced and you see them in showy production numbers that will entertain the youngsters. Heck, it entertained the movas and shakas on Opening Night. (2-minute ovation with bravos)
You see what they actually did to Skip to My Lou. You’ll dig the Cake Walk, the Castle Walk. The very entertaining Under the Bamboo Tree dance when Ms. Maloney as Esther dances and duets with child prodigy, Ms. McGuire as Tootie, will bring a smile to your faces.
When Esther plays a trick on her sister’s rival at “The Last Dance in St. Louis” Ms. Maloney is given very funny comedic bits with different dance partners that she carries off with Ms. Garland’s flair for slapstick.
Did I neglect to mention that good old good one, Meet Me in St. Louis, Louie? I did. You’ll love that too.
Special Effects
How much special effects can you do in a show in a restaurant and theatre-in-the-square setting? You get a simulated trolley with lighting, and very believable sound effects. You get snow. You get fireworks. You get Halloween night. You even get the World Exposition of 1904.
Kudos go to Andrew Gmoser, Lighting Designer who creates a Halloween night, a sky of diamonds and a full moon, while making it snow on stage. The set does not depend on rotatating stages and Broadway hydraulics, but creates with one of the best set designers, the audience’s imagination. If the acting and performing is there, the set comes to life, even if it’s only a chair.
Two Guys From Madison Avenue
Producers Bob Funking and Bill Stutler (also the owners of the theatre, starting it in 1974 when they were both in the advertising business), have got a great cast here. Everybody is believable in their roles, chimes in on cue, and you’ve got a family that cares for each other. There’s melodrama, heartbreak, music you know, and a well-knit cast that engages one another. Credit that to Director and Choreographer, Drew Scott Harris.
THEY KNOW WESTCHESTER THEATRE: Owners, Producers, Founders of Westchester Broadway Theatre in 1974, Bill Funking, left, and partner, Bill Stutler, celebrate another Opening Night at the Cast Party. Funking told WPCNR, “The whole idea (of WBT) originally was one musical, followed by a comedy or a straight play, a mystery, or another musical. After about three shows like that we discovered nobody wanted to see the non-musicals, they wanted the musicals, so we switched to all musicals.”
Funking advised WPCNR that Westchester still wants musicals: “Look at what’s going on Broadway. Right now the world and the United States wants pure entertainment. They don’t want to think about anything. Look at what’s coming in, you have the ABBA show, The Beach Boys Show, an Elvis Presley Show. These are shows coming into Broadway and it’s just pure entertainment …but it’s what you’re also familiar with.” The first musical at WBT 30 years ago was Kiss Me, Kate, Funking remembered. Photo by WPCNR PartyCam.
The WBT production gets it all right in this theatre-in-the-square venue: live music with just the right “East Side, West Side” feel to it recreates the vaudeville and ragtime feel of 1903-04, where all the women were virtuous and high-busted, all the men dressed in suits, vests and high collars even in 100-degree heat, and everything was possible.
The 8-person ensemble (under the direction of Milton Granger), offstage does not overplay the singers, but rollicks, supports, and buoys the performers on every number – not an easy thing to do in a small venue. As the producers at Westchester Broadway Theatre always seem to do they create just enough illusion to make the audience imaginations complete the illusion, and Meet Me In St. Louis takes you back in time.
Looking for a great show for the whole family for the holidays? MMISL is the one. It made me want to go out and pick out a Christmas Tree.
Meet Me In St. Louis plays the WBT in Elmsford through January. Tickets include dinner (WPCNR recommends the trout almondine), and information is available at www.broadwaytheatre.com. Or by calling 914-592-2222.
Awaiting Another Night, Another Show: The closing set, featuring the great cyclorama of the St. Louis World Exposition of 1904. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.
