WPCNR UP THE AISLE, STAGE RIGHT. Theatrical Review By John F. Bailey, December 5, 2008: Perhaps never has a production been so ironically timely as Westchester Broadway Theatre’s A Wonderful Life – the musical derived from the Frank Capra movie of 1946 depicting 17 years of George Bailey’s life in Bedford Falls from the prosperity of 1928 through the Great Depression to the end of World War II. Today’s economic climate makes the WBT production especially poignant and will make you feel all warm and mushy at the end with more hope than you had when you walked in.
Julie Robbins as Mary and Duke Lafoon as George Bailey on their Wedding Day. An American romance. All Photos by John Vecchioli, Courtesy Westchester Broadway Theatre.
More a “Dramical” than a musical, A Wonderful Life has strong Perils of Pauline soap opera crises one after another that affect a very real and compelling George Bailey reprised by Duke Lafoon, (who created the role when WBT first produced the show 7 years ago in 2001. You feel his pain, identify with him, and feel his joy throughout. Every man will see the Geoge Bailey within himself.
He is the perplexed everyday man who has ambitions but sacrifices them for others, a condition of life we all can identify with and he delivers frustration, a quiet nobility, a conscience, and a vulnerability as do the range of earnest but flawed characters who endearingly mesh together in this tapestry of Americana.
A Wonderful Life is Mark Twain, Normal Rockwell, Life magazine, filled with the optimism, the heartbreak, the spirit of a small town and the hope in every human being. Whether contemplating the mess of his life in a very real snowfall by the railroad track (above), or filled with awkwardness when a former love comes back into his life – you’ll know Duke Lafoon’s George Bailey. He’s you. He delivers his songs earnestly just as a George Bailey would. Not an actor bigger than life – not a superhero – he has George Bailey just right.
Lafoon’s George Bailey is complemented romantically real by the coloratura soprano (I do not know if there is such a combination, but that’s how versatile her pipes are) Julie Robbins who plays the love of George’s life, Mary Hatch. Together they play one of the more credible romantic couples I have seen on the stage, not just going through the motions of care, but you sense there is something there.
White Plains has seen Ms. Robbins before.
She stood up splendidly as Guinevere to Robert Cuccioli’s King Arthur in White Plains Performing Arts Center Camelot where her performance was a highlight of that show. In A Wonderful Life, the kid has done it again.
She is given the acting challenge of growing 15 years in the course of the show and her voice goes from tentative teen discovery to mature, sure passion, from charming the stage to delivering a persona familiar with the realityies of life with a wisdom beyond her age.
Ms. Robbins’ duet with Mr. Lafoon, when she and George Bailey first meet, in If I had a Wish wins your heart and you can see why she has him from hello, though he doesn’t quite know it yet. How their romance unfolds is quite realistic – especially their well-played meeting four years later where George and Marry sing the awkward and electric, tete-a-tete Good Night and Mary follows with a poignant Not What I Expected.
But just in the nick of time George’s old rival the Snooky Lanson look-alike, crooner Sam Wainwright played with period pizzazz by Brian Cooper bursts in with a phone call on an old candlestick phone. During this amusing interlude, George seizes Mary, they kiss and – next a wedding where the likable ensemble reprises Not What I Expected. A WONDERFUL LIFE shows and makes you feel all those moments in life that are both sad and joyful.
The story is about the sacrifices George Bailey makes because he feels he has to. It’s all about responsibility and doing the right thing. He stays home, giving up his dreams of being an architect, at request of his uncle to run the Bailey Building and Loan after his father dies. (How appropriate, a show about banks today – how timely!) There’s a lot to learn from this show about what your bank used to be about and what it used to do, besides foreclosing on you.
The show opens with caroleers in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve in 1945, a most different opening than you’ll ever see in most shows, no big blockbuster number, but it sets the Dickens’ Christmas Carol-like tone of the show. The show is a thinly disguised reversal of the Dickens classic.
Mr. Lafoon appears in dramatic spotlight – singing George’s Prayer in a life crisis, something we can all identify with these days, asking God for help, with a chorus of singers singing “Help Him find a reason to be.”
Appearing are two angels, St. Matthew played with Lionel Barrymore elegance by Robert Stoeckle, (left) who doubles as Tom Bailey, George’s father. St. Matthew assigns the buffon-like Darin De Paul (right) who plays Clarence, a 2nd Class Angel who has yet to win his wings. Clarence’s assignment is to save George from doing something rash. At this point St. Matthew then takes us back through time showing the people in George’s life. The show is much like Our Town in this respect, the Thornton Wilder tear jerker of 1951.a play we all were touched by in high school.
The ensemble really keeps this show (with a 1-1/4 hour first act) moving with not-your-usual-jump-around dances. Director and Choreographer Richard Stafford has picked a crew that acts like they know each other, and they dance with inspiration. They support George terrifically in their first big number, This Year,Europe (above) where George, graduating from high school, planning a world tour then college but gives away his money to his brother so he can go to college.
Later that day, another number, One of the Lucky Ones, dueted by Mr. Stoeckle (as George’s father) and Mr. Lafoon as George touchingly sing of the American Dream in appealing wistful lines that haunt.
Make no mistake: this show is about our dreams, our disappointments, and our spirit that we all have within – but forget sometimes — when the going gets tough. A Wonderful Life takes that spirit, finds it for us, and brushes it up so it shines. Its schmaltzy, it’s sudsy. It’s melodrama.
As Scoop the News Duck of White Plains Week (www.whiteplainsweek.com) would say, schmaltzy means “highly sentimental.” And A Wonderful Life is.
Dissolve ahead to the Bedford Falls High gym, where again, the intrepid ensemble of inspired hoofers strut their stuff demonsrtating the Charleston. I have to mention that Kendall Kelly, (in red dress with Mr. Cooper on podium by the microphone) recent grad of the Manhattan School of Music stole this number with her perky emcee role introducing the crooner Sam Wainwright amusingly “sent up” by Brian Cooper(left of Ms. Kelly). Ms. Kendall cuts a cheeky Charleston with Mr. Cooper. Her enthusiasm is natural, bubbling, radiating star quality in the chorus and she’s going to emerge from that chorus line real soon.
Mr. Cooper as the Rudy Vallee/Snooky Lanson crooner with his “hee-haw” and secret handshake with George, his wavy hair, and “closepin-on-his-nose” voice captures the roaring 20s crooner style. He could even nasal it up a little more.
Much like the Tony Roberts character of Mr. Christie in Play it Again Sam, Cooper as the show biz phoney Wainwright, provides the recurring comic moment that lightens up the schmaltz that gets so syruppy in this show. Each time the pretentious Mr. Cooper reappears on stage is a hoot. The producers put together a real team of a cast (at least they appeared as one) that “created” a town where everyone knows each other. All combine singing the signature song of the show A Wonderful Life
After George takes over the Bailey Building and Loan (no relation to this reviewer), we are treated to the emsemble’s next big moment, all singing Can You Find Me a House?
And these are just some of the highlights of Act I which closes at George’s wedding with A Panic at the Buidling & Loan where the townspeople demand their money. George who has thousands saved up for his honeymoon with Mary, rather than let his bank fail and fall to the local developer/banker/robber baron, Henry Potter (played by the Dick Cheney lookalike, William McCauley,
George gives his honeymoon money to his depositors Another sacrifice George Bailey makes. Act I ends with another romantic scene of George (Mr. Lafoon) and Mary (Ms. Robbins) on their wedding night in the old house they had admired five years previously at the high school dance. You have to love this, folks.
After intermission, as if you had not had drama enough, there is more. The big time banker in town Henry Potter, impressed with George Bailey’s work with the Bailey Building and Loan, offers to buy him out. Mr. McCauley as Potter has a moment, singing First Class All the Way.
This is a neat star turn for Mr.McCauley who promises George a world where he buys his suits on Saville Row and custom-made shirts and goes First Class all the Way. Very much like a Cole Porter “list song.”
George refuses.
The show reaches its climax when Uncle Billy somehow loses an $8,000 deposit, the day the bank examiners are coming. George is accused of stealing the money. He panics and we find us brought back to the present 1945. This crisis leads us to one of the greatest affects WBT has ever staged.
As George wanders seeking God, in snowflakes (yes, it snows in the WBT), figuring there is no hope, the midnight express is coming. He contemplates ending it all. The audience hears the train coming, thundering from behind the audience, then through it!. The bloody train feels as if it is coming right though the audience. The shrill whistle moans louder, louder like a banshee coming to a crescendo it seems, on the stage.
The train created by sound and light is so real, you want to jump out of your seat! As a person who has stood close to the railroad tracks in the Ohio night and heard the midnight Pullman special highballing to Cleveland, I can tell you that’s how exactly how it sounds. As the streaming flickering lights from the passing train windows as it passes, brilliantly done with the fade away clickity-clack of the rails has to be experienced to be believed.
Christmas Gifts: “Large and small, gilding December, Helping us remember, Bidding us recall, The Gift of Life, And the Gift of love, the Greatest Gifts of All.”
What a job by Sound Designer Jonathan Hatton and Light man Andrew Gmoser. The train scene is harrowing – one of the great thrills the WBT has produced. Train buffs will love it. Nothing is more menacing and power than a steam engine bearing down on you. And you get that experience in this show.
In the nick of time, angel Clarence pushes George away from doom, and proceeds to show George what life would have been like had he never been born. The following scenes show George how much he has meant in other people’s lives.
You listen and watch and think to this show. Iit’s not one great song after another, though the songs do hit the right emotional moods. This is not a thin book of one-liners to string together great songs. Instead the theatre-goer finds himself in the escalating narrative that drives this 31-scene show forward. (In contrast, last year’s WBT Phantom had 21 scenes). A Wonderful Life is a long show
A Wonderful Life songs are written by Sheldon Harnick (lyricist of Fiorello, Fiddler on the Roof).The music composed by Joe Raposo of Sesame Street, and You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown fame. These are grown-up songs. They reinforce the action, backed with an energetic, involved and likable ensemble.
There are 31 scenes in this show. The set is minimalist; the costuming, extravagant and accurately detailed recreating the 20s, 30s and 40s. Ms. Robbins’ hairstyles from the flapper bob to the Harlow look of the 30s to the wave of the mid 40s is a bonus. The pieces of period furniture to grace the set are just enough.
This show delivers the homespun wisdom of the movie. It celebrates the human spirit .
Still there’s the matter of how George is going to avoid jail. That I leave you to discover on your journey through A WONDERFUL LIFE. It plays through February 8 at the WBT, www.broadwaytheatre.com , or call the box office at 914-592-2268.
Producers Bill Stutler and Bob Funking should invite President-Elect Obama, Governer Patterson, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary to be ,Tim Geitner to see it – because A Wonderful Life has the only bailout plan that will work – giving people a chance.
YYThe stellar cast share billing with of course, the TONYaward-winning dessert personalty, the gracious and delicious audience favorite, Ms. Peach Melba, holding the record for the longest running dessert in a leading role at the WBT.
Westchester Broadway Theatre: where the magic is.
