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WPCNR Seen on Opening Night. Theatre Review by John F Bailey. February 28, 2011:
Mark Zimmerman and Laurie Landry as Michael and Agnes beginning their married life are every couple. Falling in love? Fallen in love? Gotten married? Raised children? Had lowlights, highlifhts, fights, make-ups?
I DO I DO is the show for you as Mark and Laurie play the stage at Westchester Broadway Theatre. They are not Brad and Angelina, Bogie and Bacall. They are refreshingly real as stage lovers, with such great chemistry, you root for them at the WBT revival playing through March 20.
Zimmerman as Michael is bumbling, awkward, pompous and really knows how to say the wrong thing at a sensitive time, like all we hubs, and loves his wife, (as we all do, of course).
Ms. Landry (Agnes) is impressed with him, annoyed with him, knows how to bring him off his high horse, always forgives him (well, almost always). Through fifty years of the Michael and Agnes story, the couple demonstrates this coming together, growing apart, back together, reacting and changing as the passages of matrimony are gingerly traversed with lines funny to new lovers, old lovers, former husbands, wives, and those married a long, long, long, long, long time.
As the overture swells to Dearly Beloved, house lights dim, Westchester Broadway Theatre is throwing a wedding. Who doesn’t love a wedding? WBT gets the affair off to a great start, even though it is just a wedding on the stage. with the always delicious WBT entrees it’s a reception already! When Ms. Landry throws her bouquet to the audience, you’re in for a ride that makes you sad and happy, thoughtful and happy, laugh with shocks of recognition, and nod in heart-warming hope and nostalgia.
I Do I do plays your heartstrings—dusts off the wedding album, opens the scrapbook of memory and plunges into a marriage as new as a real wedding. You make your way from the fanciful title song, I do. I do followed by Together Forever for 2 1/2 hours plus intermission.
There are the wedding night jitters, highlighted by Michael’s gaffe, when he tells Agnes, “Your youth is over.” How often have I made remarks of similar stupidity? I thought to myself when he uttered that one.
The stage couple of Zimmerman and Landry duet fabulously on “Good night” and make-up for the first time.
After a successful marriage night, Michael sings I Love My Wife, waking her and they dance together. It is a scene that subtlely paints the delicate building of oneness that characterizes the beginning of a marriage.
Never you mind, now, you cynics who say I Do I Do is based on the old bromide play, The Four Poster ( a bed is in every scene), and therefore is outdated. I Do, I Do has remarkable wisdom to declare through its dynamic veteran pros, Landry and Zimmerman.
Lauri Landry played Marguerite in The Scarlet Pimpernel; played the Christine role in The Phantom national tour opposite Michael Crawford. Zimmerman going from dashing young swain to balding in the show, is a 30-year veteran of Broadway, performing in seven Broadway shows, including West Side Story, A Catered Affair, The Rainmaker, On the 20th Century, and Brigadoon.
The new attitude of Agnes, as a mother-to-be, captures the mindset of the expecting, charmingly when Ms. Landry delivers with Julie Andrews precision and persuasion Something’s Happened, followed by Michael’s hilarious taking her to the hospital and waiting for his first-born. Landry and Zimmerman combine again on the signature song of this opus..My Cup Runneth Over, and really sell it.
Full Critic Disclosure: I never liked My Cup Runneth Over when it was popular. Mr. Zimmerman paints MCRO with heartfelt winning earnestness of the happy young man. (I remember.)
Ms. Landry compliments his genuine wonder with her sincere sweetness and lovely contralto making me really listen to the song and be touched by the feelings conveyed. MCRO is the best song they do of the good songs you’ll hear and they put this baby over like they were a slick, orchestrated double play combination who have been playing together for years. They put you out at the heart.
You know what’s coming, Mr. and Mrs. White Plains and Mr. and Mrs. Westchester, he’s a writer and he says with the two children, “Clear all the stuff away, I have to work.”
Ahh we hit the Dry Tortugas of the marriage. Ms. Landry and Mr. Zimmerman categorize all the others’ bad habits in Nobody’s Perfect. It had steady chuckles and outright laughs from all the long-married couples (seeing the show as a special promotion on Opening Night), recognizaing how real the song was. My bad habit is the same as Michael’s – I leave socks and dirty clothes around the house.
Ahhh, then there is the affair Michael has because of his celebrity!
Zimmerman’s condescending It’s a Well-Known Fact, delivered strutting about the stage, informs Agnes how he is very attractive to younger women with his worldly writer success. He sings that Agnes, and women in her “matron station, begin a certain process of deterioration.”
Zimmerman has a little too fun much fun than an actor can have with this, giving it a Rex Harrison pompousness that many girl friends and wives may recognize and nod their heads, shake them side to side.
Agnes deals with his dabbling in younger women, by marching into the bedroom, pointing out he is “a pompous ass.” She launches into Flaming Agnes, an incendiary sexy rebuttal.
Ms. Landry rises above her middle-aged adolescent hubby in this scene with a side of her Michael is surprised to see. She says she is leaving him. Ms. Landry belts this number in corset and boa, shows her world-class legs and punctures Michael’s middle-marriage peccadillo most effectively, belting out
“Used to find her tendin’to the kiddies
Up to here in cream of wheat.
But the day her husband up and left her
That’s the day that Agnes turned the heat on
Now she flames from night ‘til early morning
While he slaves to raise the alimony
He must pay to Flaming Agnes
The fight continues. They sing The Honeymoon is Over. Agnes walks out. He runs after her they fight briefly then in the maelstrom of each other, they make-up, finishing Act One. This tender reconciliation in a crisis is poignant, emotional, and played from the soul.
But, wait, is that all there is?
No you get Act Two dealing with the rest of the marriage. Ms. Landry and Mr. Zimmerman render a final act that will charm you with its uplifting encouragement about what lies ahead. They sing Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear after celebrating a New Year’s Eve alone, ending in reprise of My Cup Runneth Over.
May I say this, ladies and gentlemen:
The opening of the Final Act is one of the strongest openings of a second act of a musical that exists. It starts fresh and moves the musical up from there, not down. It like marriage gets stronger (the premise of the play, just premise, mind you!). The chemistry of Ms. Landry and Mr. Zimmerman is wonderful as they grow and age in makeup through the production. You feel them grow closer.
Tip of the fedora to Director Richard Sabellico, called by Frank Rich, “one of the most promising exciting directors to come on the scene…the concern for drama and character is highly evident…” in reviewing I Can Get it for You Wholesale.
Making his directorial debut at WBT, Sabellico gets all you can get from these two pros. As characters Ms. Landry and Mr.Zimmerman grow in their characters, with finesse. They magically make you believe this very ordinary couple really feel for each other, becoming more one, and feeling more through the years (as it should be, when it works.) Photos Courtesy, WBT, By John Vecchiola
The children get married, and Mr. Zimmerman delivers the song every father can agree with, Father of the Bride, which begins with “My daughter is getting married to an idiot.” Yeah, you have to see this, Dads.
Empty nesting is explored (nothing new even in the last century).
Ms Landry shows her pitch-perfect, attitude-attentive instinct of structuring a ballad just right to bring tears to husbands’ and wives’ eyes when she sings, What Is a Woman? She wonders powerfully what her new role is, singing, “To be a woman can be so lonely. That doesn’t mean she is only alive when in love.”
What Is a Woman? is an emotional knockdown punch and Landry lands it, makes it sing. The way she makes Agnes grow through the show through these songs and her wifely portrayal is a very realistic orchrestrating of how a wife changes. (Of course the husband changes very little. True to form the husband does not. Zimmerman keeps his Michael the same old Michael, but a little kindlier and gentler. )
How does the marriage end? You’ll have to see the only poignant happy-unhappy-satisfying-unsatisfying and completely perfect end to a musical you will ever see.
The 1967 hit musical featuring Mary Martin and Robert Preston as leads has endured because the long-running institution of marriage has endured. I Do I Do is a primer for young couples not knowing what to expect from marriage, and a “This is Your Marriage” stroll down memory lane for those of us older marrieds out here still in it, trying to figure it out every day.
Mark Zimmerman and Lauri Landry put on a show for couples young and old. I do, I do is infinitely less expensive than seeing a counselor and you can take the spouse out to dinner, too. You can see I Do, I Do here through March 20 and on March 24, Singin in the Rain opens.
For information, go to www.BroadwayTheatre.com, or call 914-592-2222
