Mame - The Muny

I’ve often been critical of the shows that The Muny produces, but due to the recent backlash over another’s review of this week’s Mame, I feel that I need to preface this one with a brief discussion about reviews.

I think that it is entirely appropriate to critique the structure of a play or musical in a review. After all, the audience witnesses a plot unfold as well as watch the actors recite their lines, so to discuss the faults in how a show is written is, in my opinion, totally fair game. What is unfair is judging a performance based on how the show is written. There is a difference between what is written and what is presented and the reviewer is obligated to separate the two. In my reviews I have tried to do this; that has usually come in a caveat that may begin with something akin to: “despite these structural problems, the cast does very well.” Just as it’s unfair to judge an actor’s performance against how someone else did it (truly the hallmark of an amateur reviewer), it’s equally unfair to judge an actor’s performance against how well the book is written. Best Actor Tony Awards ™ are graded separately from Best New Play awards, and reviews should follow suit.

However, the review in question doesn’t even do that. The reviewer didn’t even try to look at how well the actors did with the book – and in my opinion, they did pretty well. Is Mame different from traditional book musicals? Definitely. Does that make it inferior? Only if Ionesco and Beckett are also inferior.

I think that this show can be difficult to sit through because it lacks a linear plot – or any plot really. It’s not as plot-less as, say, Cats, or An Evening of Richard Rodgers; it’s episodic and the only thing binding it all together is love. That classic love that makes musicals so bubbly – here between Auntie Mame and nephew Patrick – guides the audience and it is how their peculiar relationship changes in time that creates all the other action. Some songs leave me wondering why they are there (including the first one, “St. Bridget”) but what musical doesn’t have a few throw-away songs? Jule Styne once told a young Stephen Sondheim that not every song needs to be a showstopper; perhaps it’s time we were reminded of that.

Dee Hoty, in the title role, can’t sing or dance really but she still has her comic flair and uses it to her advantage. I think she throws a few lines away, but some of them are obviously there for a cheap laugh, and I can’t figure out how better to play it myself. In all she comes off as a very loving – if very unorthodox – aunt-turned-mother, and that the audience gets that is more important than perfecting the imperfect lines.

Christian Probst plays young Patrick Dennis with the adorable energy needed for the part. He also plays well with Hoty (and vice versa). Unfortunately we do not get him for the whole play – he must grow up, but we are graciously left with Colin Donnell as the older Patrick. In the middle of a song at the beginning of Act II, he grows ten or so years, and in the meanwhile goes from the top of his class to the bottom. He also looses his youthful innocence and sense of adventure and falls in love with the snooty Gloria Upson – a young lady whose entire life has been top-drawer. Why or how any of this is unexplained, of course. We’re supposed to accept that, I suppose. Donnell does, and that’s probably best, since explaining too much of this show wouldn’t improve it much.

Georgia Engel plays Agnes Gooch, Patrick’s nanny. Ms. Gooch should be young at the beginning of the play, so that she can still get pregnant in the middle of Act II, but I suppose that since conventional story-telling is out here, so are the rules of human reproduction. Oh well. Engel has the simple nurse act down, and her absurd age just compounds the humor of the whole pathetic situation.

Francis Jue, playing Ito the Japanese butler, plays up Asian stereotypes, just as he did when he originated the role of Bun Foo a few years ago in Thoroughly Modern Millie. It’s not at all politically correct, but PC humor isn’t really funny anyway. Besides, I can only imagine how much they make fun of Americans in Japan. I hope they’re laughing at us, too.

Beth Leavel plays Vera Charles, an actress and friend to Mame. For comedy, there is probably no more relationship more crucial than theirs. Leavel works well as Hoty’s counterpart, and gets a few good numbers out of it.

The dance in this show is particularly bizarre. Hoty, as I mentioned doesn’t really dance, so instead the ensemble picks up most of the slack. It’s not as bad as Karen Morrow as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, but it is frustrating. Some of the dance numbers didn’t need to be there, such as the dance break in “Open a New Window.” It’s a shame that the Muny doesn’t – or can’t – orchestrate numbers for itself, because that would be another great opportunity to make things work for today on its own stage. Also, the ballet danceurs in the “Man in the Moon” sequence didn’t have very good turn out, and some females had their legs bent. Can’t they do ballet? Or, are they trying to play up to humor? Whatever the objective was, it looks trashy.

The rest of the ensemble did pretty well. The Men’s Ensemble particularly has several parts in different songs, and their enunciation and tone were not lost on these ears that lament that pop-ification of Broadway’s sound.