"WONDERFUL TOWN:" Resonances

Encores! wrapped its season recently with Wonderful Town, the urbane urban classic, circa-1953, from Bernstein, Comden and Green. The show got to me, for very different reasons, the first and best being: I adore Wonderful Town and was glad to savor it once more in a nifty Encores! production.

Encores! has done Wonderful Town before, though, and quite well. Why tackle it again, when so many other deserving musicals still await Encores! resuscitation? I’m thinking Seesaw especially — the 1973 Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields, Michael Bennett & Tommy Tune minor-key masterpiece about this great and grimy metropolis. Come on, Encores!

Wonderful Town glows with Golden Age NYC period patina, yet beneath that surface so much about it retains contemporaneity. The story — two young sisters from Ohio land in the city to launch their lives and careers — could be happening right now; even in our darkening Trumpian epoch, New York is still young ambition’s launch pad. The obstacles that Wonderful Town throws at these kids remain obstacles today: can’t afford an apartment (uh, huh); can’t break through to the big-time without getting slapped down (no kidding); get hit on (too much).

Wonderful Town addresses all of this head-on, with songs of hipness, humor and romance, as well as melodic brilliance, courtesy of Leonard Bernstein. These are Wonderful Town’s verities. So, what did the new Encores! production bring to these verities? Something that I, for one, found potentially intriguing: casting the two leads as women of color. This could have thrown some new light on Wonderful Town that the show would have stood up to intriguingly, I believe. What happens to young ladies of color in NYC who come to conquer the town? Think about it in the context of Wonderful Town’s action: They try to find an affordable apartment and get taken in by an unscrupulous (albeit charming) landlord. They get rousted by a cop, who thinks they’re soliciting from their street-front basement apartment, when they’re really just trying to get some sleep. The sociable younger sister attracts men (including cops!) all over town (and brings a couple of them home for dinner). The literary elder sister can’t sell her stories to a magazine editor who dismisses her writing as immature (but likes her style, nonetheless). Desperate for work, she takes a job tummeling for a Village-Vanguard-like nightclub and is taught how to “Swing!”

There were opportunities here for roiling Wonderful Town’s familiar surface with some racial undercurrents. This Encores!’ production, though, proved strictly color-blind, with no extra resonances (yes, like Audra McDonald’s Gypsy, which we will not get into now). Perfectly cool but, to me, a missed opportunity.

So, how was Wonderful Town actually? — not my fantasy version, but in reality? Well, it was wonderful, of course. The two actresses cast as the Sherwood sisters — Anika Noni Rose as droll, sage, older Ruth, and Aisha Jackson as her adorable sister, Eileen — were stellar, playing their well-worn parts smartly, while injecting welcome inflections of contemporary pop/soul melisma into their showtune interpretations. Fergie Philippe (also color-blind cast) — as the Sherwood’s neighbor, the former college football hero, “Wreck” — was simply delightful, a showstopper both vocally and in his sharp, yet understated comic timing. His big, satirical number, “Pass the Football,” about college jocks handed everything but an education, was delivered with, perhaps, a knowing racial wink. I think. But maybe that was in my head too.

Wonderful Town’s score — one of Broadway’s most lyrical, theatrical, yet symphonic (courtesy of “Lennie”) — was played expertly by a full complement Encores! Orchestra of 28 pieces; just as Bernstein originally wrote it, but after the show’s initial Broadway run, rarely, if ever, got to hear it played again.

And then there was “Conga.” Wonderful Town contains one of the funniest dance numbers in Broadway history, the Act One closer: “Conga!”, which every Ruth Sherwood I’ve ever seen (or heard about) has always brought down the house with. The set-up is simple: Ruth is sent on a wild goose chase to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to newspaper interview a bunch of rich Brazilian naval cadets in town on shore leave. The original script pointedly and repeatedly refers to them as “coffee millionaires” and “admirals,” (not sailors, the central characters in Comden, Green and Bernstein’s other NYC musical, On the Town). These “admirals” speak no English and only want to learn to dance the conga, ultimately dancing their obliging interviewer right off her feet. The number is innocent and sure-fire. Every time I have seen it performed, the cadets have appeared in dress uniforms and have seemed decorous toward Ruth, even as they dance her into disarray. That’s what makes “Conga!” so funny, the line between formality and out of control; it’s an indelicate balancing act.

Encores!’ director, Zhailon Levingston, chose to costume these “admirals” as seabees in sailor caps. This proved game-changing. “Admirals” tossing a lady around in dance can be funny; sailors manhandling a lady in dance feels more like assault, I’m sorry to say, and this feeling was magnified by choreographer Lorin Latarro’s increasingly literal, sexually visceral couplings and mis-couplings. The number, for me, was pretty much ruined, and I could sense audience discomfort all around. For what purpose? Reinterpretation, I guess (talk about extra resonances). Reinterpretation is what Encores! always allows for. It’s one of the reasons we keep coming back.