Eloise Kropp in Dames at Sea at the Helen Hayes Theatre, New York. Picture: Jeremy Daniel
Dames at Sea continues at the Helen Hayes Theatre, New York.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Ruby, the heroine of Dames at Sea, is a small town tap-dancing innocent who steps off a bus in New York in the morning, gets cast in a show and through happenstance, gumption and talent becomes a Broadway star that night. For Dames at Sea itself, it has taken considerably longer to make it to the Great White Way.
The show first set sail in 1966 at the now-legendary Caffe Cino, a coffee house-cum-performance space in New York’s Greenwich Village; it later moved to an Off-Broadway run, chalking up 575 performances. Since then, there have been numerous revivals in New York and elsewhere, including a London production and one for television. It was only recently (22 October) that the opening night curtain rose on its Broadway premiere. Attesting to this long haul, George Haimsohn and Robin Miller, who collaborated on the book and lyrics, and Jim Wise, the composer, are all deceased.
As winningly directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner, this new production revels in its Off-Broadway roots, putting a talented cast of only six through their seemingly inexhaustible paces. The Broadway infusion is more evident in the players’ plentiful wardrobes designed by David Woolard, the sturdy sets by Anna Louizos, and the expansion from the original two pianos to a nine-member orchestra, led by music director Rob Berman, a long-time sparkplug of the Encores! series at New York City Center, playing orchestrations by the esteemed Jonathan Tunick.
But even with the Broadway enhancements, the show remains a compact, affectionate and somewhat giddy take-off of Hollywood’s backstage musicals ground out as escapist fare during the Great Depression of the 1930s by Warner Brothers and mimicked by the other studios. The movies themselves with their mindless plots and elaborate production numbers were almost self-parodies, and as I’m sure you recall, 42nd Street, the 1933 flick that set the paradigm for such movies, was itself transformed into a flashy Broadway musical. By now, the genre is a pretty familiar one, but Dames at Sea remains an easy-to-take entertainment.
The score, in particular, is tuneful and catchy, fitted with clever lyrics that nicely echo the hit tunes of the 1930s. It’s amazing how familiar some of the melodies are without actually plagiarising the template.
The cast is uniformly swell, as they used to say. Eloise Kropp, as Ruby, may not have the ineffable uniqueness that lifted Bernadette Peters to stardom in the original production, but she has a winning charm and hoofs like a trouper. She handles her lilting ballads with just the right amount of emotionality – including the particularly endearing ‘Raining in My Heart’, which has become sort of a signature song for Peters.
Lesli Margherita appropriately piles on diva attitude as the haughty prima donna Mona Kent. She makes a full-course meal of the character’s overwrought torch song,
‘That Mister of Mine’, and at the performance reviewed, her every exaggerated gesture seemed to draw guffaws from the appreciative audience, many of whom, I suspect, may well have appeared in their own local mountings of the show.
Completing the distaff side of the company in fine fashion is Mara Davi as Joan, the good-hearted chorine and chum who urges Ruby on to greater heights. The long-limbed Davi brings stylish definition to Skinner’s tap choreography, and belts out her numbers with a grand Broadway brassiness, especially the Act I cheer-up finale, ‘Good Times Are Here to Stay’.
As for the guys in Dames, Cary Tedder scores high as Dick, the songwriting sailor who captures Ruby’s heart and ignites Mona’s lust. His dancing takes on a balletic grace, and his vocalising is the essence of pleasant. Equally impressive in pretty much the same way is Danny Gardner, playing Danny’s sailor pal and Joan’s long-time flame.
Taking on the double roles of the harried Broadway producer Hennesey and the pompous but fey naval captain Courageous, John Bolton contributes an admirable dose of character song-and-dance man know-how to the proceedings.
In kidding the old-time movie musicals, Dames at Sea doesn’t exactly keep its winking in check. Some of the cliched showbiz lines and adages that clutter the script may have lost their laugh-getting potential. But like that same old Martini you may drink every night before dinner, the show remains intoxicating, how much so, depending on your own individual mood.
Ron Cohen
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