On the Town – Lyric Theatre, New York

Jay Armstrong Johnson, Alysha Umphress, Tony Yazbeck, Elizabeth Stanley and Clyde Alves in On the Town at the Lyric Theatre, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus

On the Town continues at the Lyric Theatre, New York.

The fall slate of new Broadway musicals has started on a deliciously high note with the revival of the 1944 treasure On the Town. Director John Rando and choreographer Joshua Bergasse have mounted this Second World War frolic with respect, affection and verve.

Its tale of three sailors cutting loose on 24-hour shore leave and their hunt for female companionship in New York City manages to feel both freshly borne and rich with the import of a classic. The show’s creation was, after all, the first Broadway collaboration of a group of talents headed for the Broadway pantheon: composer Leonard Bernstein; the lyric/book-writing duo of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and choreographer Jerome Robbins, whose ballet Fancy Free inspired the whole thing. The rambunctious spirit of their then youthful genius ignites the entire company.

This revival, which was first done at the bucolic Barrington Stage Company in Massachusetts, retains much of the Barrington cast. The trio of sailors – Ozzie, Chip and Gabey – are again portrayed by Clyde Alves, Jay Armstrong Johnson and Tony Yazbeck. Their well-defined personas cavort nimbly, winningly and sometimes breathtakingly across the mammoth stage of the Lyric Theatre (the oft-renamed venue became part of the UK’s Ambassador Theatre Group last year). Alves and Johnson are the funny guys, wise and naive, respectively, while Yazbeck as the dreamier Gabey brings hefty singing and heart-felt depth to some of the score’s most memorable ballads, ‘Lonely Town’ and ‘Lucky to Be Me’.

And the women the sailors hook up during the course of their adventures are portrayed with equal flair: Elizabeth Stanley melds  operatic grandeur with free-wheeling comic style as the society gal-anthropologist Claire de Loon, while Alysha Umphress is a dynamo as the sex-starved taxi driver Hildy Esterhazy. Belting out such numbers as ‘Come Up to My Place’, Umphress seems to have absorbed the essence of the original Hildy – Nancy Walker – into her own formidable presence.

When Alves, Johnson, Stanley and Umphress blend their vocal talents late in the show in the quartet ‘Some Other Time’, it is nothing less than sublime. Was there ever a more poignant rendering of love cut short by time?

A casting coup has Megan Fairchild taking on the role of Ivy Smith, the girl who has been crowned Miss Turnstiles in a monthly contest sponsored by the New York Subway System (that’s the tube, in case you were wondering). When Gabey views her picture on a poster, he is smitten, and the search for her makes up the show’s central plot line.

Fairchild, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, makes a captivating Broadway debut. She brings an appealing vulnerability to her character, and extra authority to Bergasse’s choreography. Her climactic pas de deux with Yazbeck, invested with all of Robbins’ passion, is heart-stopping

Also notable is the work of Broadway veterans Jackie Hoffman, depicting with her usual uninhibited comic aplomb Ivy’s alcoholic music teacher and other denizens of Gotham, and Michael Rupert as Claire’s continuously jilted, stuffy but good-hearted fiancé.

One can only imagine how this show may have lifted the mood of war-weary New Yorkers back in 1944. However, the production nudges the imagination by starting things off with an audience singing of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, while an image of the  American flag dominates the stage. (It’s the flag, by the way, with only 48 stars representing 48 states, as opposed to the current 50. Alaska and Hawaii had not yet achieved statehood in 1944.)

There are moments, though, it should be noted, when the show’s age is not revivified. On occasion, the vintage silliness of the Comden-Green book wears a bit thin, and Rando’s sprawling staging, as it pays heed to such musical comedy traditions as a Keystone Cop-like chase in front of the scene curtain while scenery is changed, looks a bit disconnected or perfunctory. Not in  the least because Beowulf Boritt’s sleek and shifting scenic and projection designs hardly need this old-time ploy.

But these are minuscule flaws, when measured against the chance to hear Bernstein’s galvanising score (from the ear-filling opening baritone-bass workman solo, ‘I Feel Like I’m Not Out of Bed Yet’ to the final reprise of the signature ‘New York New York’)  played with fervour by an orchestra of some 30 musicians; the chance to see full-throttle re-creations of Robbins’ glorious dances, and to exult in the optimism and high spirits of young people looking for and finding love, however fleeting, in a world caught up in monumental war.

Ron Cohen

www.onthetownbroadway.com

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