Revue

"I'm so pretty
oh so pretty
I feel pretty and witty and bright."

-- "I Feel Pretty," from West Side Story, by Bernstein/Sondheim

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The following is a lengthy, pretentious, and somewhat meandering review of a show I saw last night. Theatre savvy folks, enjoy; others, good luck. Or break a leg, rather.

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Saw some Sondheim last night--or rather, saw a revue of Sondheim. Side by Side. I'm beginning to loathe reviews as an entity. Now I'll say from the get-go that I saw this one for free (much of my theatre is free these days, helps to know folks) and that a friend and co-worker was in it and stole the show. I want to make it clear that I love her talent and there were some jazzing moments among the rest of the cast.

However.

The idea of a revue as a concept bothers me. Side by Side was created when some folks who liked Sondheim's music but apparently didn't want to stage one of his full shows took the easy road by excerpting their favorites out of their rightful places and string them all into a two-act show. That's a basic review of revues, really. You cut and paste and take what you want and leave all established characters and plot behind. The result is little more than an excuse to get some good singers together and hear some good songs, well-sung. (Which is the definition of a good concert, which is theatrical, but essentially lacking theatre.)

The good thing about doing this is, you can then have a little night music without A Little Night Music. You can still have an enjoyable show that includes many of your favorite tunes without the challenge and pressure of the show behind the tunes. Also, you can perform a show like Side by Side with whatever cast you have--last night, they had one man and three women (but why they kept working on their laptops and talking on cell phones in a classy bar in the nighttime, that's beyond me). You can have basically up to ten in the cast. You can do it with minimal set, concert-style, or you can do what was presented last night: You can pretend it's a musical rather than a revue. You mistake the thing for what it is not.

This is fatal. It kills the revue, the cousin to musical theatre, and it stabs at theatre itself.

Here's my deal. If you want to have a night of songs you like, fine--have a concert. If it takes the form of a revue, fine, have a revue. But don't take a revue and assign characters and contrive a plot concept that doesn't work. If you try to weave this tangled web, you end up stuck in your own muck, and the poor actors can't save it.

Musicals are essentially plays with musical interludes that allow more expression and virtuoso talent than "straight" theatre. A character can break from reality to express emotion otherwise inexpressible: "Through the majesty of song," as Mr. Burgundy says. These expressions of emotion only make sense given the plot and character established by the playness of the musical.

When you strip a musical of its plot and characters, as in a revue, you strip the songs of their emotional clarity. So when the middle-aged woman in Night Music sings, "Send in the Clowns," she can wring tears from eyes because she is both comforting and rejecting a former lover. But when the same song appears in Side by Side, the song stands on its own, in a magical kind of void that is mysterious, alluring, and captivating, if done properly. The fact that we don't know this woman's back story has a universal effect on the song, and the audience pays more attention to the music because it is in the lyricism that we discover the story. The song is a vignette, a tiny glimpse, and we can really scrutinize it, and perhaps love it.

However.

When the song is taken out of the void, exhumed through feint and finagle, the song remains confusing and the emotion expressed is dull and aimless, like the worst kind of arrow. And that's what happened last night. The temptation to take the revue and make it back into the musical is a strong one, but one which ought to be resisted at every turn. Last night, song by song, side by side, they fell short of the target. Again, I enjoyed certain moments, bulls-eyes in the storm of thundering arrows, and some songs transcended the nonsense and became stellar.

But those were thanks to the singers, not to the direction or the concept.

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I'm done.