Off the Wagon

Yippity-da-who-rah . . . oy.

Golly, the set didn’t really wow The Phantom. The staircase to heaven loomed ever present tucking the trembling actors into the lights and well out of ear-shot just as it did in Sound of Music and the new scrim was cool but barely noticeable with the snowy mountains in the back. The painting was a little reminiscent of every high school production ever done. Disappointing.

“I get to really go wild, “ the Rumson character said. But, and perhaps thankfully so, he didn’t go half as annoyingly goofy as he did in Oliver!, in spite of his claims to do so. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) his facial expressions were tempered by an overly broad-rimmed hat so he had to tilt his face skyward in order to see what was in front of him. It was a very cool hat, for working cattle on a bright summer day, but all wrong for theater. We couldn’t see his face. Rumson does manage a large and demanding role but he does so as if no one is in the room with him. He must rehearse for hours with only his dog as a scene partner. And that darn dog never gets his lines right. Well his singing is just fine and he does have a mighty good time up there. All in all, a good quality for community theater. Perhaps he can work on that odd expression which he confuses for delighted enthusiasm.

And then there is the romantic lead. Sweet Cheeks is nothing if not consistent. Consistently blah. This is a pretty human in an “O.C./WB” kind of way, but he has very little personality on stage. Sure, he can sing loudly. I almost jumped out of my seat when it was discovered that the vein had run dry and he blatted out a huge MARIAH!!!! But he has very little chemistry with his love interest. And his “Hispanic” accent was dreadful and insulting. His dark makeup made him look like a Doonesbury character. Sweet Cheek’s singing is so patently untrained, as the night wears, (and I do mean that literally) wears-on his voice gets so strained that there are nuggets of tortured squeaks that just makes The Phantom cringe. The Year of this Pretty Boy is over and we certainly hope and pray for the lad to move on to bigger and better things. Go forth, go on now, spread the joy and our best wishes go with you.

This play was chock-full of males, so hats off and a Yee-hah! to The Theater Company for rounding them all up. The kid who played the pimp was a pleasant surprise, he was adorable and despicable all at the same time. He understood that this was supposed to be entertaining. The kid who did the Irish accent was full of personality and The Phantom even enjoyed the “Pre-Garth” singer with his toned down headset and cool cowboy hat. You have to admit that these Texans know a good shape to a cowboy hat. No cheesy, peacock feather adorned, died straw abominations for our true sons of The Republic. No sir. Let’s leave those to the tourists in Austin. And speaking of true sons, even though The Phantom does not like to use real names (protecting the innocent and all that stuff) I must mention Chaz because everyone already knows he’s not so innocent. Chaz has been doing this since the dawn of time and his contributions to community theater in BCS are to be applauded and lauded. He always turns in a solid performance and his portrayal of “Salem” was one of those performances, unfortunately we completely lost him in bad blocking during the “Bill of Sale” scene.

Although treated poorly by the book, it was the women who really shined. An obvious bright point was the young lady who played Jennifer Rumson. She sings beautifully and is always a pleasure to watch. She has a tough job trying to squeeze emotional involvement from Young Sweet Cheeks so we bow in gratitude to her. And she taught us all that once you learn to read and write your clothes will fit better. I did not know that.

The girl who played Elizabeth is fun when she is snarky. She should always play the character role, it’s much more enjoyable than any milquetoast ingenue and she does comedy very well. Comedy is tough.

“Cherry” overcame the obnoxious French accent to be a very good madam, full of energy and she had curves in all the right places. But the Gay Mormon was my absolute favorite, perhaps because the irony was positively delicious.

Happily, the orchestra wasn’t half bad.

But where the heck was the directing? The first act was relatively strong but the second act was full of awkward blank spots, dead air if you will. The blocking was at times stiff and made very little sense. The Phantom furrows his prominent brow at that blasted runway thing that sticks out into the audience leaving three or four rows of patrons craning their necks around to look right up the butts at the poor-unfortunate stuck out there. How the director manages to come up with new and improved ways to get the actors off of that thing is beyond me. Apparently TTC has no rules about not letting actors have their backs to the audience. At one point Rumsom was speaking to some mystery individual off-stage. The Phantom felt hurt, like we were no longer privy to this story.

The scenes between the lovers Julio and Jennifer were so boring as to be positively somnambulistic. And Lord-have-mercy-on-us-all for having to sit through another “ballet sequence” The only people who enjoy watching that dancing are the relatives and then only blood relations at that. The step, the blended and even most cousins are tortured just like the rest of us.

The second act was not a rinse and repeat. It fizzled.

This show managed to be insulting to Hispanics, women and men at the same time. The opening number had disturbing innuendo where all the men, of all ages, were evidently lusting after the lone Jennifer, a child of 16. “Old Steve”, shame on you! You’re a grandpa, 19 times over if the program is to be believed. It goes on to have some random guy named “Sam” spew his bigoted remarks about “those Mexicans.” The offense was tempered by the fact that he delivered the lines badly. Then there is the whole story arc of buying and selling women. No wonder it bombed on Broadway with only the musical genius of Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood to revive this stinker. Lerner and Loewe dropped the ball with this show.

The Phantom doesn’t mean to be so harsh. The efforts of these intrepid volunteer entertainers is to be applauded. The rough criticisms are only born of the fact that TTC has done well in recent productions and The Phantom offers that this last show of the season just didn’t measure up.

But the burning question of the night was “What happened to the children? We saw a handful of kids at the beginning of the show and then they were gone. The Donner children? One shudders to think what could have happened to them in those rough mountains.

Other than that it, was great.

The Phantom