Barrington Stage revives The Human Comedy
By CAROLYN CLAY | July 7, 2006
NEGLECTED GEM? Well, Galt MacDermot at least has a way with rhythm and melody. |
Galt MacDermot’s 1968 Hair didn’t just conjure the freewheeling, militant idealism of its era; it came to embody it. And in the 1984 musical The Human Comedy, which is based on the novella by William Saroyan, MacDermot was still letting the sunshine in — despite the plot’s focus on a boy whose after-school job is delivering death notifications. This time out, MacDermot, collaborating with librettist William Dumaresq, dips into the well of all-American innocence, adapting Saroyan’s 1943 story (which became a 1943 film starring Mickey Rooney) set in the small, symbolically named town of Ithaca, California, where 14-year-old Homer Macauley drinks in the folksy wonder of life while dispensing telegrams informing folks that their loved ones have made the ultimate sacrifice. But that’s not the only pall associated with the musical; The Human Comedy lasted just days on Broadway in ’84 and has rarely been revived. As America once again deals with the numbing daily news of war casualties, Barrington Stage Company honcho Julianne Boyd sets out to remedy that. And given MacDermot’s fondness for the big bright orb, it seems fitting that her energetic, heartfelt staging (at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield through July 16) should feature 1970s pop star Debby “You Light Up My Life” Boone.Boyd is loaded with savvy, and it would be nice to report that The Human Comedy is a neglected gem. But the musical is puzzling in tone. Saroyan’s wry if sentimental account of small-town life in wartime, from the brothel-like Bethel Rooms to the Parlor Lecture Club (both visited by Homer in his perambulations for Postal Telegraph), is redolent of Thornton Wilder. But the musical, which draws on idioms from jazz and swing to gospel to early rock and roll, is more like American Bandstand gussied up with uniforms. And whereas Saroyan’s writing has a colloquial elegance that mixes quaint naïveté with perceptive irony, Dumaresq’s libretto for this through-sung piece (which did begin life as an opera) is doggerel from beginning to end. If there’s a “When I’m forlorn” to rhyme with “soul unborn” or a “fighting a war” to glue to “not sure what for,” Dumaresq will find it.
MacDermot, on the other hand, has a way with rhythm and melody, and some of his tunes are irresistible. A presence called Beautiful Music has the job of extending the community connection forged by Saroyan into a musical one, and the gospel melodies assigned to Cheryl Freeman as this interconnective Muse soar. The musical is ever mindful of the role of the town as character; the ensemble is everywhere. And there are some daring juxtapositions, like the snappy girls’ number “I Let Him Kiss Me Once” with “Killed in Action,” Homer’s awkward first call with tidings of death. The best number is a duet for Homer and his soldier brother, “Dear Brother Homer,” sung a little off unison by Bobby List, as a credibly sensitive and confused Homer, and hunky Heath Calvert, as Marcus, in which Dumaresq’s cliché’d rhymes are hard to hear and the emotion is in the music.
Related:
Collage of culture, Poster children, Jobriath | Jobriath + Creatures Of The Street, More 
- Collage of culture
Peace, love, and good vibes — with bells on. Add to that a festive atmosphere, a social conscience, and a psychedelic rock score, and you have a fair summary of the epochal musical Hair , which Brown University Theater is staging through March 19.
- Poster children
The freshly painted mural built on the wall outside Anthony’s Italian Kitchen is pretty convincing.
- Jobriath | Jobriath + Creatures Of The Street
Jobriath was all the things the early Bowie either wanted or pretended to be: all-American, a bona fide musical-theater performer, and unabashedly gay.
- No sex please, we’re bookish
A not so funny thing happened on the way to the Huntington Theatre Company’s planned run of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum : the lead actor accepted a part in a Broadway show.
- After the fall
The evil is boiled down in the revival of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and that makes for a stew far tastier than Mrs. Lovett’s human-hamburger pies.
- That’s amore
The Light in the Piazza is an ambitious if old-fashioned musical.
- Maid in America
Caroline, the African-American maid of Caroline, or Change , spends most of her days doing laundry in a basement in Louisiana, circa 1963.
- Players and painted stage
It seems the fall theater season was shot from a gun this year, barely after the Labor Day picnic baskets had been packed away.
- Simple gifts
If there’s a God in show-biz Heaven, she’s no doubt relieved that the folks at Cape Playhouse in Dennis had enough theatrical smarts to mount Guys and Dolls without messing around.
- Music and fashion
Since it turns out that the Evil Empire actually does suck this year, let’s start this summer preview off with Joe Boyd’s famous Faustian bargain
- Killing grounds
Chekhov wrote to a friend while composing The Seagull , first of his Big Four, that he was writing a “comedy with three female parts, six male parts, four acts, a landscape (a view of the lake), much talk about literature, and five tons of love.”
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, More
, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, War and Conflict, Musicals, Thornton Wilder, Barrington Stage Company, Julianne Boyd, Mickey Rooney, Galt MacDermot, Less
