Come summertime, when you’re sunning on the sand all day and evening rolls around, sometimes the theater equivalent of light beach reading is just what you need. Cornerstone Playhouse in Wakefield is offering such fare (through July 27), presenting two lighthearted musicals, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off and Birds of Paradise, alternating in repertory.
Both are convenient to stage, requiring little or nothing in the way of sets, and are directed by Gerald Moshell. The first, which charts the life of an Everyman, has stretches of pantomime, while the second play is nearly as off-handed as a last-minute production in a barn, as it details the trials of a community theater mounting a new play.
Stop the World is the better show and the more polished production. The 1962 Broadway hit had music, lyrics, and book by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse. Newley starred as Littlechap, whose self-centered story is traced from the beginning of the end, when he gets his boss’s daughter pregnant and has to marry her, through a selfish career full of apparent success but inner, unreflective emptiness.
Sounds like loads of laughs, right? Actually, irony keeps us amused as we arch eyebrows at his hapless plight. Littlechap wears a street mime’s striped shirt and optimistic determination. Reed keeps up the desperate momentum and, perhaps more impressively, the lower-class English accent. He also keeps him charming, a requirement for this sort of scoundrel antihero, where we sometimes have to root for him despite ourselves.
He’s backed up by a sort of Greek chorus of a half-dozen young women and an announcer (Lauren Matthias). Choreographed by Raja Kelly and Rachel Ladd, they represent everything from bustling pedestrians to clockwork-like factory workers. As Littlechap makes the best of his changing situations, his wife Evie (Ladd) keeps popping out kids and he keeps leaving the country on business. His illicit lovers include the blunt-as-a-Bolshevik Anya (Laura King) in Moscow, the all-but-goose-stepping Ilse (Meredith Thurston) in Germany, and gum-chewing Ginnie (Micah Tougas) in New York. King stands out among these cultural stereotypes, providing a sympathetic personality for the blustering stage Russian.
Anyone who has heard the soundtrack to this musical will probably find a few of the catchier songs familiar. The upbeat “Gonna Build a Mountain,” sung by Littlechap and the ensemble, is a much parodied anthem to ludicrous optimism. “Once In a Lifetime,” which he sings with one of his daughters (Jaclyn Therrien), is a gentle little interlude. “What Kind of Fool Am I?” is the best-known, with good reason, as Littlechap sings the closing song in regret for a life that may have seemed successful from the outside but has felt loveless from within.
There are other songs that make Stop the World a worthwhile experience. “Lumbered,” which is a Britishism for getting suckered, sandbagged, trapped, is our non-hero’s hymn to self-pity, and Reed sells it like he means it. “Mumbo Jumbo” is a finger-snapping demonstration of the nonsense politicians spout, sung as Littlechap successfully runs for Parliament.
If the above sounds like a show that revolves entirely around one person, it does. And Reed — in action just about every moment and singing in a dozen of the 19 numbers — pulls it off quite well.
Birds of Paradise has music and book by David Evans and lyrics and book by Winnie Holzman (thirtysomething, My So-Called Life). You probably haven’t heard of it, never mind seen this show, for good reason: as backstage musicals go, it’s no 42nd Street. The behind-the-scenes bickering and ultimate conciliation of the Harbor Island Players just don’t have the stakes of the grown-up versions.
Here Reed is playing Lawrence Wood, a professional actor and former member of the troupe who is visiting to give them some advice. The stylized presentation of Stop the World suited Reed better, since here he comes across as stagy at the beginning. Everyone settles down by Act II, as Wood has agreed to direct — and drastically trim — a musical written by one of the company, Homer (Jeff Church).
The resulting show-within-a-show is a surreal adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, set during the last Ice Age. The high point of the whole enterprise is a song-and-dance number, “Penguins Must Sing,” choreographed by Julia Strong, and entertainingly delivered by Ben Rose, Rachel Ladd, and Patrick Greene. (The second funniest bit in the show involves a misunderstanding over whether the Birds of Paradise are feathered or floral.)
It’s way easier than a beach book. It’s read to you and even acted out.