Most Happy In Concert
Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Mass.
Conceived and directed by Daniel Fish
“This little piggy is the littlest little piggy but the big son-of-a-b.. hurts the most.”
According to the program, nine singers participate in this peculiar show on the mainstage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, though I could only count seven of them as seen in the finale photo below. They are performing the score of Frank Loesser’s masterpiece, a through-composed musical from 1956 based on a 1924 play that had many successful runs on Broadway, and was made into a film starring Charles Laughton and Carole Lombard. The fat, awkward, aging Italian Napa Valley winemaker is played, in this current version, by Mary Testa. In fact, every character in the show is played by a woman, and sometimes by more than one woman, or so it seems. Director Daniel Fish has wrought a most confusing rendition of this world-class classic. His team, including an off-stage band of twelve talented players, work in the darkness of the stage. It is almost never possible to locate who is singing, but when you do, you still can’t see her or them or she/they. In fact when five of them come together to sing the hit standard “Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by,” the show ventures into the realm of “The Most Happy Lesbians.”
The women listed in the program are Tina Fabrique, Maya Lagerstam, Erin Markey, April Matthis, Mallary Portnoy, Mary Testa, Nicole Weiss, Kiena Williams, and Gwynne Wood. I do not know who sang what songs, what roles with the exception of Testa who began as the Scene Two postman transforming himself/herself/Theirself into Tony Esposito, an operatic bass fit for the Metropolitan Opera House. There are four people listed for music arrangements (Daniel Kluger and Nathan Koci) and vocal arrangements (Nathan Koci and Daniel Fish) with Daniel Kluger listed as orchestrator. What they have done is alter the traditional musical settings from 1950s beauty into 2022 cacaphony and disharmony with altered tempos making exuberant Italian songs into deadly dirges and ballads into up-tempo swing numbers, all accompanied by the worst of sounds in the orchestra. Five great songs have been cut.
In addition to not knowing who was singing what roles, or from where in the cavernous Williamstown stage, there were no connectives or narration. If you don’t already know the show you would never know who was supposed to be singing, what in the book prompted the song or what it would lead to in the story. A few cherished musical numbers have been completely eliminated, and except for one brief musical interlude, the dance arrangements and dance music have been completely cut leaving only one number danced, I believe, by Erin Markey, though I could be wrong, choreographed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, who may have choreographed the hand-held microphone cords. There is also a last scene striptease in the dark so you don’t actually see it, just hear it.
Set designer Amy Rubin has employed what appears to be a left-over Las Vegas show curtain as her signature design element. It ultimately becomes a brazen prop that fans the singers exuberantly and also becomes the major costume change for most of the singers courtesy of costume designer Terese Wadden, who clearly understands motif when she designs.
The singing is good even when the songs don’t work with the voices singing. Loesser made a major teaching point in his lyric writing about male vs. female lyrics. He employed specific sounds and words that he felt identified the songs as male or female. I believe he would be both appalled and embarrassed to find his theories flouted in this way. Thomas Dunn gave us negative lighting.
This presentation is neither a good representation of a major musical nor a tribute to its creators, Loesser and before him Sidney Howard. It is a bold experiment that fizzles out on its stage leaving an impression of nothing good, nothing exciting, nothing worthwhile. And that’s the best that can be said of this musical showcase of talent. It’s 72 minutes were, and are, not worthwhile.
“Most Happy In Concert” plays on the mainstage of the ‘62 Center for Theatre and Dance at Williams College, 1000 Main Street, Williamstown, MA through July 31. For tickets and information call 413-458-3253 or go to the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s website.
