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Photos courtesy of Caught in the Moment.

Could you imagine anything dumb-bah?

Why did I have to succumb-bah?

-Ira Gershwin

The definition of the act of reduction in cooking is relatively described as this: “The process of thickening and intensifying the flavor of a liquid mixture such as a soup, sauce, wine, or juice by boiling.”

However, the all-powerful Wikipedia also notes that: “While reduction does concentrate the flavors left in the pan, extended cooking can drive away volatile flavor compounds or even juice from the meal, leaving behind dryer, less juicy food without essential flavors.”

Over-reduction is a fitting comparison to the issues that plague the current production of ‘S Wonderful, the new musical using the music of the legendary Gershwin brothers and now on stage through April 20 at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach.

A show that features 40 classic songs by the Gershwin brothers in the course of one performance would already be a bloated, over-cooked evening—but the show’s creator and director Ray Roderick doesn’t stop there. He also tries—and “tries” is the key word here—to stuff five different mini-plots into the mix. He somehow does this without creating a single identifiable or vaguely believable character while managing to avoid finding any idea that is not dripping with cliché. In all its triteness, it does little more than pander to sentimentality and unfunny “bits” as old as the Gershwins themselves.

SWonderful04Mounted by Musical Theater West as the second-to-last show of their 61st (!) season, ‘S Wonderful attempts to give a long list of classic, beautiful Gershwin songs a new home. Unfortunately, that new home is more suited for assisted living than anything inspired or in alignment with the great songs that serve as this new “musical”’s source material.

A (shorter than you think) list of things you will experience at a performance of ‘S Wonderful:

  • A series of five vignettes, each set in a different decade and location but performed out of chronological order and without much, if any, necessity to be set in the time and place where they are;
  • Clip art projections that include Matrix-like letters in flight, computer animated;
  • American flags waving, a brick wall, the deep reaches of outer space and more;
  • Lots of awkward dancing on chairs with wheels;
  • People holding up and carrying around roses but refusing to mention anything about their significance to the song they or singing or the infrastructure of the production;
  • The longest chain on a pair of handcuffs known to man;
  • Two gazelle-like ensemble members who are only in the show to bring on furniture, do a kick in the air and exit;
  • A man in wedding-dress drag;
  • A song performed in cartoonish Austrian attire;
  • A song performed in cartoonish Cuban attire;
  • Choreography and dramaturgy that calls to mind the film “Waiting for Guffman” more than it does any classic musical;
  • A female falling through a mirror into another dimension where suddenly she is a Hollywood Starlet;
  • A whole act based on a guy listening to some Gershwin songs on an iPod.

If any of these scenarios sound like fun to you or you love the music of the Gershwins so much that nothing can reduce that love, then perhaps ‘S Wonderful is for you. For the rest of us however, I will let this list stand as a warning.

The cast all have strong voices that are appropriate for the material, yet not one of them can elevate their stock characters into anything beyond that. Rebecca Johnson comes the closest however, as a makeup artist who gets a chance to film a kissing scene with a Hollywood star.

It should be noted that the sound design was on point and that the orchestra, lead by Musical Director Bret Simmons on the piano, was unquestionably the performance’s greatest asset. It would have been easy to get lost in the beautiful melodies underneath this pretense-heavy show if everything on stage was a little less distracting. Sadly, very few of these classic songs claw their way out of the muck they sit beneath, leaving the audience to fend for themselves.

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The Gershwins were some of the most important composers of popular/theater songs in the first half of the 20th century. Aside from penning many of the greatest standards and show stoppers of all time, George also wrote “Rhapsody in Blue,” a work that established him as a serious composer with chops in the worlds of both classical and jazz music. Together, the Gershwins also wrote the groundbreaking American opera Porgy and Bess (on stage soon at the Ahmensen Theater in Los Angeles), a work that single-handedly changed the state of opera and musical theater forever. They were masters of their craft and their work unquestionably deserves to be heard and celebrated by everyone.

I am truly tired of people taking great works of music and using them in a juke box musical format. As with Let’s Misbehave earlier at the ICT this year, it is gimmicky to re-purpose classic material in this way and present it in a manner that belittles its greatness.

There are a ton of great Gerswhin musicals that never get revived, thirteen or so, that I would have much rather seen on the stage of the Carpenter Center.

I have a feeling that mounting any of those old shows would pull the same sort of crowd that ‘S Wonderful is enjoying, and maybe even get musical Theater West the attention of some die hard musical theater afficionados from a wider geographic area. I am also fairly certain that enjoying these songs in the simplified setting of a cabaret or a straightforward review would also make for an enjoyable evening. Either option would be better than what is displayed here.

Musical Theater West is one of the few theater companies in the United States that is dedicated purely to the preservation and performance of musical theater. While I find this fact invaluable, I also wish that at least once a season they would step outside the box and offer up something we can’t find elsewhere but deserve to see.

Swonderful05They have the right idea with their Reading Series (one-night concert performances of lesser-seen musicals), but I wish they would take at least one valuable chance per season on their main stage. Whether that be a fully mounted revival of a rarely seen classic like the Gershwin’s own Of Thee I Sing or a contemporary piece that is slightly more controversial such as Next To Normal (on stage at Cal Rep shortly) or even The Light In The Piazza (recently seen at South Coast Rep). Even in the depths of Orange County, The La Mirada Theater for the Performing Arts One has found a way to balance both crowd-pleasing and more progressive productions in their season.

Musical Theater West is a company that can draw a musical-loving crowd that would be willing to take a chance with them.

In the future, I would hope they would opt for a contemporary or seldom-seen classic musical more along any of those aforementioned lines, than one that feeds on its source material without providing any proper nutrition of its own.

“Who could ask for anything more?”

I could.

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