the morning line - Boneau/Bryan

THE MORNING LINE
DATE:
Friday, March 25, 2016
FROM:
Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh
Danielle Gruskiewicz, Claire Manning, Amanda Price
PAGES:
7, including this page
C2
March 25, 2016
Musical Adaptation of ‘Roman Holiday’ Aims for Broadway
By Michael Paulson
A musical adaptation of “Roman Holiday” will be staged in San Francisco during the spring of 2017, with a
planned transfer to Broadway that fall, the show’s producers said Wednesday.
The musical, which combines the plot of the 1953 film with the music of Cole Porter, has been in development
for years — an early version was staged at the Muny in St. Louis in 2001, and a reworked version at the Guthrie
Theater in Minneapolis in 2012. SHN, a theater owner in San Francisco, has agreed to present the newest
version of the show at its Golden Gate Theater starting on May 24, 2017.
The show, now with the title of “Roman Holiday – The Cole Porter Musical,” tells the story of a romantic day
spent by a princess and a reporter sightseeing in the Italian capital. The film starred Gregory Peck and Audrey
Hepburn, and Ms. Hepburn won an Academy Award for best actress for her performance.
The musical is being produced by Paul Blake and Mike Bosner, the team behind the surprise hit “Beautiful: The
Carole King Musical,” which has been running on Broadway since late 2013, and is also playing in London and
on a national tour.
The book is being written by Kathy Speer, Terry Grossman and Mr. Blake.
Mr. Blake has made a specialty of mining the classic American songbook for scores to musicals — he also
wrote the book for, and co-produced, “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas,” which ran on Broadway over the
Thanksgiving to New Year’s holiday periods of 2008-2009 and 2009-2010.
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March 25, 2016
Review: ‘Bright Star’ Beams Nostalgia Underscored by Fiddles
and Banjos
By Charles Isherwood
Bluegrass on Broadway? Yes sirree. The warming sounds of banjos, fiddles and even an accordion are filling
the Cort Theater, where the musical “Bright Star” opened on Thursday, bringing a fresh breeze from the South
to the spring theater season.
Perhaps more surprising is the source of the songs that give a heady lift to this nostalgia-tinged show, a
romantic tale set in North Carolina in the 1920s and the 1940s. The authors are Steve Martin, better known as a
comic, actor and occasional novelist, and Edie Brickell, who rose to pop-chart fame some time ago. (They
collaborated on the music and the story, with Mr. Martin providing the book and Ms. Brickell the lyrics.)
It’s not just the unusual flavor of its music that makes “Bright Star” something of an outlier on Broadway. The
musical is gentle-spirited, not gaudy, and moves with an easygoing grace where others prance and strut. And it
tells a sentiment-spritzed story — of lives torn apart and made whole again — that you might be more likely to
encounter in black and white, flickering from your flat-screen on Turner Classic Movies.
The protagonist, Alice Murphy, portrayed by Carmen Cusack — making a simply gorgeous Broadway debut —
is a spunky girl in her late teens in the scenes set in the 1920s. A dreamer with a rebellious streak and a hunger
for literature, she’s causing a fine ruckus in the sleepy town of Zebulon, striking up a clandestine romance with
Jimmy Ray Dobbs the son of the powerful mayor, with traumatic consequences.
But before we meet the younger Alice, we meet the grown woman, in 1945, in Asheville, where she has become
editor of The Asheville Southern Journal, a prestigious literary magazine — contributors include Eudora Welty
and Carson McCullers — and lives an independent life. The heart of the show is the rough road Alice traveled
during the years in between, how the backwoods girl became the mature, educated woman, and the hard price
she paid for her wisdom.
Meanwhile — and in “Bright Star,” which moves between eras and story lines frequently, there are a lot of
“meanwhiles” — in another town, the young Billy Cane (A. J. Shively) has just returned from serving in World
War II. In the rousing title song, he sings of his high hopes now that the darkness of war is past. Billy’s great
ambition is to be a writer, and he sets out to achieve his dream almost immediately, leaving behind a friend,
Margo (a genially wry Hannah Elless), who secretly pines for him. With a passel of short stories in hand, he
heads straight for, yes, The Asheville Southern Journal.
Alice agrees to read his stories, and buys one for $10, just to encourage him. While she believes he has talent,
she doesn’t think he’s found the right vessel for it yet. “You need to find a sweeping tale of pain and
redemption,” she tells him — a fitting description, as it happens, of the story the musical proceeds to unfold.
This involves events more likely to be found in radio serials and movies of yore — a scandalous pregnancy, a
baby torn from a mother’s arms, a still more dastardly act of violence — but among the pleasures of “Bright
Star” is the sheer yarniness of the yarn that unspools, so I’ll leave the rest to be discovered by audiences.
While the story certainly skirts (if not embraces) sentimentality and the overripeness of melodrama, the
production’s soft-hued style — and the sometimes wry tone of Mr. Martin’s book — keeps it from curdling into
treacle. The songs boast simple but seductive melodies, and lyrics that have a sweet, homespun quality. They
range from heartache-perfumed ballads and yearning love duets to energetic hootenannies. Under the music
direction of Rob Berman, the mostly acoustic score is beautifully played.
The band has a significant role in the supple staging of the director, Walter Bobbie, on suitably flexible, simple
sets by Eugene Lee. The musicians are in a wooden A-frame structure that glides back and forth across the
stage. Their presence is unobtrusive, and it’s an inventive manner of keeping story and song tightly knit
together. A small chorus, whose members play various minor roles, also often hovers in the background, or
moves fluidly through the proceedings, performing the understated but fluent choreography by Josh Rhodes.
The performances are superb. Ms. Cusack moves so smoothly between the younger and older Alice that, while
we are always clearly aware of which one we are watching, we also see the continuity between the aspiring if
reckless teenager of the 1920s and the mature but emotionally restrained woman of the 1940s. Her singing,
trimmed with a slight twang, is impeccable both in the bloom in her voice and the emotion she invests in the
lyrics.
Mr. Shively’s Billy radiates youthful ambition and a nice unvarnished innocence. As Alice’s beloved Jimmy
Ray, Paul Alexander Nolan sings with his customary firm tone, bringing alive his character’s angry disdain of
his father’s power-mongering.
In smaller roles, Michael Mulheren scowls and plots as that villainous mayor, and Stephen Bogardus imbues
Billy’s widower father with a paternal tenderness. Jeff Blumenkrantz and Emily Padgett provide modest comic
relief as Alice’s employees at the journal.
“Bright Star” untangles all the knots in its story in something of a rush, with a startling reunion and not one but
two weddings. It may strain credulity, but one can easily point to a celebrated writer who often ended his plays
in the very same fashion, with startling revelations, wedding bells set to peal for more than one couple, and
perhaps tears in a few eyes. This would be William Shakespeare.
Bright Star Music, book and story by Steve Martin; music, lyrics and story by Edie Brickell; directed by Walter
Bobbie; choreography by Josh Rhodes; sets by Eugene Lee; costumes by Jane Greenwood; lighting by Japhy
Weideman; sound by Nevin Steinberg; hair and wig design by Tom Watson; scenic design supervision by
Edward Pierce; associate choreography by Lee Wilkins; orchestrations by August Eriksmoen; music
coordinator, Seymour Red Press; production stage manager, Michael J. Passaro; company manager, Cathy
Kwon; music supervisor, Peter Asher; music direction and vocal arrangements by Rob Berman. Presented by
Joey Parnes, Sue Wagner, John Johnson, Zebulon LLC, Jay Alix and Una Jackman, Len Blavatnik, James L.
Nederlander, Carson and Joseph Gleberman, Balboa Park Productions, the Shubert Organization, Jamie
deRoy/Catherine Adler/Cricket Jiranek, in association with Rodger Hess, A. C. Orange International, Broadway
Across America, Sally Jacobs and Warren Baker, Diana DiMenna, Exeter Capital, Agnes Gund, True Love
Productions and the Old Globe. Ongoing at the Cort Theater, 138 West 48th Street, Manhattan; 212-239-6200,
brightstarmusical-.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
WITH: Carmen Cusack (Alice Murphy), Paul Alexander Nolan (Jimmy Ray Dobbs), Michael Mulheren (Mayor
Josiah Dobbs), A. J. Shively (Billy Cane), Hannah Elless (Margo Crawford), Stephen Bogardus (Daddy Cane),
Dee Hoty (Mama Murphy), Stephen Lee Anderson (Daddy Murphy), Emily Padgett (Lucy Grant) and Jeff
Blumenkrantz (Daryl Ames).
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March 25, 2016
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March 25, 2016