OFF BROADWAY: “Summer Of Love” Music Message Strong
by James Scarborough, m.gazettes.com
April 6th 2011 10:00 AM
Without a doubt, Musical Theatre West’s “Summer of Love,” written and
directed by Roger Bean, entertains the audience.
The evening waxes exuberant, while the message, you’ve got to make your own
kind of music, rings true. Some of us danced in our seats like Sesame Street
puppets and sang along to songs that defined our youth. The set and the music
sparkle.
But while the concept of and subsequent staging for the script is
brilliant, its construction, man, is a major downer.
It works best as a tale of exploring options. It asks, “What makes up a
family?” Here it does a nice job as it presents the various options (mind you,
in the 1960s, those options included the families Partridge and Manson). It
suggests that a family is a person or a group of people to whom you can open
your up your heart.
It also reminds us that all families are dysfunctional, from the female
lead’s mother who drinks in the morning to the kleptomaniac who steals her
purse.
Though the story had a plausible beginning and a serviceable end, it didn’t
have a coherent middle. At the beginning, Holly (Melissa Mitchell) has just
skirted across the Golden Gate Bridge from Sausalito to San Francisco. She
wears her wedding dress; it appears to be stained with blood but, alas, it’s
just an errant Bloody Mary.
She faces a middle-class crisis — do what’s expected (marry Curtis — Doug
Carpenter) or do what she doesn’t-yet-know-what-she-wants. She chances upon a
coterie of anti-Establishment Merry Pranksters who live in the Haight-Ashbury
and decides to spend the night with them.
It ends when she and her loyal, not-so-square Curtis (thanks to a stamp of
acid) decide to chuck everything planned and chart their own adventure in the
City by the Bay. It’s a story of exploration and discovery.
It’s the in-between that’s muddled. First, the pace felt stylized if not
superficial, heavy on effect, without much substance. Second, though the cast
(especially Carpenter who made his Curtis morph from an Ozzie and Harriet to a
Garden Party Ricky Nelson) did what they could with a clunky script, their
characters are more stereotypical than credible, which also detracts from
narrative traction.
And third, we’re not sure if it’s Holly’s story or if it’s Doug’s story.
Holly steals the first act, quickly doffing her wedding dress into a comely
miniskirt. Her decision — push forward or return home? — holds us in thrall for
the first act. In the second act though, Doug embarks on a 15-minute acid trip
(amazing kaleidoscopic designs projected on the back wall; very cool,
LSD-induced choreography; music to die for) that nonetheless buzz-kills the
narrative.
The production feels like a Grateful Dead concert at the Oakland Coliseum.
All that anticipation, all the people, music and flashing lights and, by the
end, you’re too stoned to remember what happened.
Shows are at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
and 7 p.m. on Sunday, April 10. The show runs until April 17. Tickets are $30 -
$70. The Carpenter Center is at 6200 Atherton St. Call 856-1999 ext. 4 or
visit www.musical.org.
Original Page:
http://m.gazettes.com/mobile/lifestyle/arts_and_entertainment/off_broadway/article_4c280bdc-6089-11e0-97d6-001cc4c002e0.html
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