LOS
ANGELES TIMES
February
11, 2004
THEATER
REVIEW
'Little
Mary Sunshine's" parodic targets are largely forgotten, so the Musical
Theatre Guild accentuates other positives in its revival.
By Rob Kendt
The
name Rudolf Friml mean anything to you? How about Sigmund Romberg? Surely
you've heard of Victor Herbert?
If
you're drawing a blank, you're unlikely to enjoy, let alone understand,
"Little Mary Sunshine," Rick Besoyan's loving parody of the chaste,
warbly operettas with scores by the above composers, made popular in films with
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, among others. "Sunshine" is now
in a decent, doting staged-concert revival by Musical Theatre Guild at the Alex
Theatre in Glendale and plays next in Thousand Oaks.
The
1959 off-Broadway audience that made "Little Mary Sunshine" a minor
hit probably had fresh memories of such classic 1930s films as "Rose
Marie" and "Maytime," and they must have laughed knowingly
through its good-natured battery of cliches. But 45 years on, the distance from
the original targets is so great that Besoyan's kid-gloved spoof has mostly
blurred into straight-up homage.
Now, witnessing the virginal Little Mary
(Teri Bibb) and her twittering female cohorts blushingly flirt with a troop of
fresh-faced forest rangers, in songs seasoned more with corn than sauce, we
can't be sure exactly whom the joke is on.
The
trick, then, is to make this quaint lampoon as simply delightful on its own terms
as possible, whether we get the references or not.
By that
standard, Musical Theatre Guild's reading is a qualified success. Under
director Jamie Rocco and tireless music director Tom Griep, its relentless
charm offensive ultimately proves disarming, even winning.
The
casting doesn't hurt. In the title role, Bibb nails the show's tone to a
fare-thee-well: Beatifically sunny and smiley without being simpering, she lets
us enjoy this impossible ideal of virtuous womanhood even as we laugh at it (a trick,
by the way, that Jeanette MacDonald managed, too--or so it seems, at least, in
retrospect).
Gordon
Goodman's Capt. "Big" Jim Warington, is serviceably dashing, though
he has neither the pipes of a Nelson Eddy nor Bibb's flawless deadpan; with his
press-on smile and self-conscious line readings, he's winking a bit too much
through the artifice.
Still,
one need not have seen any of Eddy's and MacDonald's hilariously formal
clinches to relish the exquisite moment when Bibb and Goodman, in the heat of
an ardent moment, rush toward one another into an open-mouthed kiss--and
instead begin to sing "Colorado Love Call."
As
they embrace cheek to cheek and turn downstage to croon out their love, we have
our cake and eat it, too: We can giggle at the sexual sublimation and sincerely
swoon along with their harmonizing.
And
there are moments to be savored in Christina Saffran Ashford's bouncy turn as
an irrepressibly naughty maid; in Kevin McMahon's performance as her nerdy,
cuckolded squeeze; in Carol Kline's over-the-top Teutonic diva ("the first
to perform 'Carmen,' " she informs us, "in German"); and in Doug
Carfrae's dapper lech. Milking stray titters from the show's egregiously
stereotypical Native American roles are Michael G. Hawkins, Chuck Bergman and
Eric Anderson.
In
a brief duet with an offstage warbler, Little Mary sings, "You coo your
'coo coo' as all cuckoos do." That just about sums up the show's sense of
humor: so on-the-nose it's supposed to be funny. In this modest revival, it
often is.
"Little Mary Sunshine," Musical Theatre Guild
at the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. Next playing at the Scherr
Forum in the Thousand Oaks Civic Art Plaza's Performing Arts Center, 2100
Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2:30 & 7:30 p.m. $38.
(805) 583-8700. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.