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"Wonderful Town"

Broadway Review

By Linda Winer | STAFF WRITER

November 24, 2003

Talk about great comic timing. Just when it seemed that all the commercial musicals in this busy beast of a season were going to be, at best, mixed blessings, along comes "Wonderful Town" - a big wet kiss for old-time Broadway, dream-boat Manhattan and high-style screwball musical comedy.

The 1953 show, which opened under the hype radar last night at the admirably renamed Al Hirschfeld Theatre, has been almost completely recast since Kathleen Marshall's smash semi-staged weekend at City Center's Encores! series in 2000. But fear not. The revival still has its major attraction, the smart, almost shockingly lovable star turn by Donna Murphy. Aside from some discreetly handsome scenic expansion, the production is essentially the same delight from the witty, goofy, grown-up heyday of Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

This trajectory to Broadway is much the same as the one taken by "Chicago," which, believe it or not, was hardly considered a sure thing in the now-celebrated minimal style. Still, a stripped-down "Wonderful Town" will always be a harder Broadway sell than "Chicago," which, for starters, was charged with the satirical, erotic brilliance of Bob Fosse. "Wonderful Town" has its own gentle sort of razzle-dazzle, but the Joseph Fields-Jerome Chodorov adaptation of their "My Sister Eileen" frolics in a far more gentle, ever-optimistic corner of the American psyche.

Any concerns about a Broadway transfer, however, almost disappear with the first brassy, elevated show- biz sounds of Bernstein's overture, conducted by the musical moral force of Encores!' Rob Fisher. Contrary to all laws of Broadway cynicism, the onstage orchestra employs more than the minimum number of musicians required for this theater after last spring's strike.

Then, concerns about a reduced Encores! setting and shallow stage are forgotten with the lowering of John Lee Beatty's copper-filigree outlines of a Greenwich Village street. Somehow, Beatty ingeniously encompasses all the city's romance and downtown grunge with the simple addition of a flowerpot in the suggestion of a window or a bit of skyline beyond the basement apartment. Peter Kaczorowski's elegant lights make poverty seem glamorous.

This is, of course, bohemian poverty we are talking about here - the 1935, but timeless, story of every young hopeful who comes to New York to find the cultural equivalent of Oz. Murphy plays Ruth Sherwood, a struggling writer who arrives with her sister Eileen, a struggling actress. They come, famously, from Ohio - as in "Why, oh why, oh why, oh/Why did I ever leave Ohio?" - set to the sort of home-on-the-range western tune that Bernstein amusingly considered Midwest.

The breakthrough in all this is Murphy, who won her Tony Awards for playing serious drama queens in "Passion" and "The King and I." Here she seems to be channeling both Jimmy Durante and Rosalind Russell, as the too-smart sister who knows "One Hundred Easy Ways" to lose a man. Everyone knew Murphy could sing, but nobody knew about her fast-talking, self-deprecating '30s way with a punchline, her mastery of physical comedy, her quick-change personalities - not to mention her ability to toss her fearless self into a conga line, or sound like Louis Armstrong in "Swing." Not incidentally, she wears the little white gloves and pencil-skirt suits - keenly observed by designer Martin Pakledinaz - as if born to wear them.

Jennifer Westfeldt, who wrote and starred in the movie "Kissing Jessica Stein," has a lovely mock-operetta voice and just the right unassuming sense of entitlement as Eileen, even if she doesn't quite have the dazzling beauty that defines the guy-magnet sister. Gregg Edelman is charmingly offhand as the editor who appreciates more than Ruth's writing style, Raymond Jaramilla McLeod is terrific as the big lug and unemployed football star and Nancy Anderson is just slutty enough as his live-in love. Michael McGrath is suitably slick as the libidinous reporter and David Margulies is both paternal and a hustler as the landlord - who, like everyone else in the Village, thinks he is an artist.

Marshall directs with a light touch and a cheerful sense of humor. Her choreography - including a Martha Graham spoof for the would-be dancers, "Riverdance" steps for the Irish cops - knows the difference between a Broadway cartoon and serious fun.