Good Time Giuseppes
It's not a musical comedy. And it's not an opera. A Most Happy Fella is a most happy hybrid, a musically ambitious commercial theater piece. Nowadays, with self-styled "serious" composers like Adam Guettel and Michael La Chiusa-not to mention the operatic pretensions of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Claude-Michael Shönberg (Les Miserables)-we've come to accept, if not exactly warmly embrace, the concept. But in the mid-1950s, this was strange fruit.
Nevertheless, the fact that the score contains some of the most gorgeous melodies ever spun out for the American stage helped make it a huge success. In an age that gave us South Pacific, My Fair Lady and West Side Story, Fella bears comparison to the greatest Broadway-operatic hybrid of them all, Porgy and Bess. In its musical composition, it owes a lot to the casual dissonance popular to the time-to my ear, the piece it most closely resembles is Carlisle Floyd's opera Susanna, which premiered in New York the same year.
If Fella has a flaw, it's the book, which composer Frank Loesser wrote himself. The "moon-June-spoon" lyrics and substandard book make clear how much his other masterpiece, Guys and Dolls, owes to his book writers. Unfortunately, the revival at the New York City Opera (running through March 25) brings the show's flaws to the fore, thanks mostly to the vanity casting of film star Paul Sorvino in the title role.
Sorvino, who has spent much of his career playing a gumba (most notably in Goodfellas), would seem tailor-made for the story of an Italian immigrant who becomes a successful Napa Valley vintner. In this Cyrano riff, it's not just Tony's nose that makes him self-conscious to the beautiful young San Francisco waitress he woos via letters. As his sister keeps reminding him, he's "not young, not good looking and not smart." (Two arias cut out of the original in out-of-town tryouts only point up how creepy her relationship to her brother is.)
He's also no singer. Sorvino is miked to the point that his English sounds like Italian. Although Tony (who conveniently has an accident as soon as he meets his beloved again at his home) is supposed to be fairly immobile, Sorvino's staging reminded me of the way Pavarotti, late in his career, would plant his carcass on the stage and stay there. Hey, the guy's Italian: Can't he at least gesticulate, even if he can't sing?
The rest of the cast does better. Ivan Hernandez, as the one-night love interest of Tony's betrothed and the man in the pictures he had been sending her as his own, is handsome; his Broadway baritone isn't far from Howard Keel and Brian Stokes Mitchell (although the role will always belong to Richard Muenz). Lisa Vroman, as the wife/lover, was a little too trilly for my taste, and she has that annoying habit of e-nun-ci-a-ting e-ve-ry line. But that may be director Philip McKinley's fault. Certainly, he's to blame for the chorus behaving as though they were guzzling Chianti in a bus-and-truck L'eliser d'amore. The choreography, however, by Peggy Hickey, is pure Broadway crowd-pleasing shtick. It's glorious.
Leah Hocking brings some much-needed comic relief as the heroine's waitress friend, in full Flo ("Kiss my grits!") mode. As her boyfriend, John Scherer not only gets the girl, he gets to sing the great "Standing on the Corner" (you'll recognize it when you hear it).
The original City Opera production benefited from comparison to a bare bones Broadway revival running simultaneously. This time, it has to stand on its own two feet, and if it's as wobbly as Tony himself, it's still a chance to hear some ineffably beautiful music. (As soon as I hear that soaring line "I don't know nothin' about her," my eyes well up. Happens every time.)
If this isn't a Fella for the ages, he'sa gonna make-a you a-happy theateragoer.