High kicks on ‘42nd Street’

It’s just a feeling and America has been through it before. Unemployment, foreclosures, rising prices, stagnant hopes. So how (to re-word King Theseus) shall we beguile uncertain times if not with some delight?

The Depression known to history as the “great” one spawned a stream of large spectacle movies which fed the public’s appetite for dancing girls, glitter and happy endings.

Shows such as “Gold Diggers of 1933,” “Ziegfeld Girls,” “Dames,” and “42nd Street” under Busby Berkeley’s golden touch blended rousing kaleidoscope choreography with struggling-girl-makes-good storylines. Of those, only “42nd Street” reinvented itself on Broadway, winning the Tony for “Best Musical” in 1980. Twenty-one years later, it still seemed like a good idea and won the Tony for “Best Musical Revival.”

Scaled down but sharp where it needs to be sharp, “42nd Street” has opened at Riverside where it is, coincidentally, the 42nd show in the Riverside oeuvre.

Being musical comedy, everyone has to sing, but for this show, singers who aren’t also dancers need not apply. Not only is Gower Champion’s famous “curtain rising on dancing feet” opening intact, choreographer Connor Gallagher puts the cast through its paces in one impressive bit of tap mastery after another.

Musicals intended to make the audience forget its troubles can’t afford to be complex, and “42nd Street” is, plot-wise, as simple as they come. Ambitious and talented young Peggy Sawyer leaves her small town home to try her luck in New York. Finally accepted into the cast of “Pretty Lady”(a gamble itself), she runs afoul of the foul-tempered star and ends up saving the show - and the cast, and the backers, and the day. Along the way, she finds love, friends, success and such precious bits of cornball dialogue as “Get out there and be so swell it’ll make me hate you!”

Samantha Graves is an obvious choice for Peggy. She’s got the radiance of eager youth, and while her voice isn’t her main strength — we’ll call it “cute” — she can dance the spandex off anyone in the company. Her foil, Dorothy Brock, (Heather McIntosh) makes up with an Art Deco statuesque bearing what she lacks in emotional dimension.
She’s always mad. Sometimes she’s furious, sometimes just annoyed, but she’s the star you love to hate — until her compound fracture reduces her to simple mortal height. Ms. McIntosh brings a very necessary humor to the part and does a credible bit of torching in “I Only Have Eyes for You.”

  Director Patrick A’Hearn lets the love flow in this ode to the “gaudiest, bawdiest, naughtiest” street of them all.

Scene changes take just seconds, and a crackling zip in the company energy level prevents prolonged hang time where so many musicals make the same point endlessly.

One of the wittiest arrangements is found in the “Shadow Waltz,” a visual joke with the audience, as well as “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” a daring little piece of impishness superbly brought off by Bert and Annie (Carl Bowman and Ashleigh King) with the chorus posed fetchingly in Pullman compartments. Likewise, A’Hearn has chosen to give the famous “Lullaby of Broadway” an upbeat slant rather than the reflective view of some interpretations.

  Special mention is in order for the feline dancing litheness of dance director, Andy Lee (Anthony Williams) whose waspish tongue seems right at home in a New York rehearsal studio. Playing the show’s tyrannical director, Julian Marsh, Gary Best never fails in his well-centered authority. The rare moments when he sings are treats indeed.

  Balancing the seriousness of a Broadway director gambling everything on one show is Abner Dillon (Page Dreher), an oil-rich Texas goober who has put up his money on the show just to please Miss Brock, and hangs around taking exception to Miss Brock’s romantic scenes. These intrusions lead to one especially funny rehearsal scene.
  Mixed though mostly positive notice goes to the men’s chorus of dancers, particularly in the stylish “Maison des Dames.”

The dancing feet were there, but a few of the younger members seemed to drift in focus, blank faces with uncertain commitment. Barbara Cochran as Maggie Jones is a powerhouse singer and a forceful presence, but the sameness of acting in her non-singing scenes had me wishing for a little more attention to playing her objectives.

  The multiple interiors and exteriors have been created with leased designs under the direction of Matthew Westcott, the angles and colors accenting time period, purpose, and emotional content of the scene. As for costume design, it would almost be worth going back to a great depression to get ultra-elegance like this. If a feathered and jeweled cape won’t get your mind off your problems, what will?

  Maybe a team of dancing girls carrying torso-sized coins and singing “We’re in the Money”?

Margaret Lawrence is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association. She teaches drama and English at CCHS.