| MACK AND MABEL Tonight | |
| Last Edit: sergius 12:41 am EST 02/23/20 | |
| Posted by: sergius 12:40 am EST 02/23/20 | |
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| Herman wasn't a versatile composer--his scores are formulaic--but he wrote good melodies and neat lyrics which is saying something these days. This Encores! production won't revise the prevailing opinion that MACK AND MABEL is a score in search of a book. Most of the show's story is shopworn and banal. It's not until Mabel acquires an apparent drug addiction that things get interesting and by then it's too late. What we're left with is a prototypical Herman score that bounds routinely from jaunty to wistful ("Tap Your Troubles Away" add a does of irony to the proceedings, but it's basically a reworking of "Live, Laugh & Love" from FOLLIES). There are many good songs here--"Time Heals Everything" is, to me, Herman's best song--but they're stuck in rotation in part because they have no interesting story to advance or annotate. In addition, the show suffers for not having any real secondary characters who might at least distract from the tedious main pair. What's here is a good enough entertainment, but if this show is ever to really land--and if the book isn't re-written altogether--it will need a director/choreographer with a stronger, more idiosyncratic point of view than Josh Rhodes has. Sills and Socha do their best to keep their heads above water, but the book keeps pulling them under. | |
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