In the exposition-laden, opening first 30 minutes or so of the new musical “A Tale on Two Cities”, one line jumped out at me, and that’s when Lucy (our heroine) gets this bit of news: ‘Lucy, after seventeen years your father’s been found in France. And he’s alive!’ My first thought was well thank god, if he had been found dead that would have been a pretty rotten corpse. Lucy and her small coterie of guardians then travel from London to Paris where there’s lots more exposition. Downtrodden peasants, mean condescending aristocrats and those in the middle with a conscience but no ability to affect change. It’s a rather dizzying array of those Dickens characters with either colorful or funny names. Also on display are a great number of wigs to help us delineate who’s who. (The hair and costume budget alone would have fed those peasants for at least a year)
Now don’t get me wrong. As I was watching “A Tale of Two Cities”, I kept thinking that this was perhaps ‘the best new musical of the year.’ But, but unfortunately the year is 1985. Just imagine if it had come out then; Goodbye “Big River”, hello “Tale…”. All the trappings of a great musical are there. Big story, big themes, great sets, loud bombastic music with singers demanding you to PAY ATTENTION. In 1987 “Les Misérables” did just that and so much better. I know, I know this was a different revolution by a different author, but frankly for me one French peasant in the later 1700’s is very much like another in the early 1800’s. I’m shallow that way. Even the first act in “Tale…” ends the same way as “Les Miz”, with its anthem of strength and solidarity in numbers and the whole cast on stage yelling, screaming, and exhorting us to march along with HISTORY. In “Les Miz” it’s “One More Day”, here it’s “Until Tomorrow”. At Musical Mondays at Splash, patrons jump on their bar stools waving their drinks and tee shirts to sing with “Les Miz.”. Somehow I don’t see the same patrons wanting to shout along again. (Bar stool jumping is usually reserved for only special moments, maybe once or twice a night, like Idina Menzel wailing “Defying Gravity”,)
There is nothing terribly bad about “Tale…”. It is just so, so retro. Certainly there have been worse shows based on famous books. (“Copperfield”, Jekyll and Hyde” etc.) And as I said, if it had opened before “Les Miz.” who knows?
I try not to comment too much on acting, since I think I look at the whole show more than its parts, but I couldn’t help notice Katherine McGrath as Lucy’s steadfast guardian Miss Pross. Here was a role that cried out for Mary Stout, but I guess she was still incapacitated by her run-in with a hot dog cart; instead we got a very weak version of Barbara Bryne. OH, How I miss having her in the show. As Sydney Carton, the hero of the play, James Barbour seems to have taken the concept of louche and runs with it. Sometimes he is so laid-back that he can’t stand up straight. I get that Sydney is a drunk; boy do I get it, but come on James, drink from the cup of Mandy Patinkin and give us a little pizzazz. I will grant his singing was terrific and I especially liked his “I Don’t Recall” number in the first act. (Of course I also liked it in “The Happy Time” when it was called “I Don’t Remember You” or “Sometimes A Day Goes By” from “Woman Of the Year” or even Maltby and Shire’s “I Don’t Remember Christmas”.) And by the end, he was very moving, culminating with his “far, far better thing I do” speech. I only wish the other actors had reached his level.
Overall I have to say that “A Tale of Two Cities” really felt like the kind of show that had been running for decades and the producers decided to spiff it up with a new cast, refurbished costumes and sets and a new sound system. Everyone in New York has already seen it when it first opened and the ‘why Patti Cohenour lost to Leilani Jones in the best supporting actress category (there was no best actress category that year) and why didn’t Howard McGillan win for best actor debates’ have long since receded in memory.
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