A Chorus Line is a unique musical, a perfect musical. I’m not sure, in retrospect, it’s one of the great musicals.
The tour based on the recent New York revival arrived at Fair Park Music Hall on Tuesday. It has restored the show’s vivid energy and sharp characterizations, and it makes nearly as good a case for the piece as possible. To paraphrase one of Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban’s songs, it scores dance 10, acting 10, singing maybe a six.

At one point the longest running show in Broadway history, A Chorus Line grew out of workshop-style discussions organized by director-choreographer Michael Bennett. He asked professional dancers, gypsies from Broadway chorus lines, to talk about their lives. Then he, with librettists James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, made a show out of their stories.

The musical, without an intermission, is built around a day of auditions. It also takes its shape from the process of putting together a big production number, from the first rudimentary steps to the high-strutting, show-stopping climax.

The personalities of the individual characters are indelible, but over the years productions have tended to blur or exaggerate them. Bob Avian and Baayork Lee, both part of the original process in 1974 and ’75, have whipped things back into shape beautifully.

Emily Fletcher, for instance, nails Sheila’s aggressive sensuality without making her too hard, and Bryan Knowlton, as Paul in the first week of the current run, keeps his dignity while making his sometimes shocking self-revelations.

I’ve never seen a completely satisfactory Cassie. Robyn Hurder at least dances the role better than most. Part of the problem is inherent: The starring role in this musical is that of a woman who keeps insisting she doesn’t have star power or star pretensions.

Hamlisch’s tunes retain their hummability, albeit in very ’70s fashion. Kleban’s lyrics tell the dancers’ stories with considerable wit. Most of all, Bennett knew how to build a dance number.

Still, a nagging little voice keeps telling me that a really great musical should have characters who interact with each other and should be about something other than getting a job, even if the people do their jobs for love.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Through July 19 at Fair Park Music Hall. 130 mins. $15 to $85. Ticketmaster at 214-631-2787, http://www.ticketmaster.com/.

Nobody finds it odd when a violinist or pianist is still playing a favorite concerto at the end of a 40-year career. So why be surprised that Topol is still playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof?

The Israeli actor had racked up a number of stage performances even before he made the 1971 movie. Now the total is around 2,500. In what is billed as his final tour, he arrived in Dallas for a one-week run at the Dallas Summer Musicals on Monday.

The performer still has what the role requires. That sonorous bass-baritone peals magnificently through the low notes. The stately, if world-weary, bearing and the soulful countenance, blazing eyes clearly visible in the back rows of the huge theater, give Topol, 73, a patriarchal aura. He could as easily be playing Moses or Rasputin – if it weren’t for all the droll bits of low humor he tosses off so nonchalantly.

It must be said that spontaneity is not a factor here. Every mournful growl at a bit of bad news, every joyful roll of the eyes, appears calculated and polished to the nth degree. Naturalism also goes out the window in favor of this delicately calculated theatrical flair.

Many old-fashioned masters of comic shtick destroy their material by sending it up. Not Topol. No shred of cynicism or self-indulgence gets in the way of Fiddler’s emotional journey. Before empty-nest syndrome had a name, this great musical explored the agonies of letting go – and the star plays them for all they are worth.

The current tour has selling points beyond its leading man. Susan Cella as Golde and Mary Stout as Yente are also masters of the broad comic style. Among the lovely daughters, Jamie Davis’ Hodel stands out for her soaring voice. Steve Gilliam’s storybook set invests the village of Anatevka with a quaint charm.

Best of all, director-choreographer Sammy Dallas Bayes has reproduced Jerome Robbins’ exuberant first-act dances with fiery precision. An important secret of Fiddler’s success is the sheer animal energy that drives these sequences. They keep this tale of loss and aging young and vital.

As young and vital as its septuagenarian star.

An airline ticket can get you to Las Vegas quite reasonably these days. A time machine that’ll get you there a half-century ago is another matter.

That’s the goal of The Rat Pack – Live at the Sands, the London hit that Dallas Summer Musicals brought to the Majestic Theatre on Tuesday.

You can guess the format from the title: Singers portraying Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. cover the stars’ greatest hits. A 16-piece band (something of a luxury in the theater these days) plays onstage, and three curvaceous backup singers add a considerable amount of what in those days was called sex appeal.

This may sound like a dubious proposition, but people apparently are still eager to hear numbers out of the great American songbook (alongside tunes of lesser pedigree) sung by voices of substance and backed by choirs of actual saxes, trumpets and trombones.

Of the three leading performers, only Stephen Triffitt’s Sinatra provokes the occasional internal double take, providing reassurance that this is only a latter-day impersonator rather than the real thing. At first, he’s almost too successful in duplicating Sinatra’s every rhythmic and phonetic inflection. Eventually, he makes us forget the mechanics and just listen to the music – especially the torch song “Angel Eyes.” He’s also got the physical manner, at once regal and offhand, down pat.

His pretend buddies both boast fine voices, but the illusion is weaker. Davis sometimes trod perilously close to self-parody, which makes things doubly hard for David Hayes. He’s lively and he can hoof it, but he lacks the grit under the original star’s larger-than-life exterior. Mark Adams projects Martin’s macho appeal, and the voice evokes the star without imitating him slavishly. But Adams works too hard at ingratiating himself with the audience, whereas you could always see a dead chill of indifference in Martin’s eyes.

The Rat Pack brims with the buddies’ horseplay (complete with sexist, racist and boozy jokes authentic to the period). What it leaves you with, however, are meditations on Frank Sinatra’s unique career. Not only does Triffitt bring him to life, he sings the questionable later material, especially “My Way,” with genuine feeling that we didn’t always get from the man himself.

PLAN YOUR LIFE

Through Sunday at the Majestic Theatre. Runs 140 mins. $12 to $71. Ticketmaster at 214-631-2787, www.ticketmaster.com.

ltaitte@dallasnews.com

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Epic novels often have a rough transition to the stage: Events fly by so fast they feel like a historical pageant rather than a play.

Oprah Winfrey presents The Color Purple, the stage musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel, exhibits such symptoms early on. The Dallas Summer Musicals opened the area premiere, its 2008 State Fair show, on Tuesday at Fair Park Music Hall.

The childhoods of the heroine, Celie (Jeannette Bayardelle), and her sister are over after two short choruses of the opening song. Horrors of domestic violence bump rudely against stylized comedy, even in the scenes in which Sofia (Felicia P. Fields) begins to show Celie she doesn’t have to accept the abuse that has been heaped on her all her life.

The show really doesn’t come to life, though, until the notorious Shug Avery (Angela Robinson) returns to town. Shug was the true love of Celie’s cruel husband, Mister (Rufus Bonds Jr.), but convention prevented them from marrying. Mister takes his disappointment out on Celie for years. During one of Shug’s periodic visits home, though, Celie nurses her back to health and the two women develop a sisterly relationship that eventually turns sexual. As this happens over the last half hour of the first act, we finally get characters interacting with one another.

The second acts ratchets things up by finding some creative solutions to the problems of long-range storytelling. To begin with, a dream – or rather a letters – ballet, spectacularly set in Africa, shows Celie what has become of her long lost sister. The successive stages of Celie’s evolution into a free woman each get a neatly turned scene or song, or both.

The score doesn’t have many grab-you tunes, a disappointment given the rich musical styles of the early 20th century, in which the story is set. But the performers are uniformly terrific, dramatically as well as vocally.

The gorgeously designed sets and costumes envelop the actors in swirling color. Donald Byrd, a significant modern dance choreographer, has the entire cast moving and shaking.

Occasionally Ms. Bayardelle’s gestures and expressions seem modeled a little too closely on Whoopi Goldberg’s in Steven Spielberg’s film version of The Color Purple. But Ms. Bayardelle does create a character that evokes sympathy and, eventually admiration.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Through Oct. 19 at Fair Park Music Hall. Runs 170 mins. $25 to $77. Ticketmaster at 214-631-2787, http://www.ticketmaster.com/.

Talk about a buildup: We are two-thirds of the way through the first act of Jersey Boys before the Four Seasons come together for their first big hit. When “Sherry” finally does erupt, it’s as if a skyscraper-sized bottle of champagne exploded.

The 2006 Tony Award winner for best musical opened at the Dallas Summer Musicals on Friday (after a couple of previews). The show doesn’t miss a beat in its transfer from Broadway to the road. You’ve probably never heard the names of any of the performers, but no matter. Jersey Boys doesn’t need stars, it creates them.

Marshall Brickman and Rick Ellice wrote one of the all-time great show librettos in telling the story of four working-class Italian boys who became one of the most successful musical groups ever. Take that example of the long buildup: Hearing the cover songs the boys sang as they established their career gives the tale a context. So do the pop-art and video projections Michael Clark designed for Klara Zieglerova’s ingenious set.

Each of the four group members narrates – and dominates – a quarter of the show. Tommy DeVito (Erik Bates) is the deal maker – and corner cutter, stealing when he needs to and gambling away his earnings during the good times. The baby-faced Bob Gaudio (Andrew Rannells) writes the music and doesn’t really feel part of the neighborhood. In his segment, Mr. Rannells proves that white bread can be charismatic and nearly steals the show.

Nick Massi (Steve Gouveia), the quiet one, gets tired of touring and wants to go back home. Of course, the frontman is Frankie Valli (Joseph Leo Bwarie). Tommy treats him like a lowly kid brother, but Bob knows that that strange, high-flying voice is the one he was destined to write for.

After intermission, we see the group falling apart. The emergence of Frankie’s solo career is the second act’s trajectory – and once again the build to the huge hit “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” is tremendously exciting.

Director Des McAnuff wove all the elements of Jersey Boys into a swirling, precisely choreographed showpiece that keeps on gaining momentum. Entertainment doesn’t get any slicker – or more accomplished.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Through Aug. 16 at Fair Park Music Hall. Runs 155 mins. $25 to $124. Ticketmaster at 214-631-2787, www.ticketmaster.com.

‘Hairspray’ keeps its bounce at Fair Park Music Hall

by Lawson Taitte

mailto:Taitteltaitte@dallasnews.com

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Nearly six years after it debuted on Broadway, Hairspray is turning out to be the most influential musical of the decade. To figure out why, check out the touring version that the Dallas Summer Musicals opened Tuesday.

Three things make Hairspray special: The stage adaptation of John Waters’ cult movie adds just the right dash of sincerity so that the formerly tongue-in-cheek story about an overweight teen determined to integrate 1962 Baltimore taps into a deep American mythos, the pursuit of happiness. The score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman forges 1960s pop styles into beautifully crafted Broadway songs, and Jerry Mitchell’s choreography (lovingly re-created here by Danny James Austin) keeps the fizz in the phosphate for all 2 ½ hours.

Here’s the plot: Plus-size Tracy Turnblad (Brooklynn Pulver) tries out for a local TV dance show but is rejected by the evil producer. In detention, she picks up new steps from some black kids. Her new routine catches the TV host’s eye and gets her a berth on the show, where the heartthrob, Link (Taylor Frey), eventually realizes he likes Tracy better than the producer’s haughty daughter. But when Tracy insists that the black kids should be able to appear on the tube more than the one day a month to which they’ve been consigned, trouble erupts.

The big gimmick, carried over from the film, is that Tracy’s mom, Edna, is played by a man in drag. Edna is so sensitive about her weight that she hasn’t left the house in years, but Tracy fixes that, too. The point of the show is the people who’ve been discriminated against win out in the end.

Although this tour features a young, non-Equity cast, it maintains standards. Ms. Pulver seems so competent and practiced that she skirts falling into routine, but her singing is exceptional. In fact, most of the performers show off strong voices. It’s a good thing, though, that a lot of the audience has already seen the musical movie remake, because the lyrics are even harder to understand than usual in the intractable Music Hall acoustics.

The performers zip through all the dance numbers as if their shoes were filled with helium, too.

For me, the most memorable aspect of this edition of Hairspray is Jerry O’Boyle’s Edna. More than anyone else I’ve seen do the role, he really acts it. He never affects a self-consciously feminine gesture, but you believe him as a woman. He’s got great comic timing, too – and his big number with his stage husband, Wilbur (Dan Ferretti) – “(You’re) Timeless to Me” – brings down the house.

Even though the incessant, smarmy double-entendres clash with the musical’s intrinsic sweetness and social conscience, Hairspray is beginning to feel pretty timeless itself.

Plan your life

Through Sunday at Fair Park Music Hall. 155 mins. $18 to $80. 214-631- 2787, www .ticketmaster.com

I get kidded sometimes for maintaining that something we see here in Dallas — either a tour or a local production — is often superior to the original Broadway show. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a marked difference, though, as in The Drowsy Chaperone, which the Dallas Summer Musicals opened last night.

In my review, I detailed some of the cast members I think genuinely superior to the Broadway originals. I left out the specifics of the female lead role, Janet, though I praised the current performer, Andrea Chamberlain. But you wouldn’t believe how much better she is than Sutton Foster — who first came to Broadway stardom by winning a Tony Award for the lead in Thoroughly Modern Millie. In that role, and every role since, Ms. Foster has projected a brassy, knowing professionalism that lacks a spark of sincere feeling or charm. The one time I have liked her is in the current Young Frankenstein, which doesn’t need feeling or charm.

It has been very hurtful to Broadway in recent years that producers hire the same people over and over because they believe the performers have a following. Some of those performers just aren’t very good, I’m afraid.

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Sweeney Todd: You’ve seen the movie. Now see the real thing.
Actually, Tim Burton’s screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s bloody musical masterpiece was faithful to the 1979 stage original, in its fashion. But it left quite a bit out. And a musical almost always works better when it’s being performed by genuine singing actors rather than by well-coached but essentially voiceless movie stars.

The stage version that the Dallas Summer Musicals’ Broadway Contemporary Series brings to the Majestic Theatre on Tuesday has considerably more going for it than mere completeness. This is the production by director John Doyle that won plaudits first in London and then a 2006 Tony Award in New York.

Its eccentricities have become famous. All the onstage performers play musical instruments. In fact, they’re the only band there is. The show is apparently taking place in an insane asylum, and the inmates are the actors. A certain amount of blood is part of the action – although even Mr. Doyle’s production can’t rival the film in the gore department.

The story, of course, remains the same. A mysterious man, Sweeney Todd, returns to London from abroad in search of vengeance. His new ladylove, Mrs. Lovett, owns a pie shop near the barbershop where Sweeney once worked. The two find a new supply of meat for the pies – in the bodies of the men whose throats Sweeney cuts in his quest for revenge.

Five performers from the New York revival are part of the tour. The live cast is strongest, however, in the role that suffers most in the movie. Helena Bonham Carter is too glamorous, and not nearly dotty enough, to make a credible Mrs. Lovett. The tour stars one of Broadway’s most talented performers, Judy Kaye, in the role. Ms. Kaye won a Tony Award as Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera and was nominated for another as one of the female sidekicks in Mamma Mia! Those roles didn’t begin to show her real powers as a performer. Mrs. Lovett is a perfect fit.

Opens Tuesday at 8 p.m. and runs through Jan. 20 at the Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm St. Continues Wednesday through Jan. 18 at 8 p.m., Jan. 19-20 at 2 and 8 p.m. Ticketmaster. http://www.dallassummermusicals.org/.

$17 to $62.

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THEATER REVIEW: Kaye cooks up humor, passion in ‘Sweeney Todd’
Judy Kaye is a wonder as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. She’s all the reason you need to run downtown to the Majestic Theatre.

Otherwise, the touring version of the recent Broadway revival, which the Dallas Summer Musicals’ Broadway Contemporary Series brought to town on Tuesday, has its issues. But, as I always say, pretty much any Sweeney Todd is a good Sweeney Todd.

Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 masterpiece, subtitled The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, recounts an old horror story. A barber, deported for a crime he didn’t commit, returns to Victorian London to get his revenge. After the first man whose throat he slits, Sweeney’s girlfriend, Mrs. Lovett, gets the bright idea of using the meat from the carcasses in the meat pies she sells.
The tale is gruesome, but onstage the bloody bits are a great deal less bothersome than in Tim Burton’s current Golden Globe-winning movie version. Mr. Sondheim’s witty lyrics keep the mind amused, while his nearly operatic score accumulates overwhelming momentum and power.

The British revival by John Doyle, imported to Broadway two seasons ago, cuts the epic musical down to size. Only 10 actors play all the roles, and they double as the orchestra. Ms. Kaye, for instance, plays the bright percussion instruments and occasionally wanders in with a tuba. The compression is all very clever, but it smacks more of thrift than of inspiration.

Setting the whole action in an insane asylum doesn’t really work, either. The locale is all too obviously a metaphor; we don’t believe for an instant that this is a cooperative production by the staff and the inmates. Unfortunately, the gimmick encourages the actors to go off the deep end. The young lovers, Johanna and Anthony, sometimes seem as loony as the truly crazy old beggar woman.

Frankly, all this doesn’t matter much. The material is so strong, and the performers sufficiently competent, that Sweeney Todd survives in all its glory. I did find David Hess’ performance of the title character somewhat problematical, in that he lacks the obsidian voice the part needs. He’s also among the worst offenders in the acting-loony department. Yeah, Sweeney is more than slightly off his rocker. But the story does require him to be able to pass for normal.
But ah, Ms. Kaye. The first requirement for a Mrs. Lovett is a quirky sense of humor, and Ms. Kaye is as funny as they come. Her vocal technique has held up as well, so she can warble daintily or go as deep as her tuba, as required. This whole cast manages to make its words heard in the often intractable Majestic, but no one else uses language like Ms. Kaye. Every rhyme in the remarkably clever “A Little Priest” gets a laugh. But you also believe in the woman’s passion for her lover and in her absolute determination to give him what he wants.

Since Helena Bonham Carter’s Mrs. Lovett is the Sweeney Todd film’s biggest problem, seeing Ms. Kaye is an ideal supplement – or antidote – for the film. It’s a great performance by one of the great ladies of the American theater.

• Through Sunday at the Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm St. Runs 150 mins. $16 to $72. Ticketmaster at 214-631-2787, http://www.ticketmaster.com/.

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If you’ve been waiting for the new-style circus to blossom into high art, check out Cirque Éloize’s Rain. If there’s a circus in heaven, and Federico Fellini and Merce Cunningham got together to stage it, this might be the one.

Every time I see Cirque du Soleil or one of its offspring, I’m tantalized by the hints of something beyond. The elaborate sets and costumes and the sketchy story line arouse hope that the show will break through the boundaries of technique and routine to become a new kind of epic.

The show that the Dallas Summer Musicals’ Broadway Contemporary Series opened at the Majestic Theatre on Tuesday doesn’t quite do that. Much more modest in scale, it’s more like modern dance or vaudeville or performance art. But it never lapses into automatic drive; it’s full of imagination and poetry throughout.
Daniele Finzi Pasca wrote and directed this piece, which begins with a spoken prologue about memories of childhood freedom. A later, hugely funny, monologue questions the pretensions of these new circuses, asking why they so pretentiously explore the unconscious only to end in a virtual pratfall.

The Majestic turns out to be a superb place to watch these high-flying trapeze and tumbling acts. That ironically pretentious prologue soon gets a counterpoint – a woman bouncing from stage to proscenium height behind a scrim. It’s a simple enough trick, but seeing the speed and vertiginous motion in such an intimate setting gave me intense butterflies each time the woman defied gravity, only to be pulled back to earth again.

In one number, a man lyrically spins around and around inside a hoop to the strains of strings and accordion (no nasty electronic sounds here). Several bits involve a live pianist: First, some of the strongmen hoist the piano player to a horizontal position, then revolve both player and instrument together. In the second act, the music, lighting and subtle performances turn what might have been conventional trapeze and balancing acts into a waking dream.

“Unearthly beauty touched with wit and charm: Rain is fantastical. And fantastic.”
Through Sunday at the Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm. Runs 130 mins. $15 to $67. Ticketmaster at 214-373-8000 or 972-647-5700, http://www.ticketmaster.com/.

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