Not-So-Noir New Musical

Nightmare Alley. The Geffen Playhouse. 4/12/10.

I feel guilty reviewing the shows I see at the Geffen, since I ended up with tickets for the first preview (hey, it's all I can afford) and at that stage, the productions often show signs of being not quite ready for prime time with flubbed lines and occasional acting failures. The cast of Nightmare Alley, however, seemed well-prepared and professional and deserves nothing but applause for their performances. The worst side-effect of the preview that I noticed was that the actors were over-mic'd so that their powerful voices were loud enough to be cringe-worthy from where I was in the back of the balcony. This show was excellently cast with talented performers who had lovely voices and handled the music beautifully. In fact, I loved the cast and most of the music. Larry Cedar was especially charming as Pete, the surprisingly spry drunken old carny who haunts the main character (Stan, played forcefully by James Barbour).

While the performances were great and the music enjoyable, the plot of the show decidedly needs work. The musical departs significantly from the 1947 Tyrone Power film, but I haven't read the book, so perhaps it remains true to that plot. Unfortunately, several of the plot points don't work particularly well as they stand in the musical at the moment. That gritty, dark nightmare sensibility is desperately missing in a show that otherwise has a lot of potential.

I like the choice to emphasize the carnival as being in the 1930s dust bowl and the sense of desperation and poverty barely contrasted with the hustle and artifice of a dingy sideshow provide a lot of evocative opportunity, of which the production fails to take full advantage. The carnival needs to be established early on (preferably with a strong opening production number, which this show lacked) as a combination of nightmare and promise. As an audience member, I need to feel the desperation and cynicism and fascination of the carnival as a "Nightmare Alley." Instead, the show opens with Zeena the fortune-teller (played by Mary Gordon Murray) moralizing about fate and choosing your path in a way that seems to shut down rather than compel the audience's engagement and imagination.

There was also an odd sense of referencing the Wizard of Oz, with Cedar as very Ray Bolger-esque, Glendening first appearing in the funnel hat of the the tin man, and Michael McCarty having some of the vaudeville spirit of the Bert Lahr's cowardly lion, but I thought these references did a disservice to the show, because the last thing we need from our leading man, who should be charming and ambitious and manipulative, is an association with the wide-eyed innocence of Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale. Stan should be at home in the carnival from the first, not as disoriented as Dorothy arriving in Oz, and while the moment of recognition of the allusions was fun, it took me out of the spirit of the show.

The show makes several similar unfortunate choices that imply the need for a bit of a re-write, but this is a musical that I want to fix, not dismiss. It has a lot of potential, but it doesn't yet capture the grittiness and desperation that it needs to make it work. Go see it for the music by Jonathan Brielle and some really strong performances, particularly by Sarah Glendening as the spirited ingenue and Cedar in several roles. Cedar's duet with Mary Gordon Murray, "I Get By," was my favorite number in the show by far. I was also happy to run across Melody Butiu, a local actress who I've seen in many excellent performances, as one of four severely underutilized chorusgirls/backup singers who need a more compelling role in the show. While I'm not an expert, their costumes suggested 1940s pinup rather than 1930s carnival worker to me and I would have rather seen them more clearly integrated into the scenes in which they performed. With a stronger opening and some plot and character revisions, this could be a really fun, dark musical, but it's not quite there yet.