More Than Child’s Play

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The New York Sun

When producers converted the beloved 1944 film “Meet Me in St. Louis” into a Broadway musical in 1989, they lost two of the movie’s key ingredients: Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli. And when Charlotte Moore (who was in the 1989 cast) decided to direct a small-stage, small-cast, small-orchestra version of the musical at the Irish Rep this season, she forfeited the sumptuous production values that had kept the Broadway version afloat.

What remains in Ms. Moore’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” is a mild domestic tale of a turn-of-the-century St. Louis family talking and singing in their living room. (A three-piece band is tucked into a corner upstage.) The intimate dimensions of the theater make it feel like someone’s living room — say, that of a family with a bunch of precocious kids who all want to perform in front of the guests. It’s pleasant enough to hear the show’s handful of great songs (by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane) performed by a competent cast. But there’s nothing in this vanilla production to tempt the owner of the “Meet Me in St. Louis” DVD.

The brilliance of the Garland/Minnelli film version was its duality. On the one hand, there was Judy Garland playing Esther, a sweet girl who dreamed of marrying the boy next door (literally); on the other hand, there was Garland herself — a damaged person with depths to her eyes and to her voice that contradicted the sweet veneer. For his part, Minnelli fleshed out the darkness in the material, like the morbid death fantasies of the youngest sister, Tootie.

In Ms. Moore’s sunny-side up version, the script’s dark notes can’t help but sound false, so the actors are only too happy to play them for broad humor or skim over them. When the ugly themes do register — as with the family’s general disdain for Dad — they feel out of place and bizarre: inexplicable blemishes on an otherwise idealized portrait.

Like many homespun holiday tales, “Meet Me in St. Louis” has not aged gracefully. Hugh Wheeler’s book — with its caricatured maid, its virtually interchangeable bland beaux, and its precious tots — feels dated. The irreducible wholesomeness of the family members makes them seem more like dollhouse figurines than people.

Sarah Pfisterer tries to work some nuance into the mother of the brood, Mrs. Smith, but as the character’s name makes plain, it’s an uphill struggle. As the boy next door, John Truitt, Colin Donnell has some fresh moments.

Yet Ms. Moore’s nostalgic production seems to enjoy its dollhouse qualities. Esther is played by Bonnie Fraser, a gentle soprano with the look of a 1940s movie actress. Becky Barta’s Irish maid might have been sent over from central casting. The women’s costumes (by Tracy Christensen) are as frilly and pretty as dolls’ dresses. And the set is assembled with the ad-hoc haste of a doll’s room — a cardboard cutout dog, a tall piano, a squat mini Christmas tree.

‘Tis the season for pulling out old chestnuts, and “Meet Me in St. Louis” is no more clichéd than many a holiday classic. But after annual doses of the Minnelli film, audiences have come to expect a little spice in this gingerbread — a spice Ms. Moore steadfastly declines to supply.

***

To hold their young audience’s attention, plays for children need a simple premise. “Henry and Mudge,” the new musical based on the characters from Cynthia Rylant’s popular children’s series, has a wonderful one: We, the audience, can hear a dog’s thoughts, while his owners can’t.

From that little gem of an idea, writer Kait Kerrigan (book and lyrics) spins out a surprisingly satisfying musical for young children. (Theatreworks USA, its presenter, recommends it for prekindergartners through third-graders.) Though its structure is familiar — boy gets dog, boy comes to love dog, boy doesn’t want to share dog — its methods are novel. Adults play young Henry and his cousin Annie, and under Peter Flynn’s whip-smart direction, they make better kids than actual kids probably would. The 182-pound dog, Mudge, is embodied by Todd Buonopane, most recently of “The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee.”

For all its belly laughs, “Henry and Mudge” is actually a finely-drawn study of Henry’s relationships. As the musical opens, Henry and his parents have just left the city for a house in the country, and Henry misses the best friend he left behind in New York: his cousin Annie (Jennifer Cody, in a powerhouse performance). When Mudge arrives, he sees the possibility of a new best friend, but it’s not that easy for a boy to figure out what a dog wants — or for a dog to understand what a boy is saying. Just as Henry begins to hit it off with Mudge, Annie comes to visit, and — horror! — Mudge seems to like Annie better than Henry.

Backed only by a simple, “Sesame Street”-like set (house, tree, mailbox), the actors bring their characters to vivid life. Henry is a hyped-up bundle of impulses, a nervous little only child who really needs a friend his own age. Mom (Joan Hess) is nice but overtaxed, Dad (Patrick Boll) is cheery but often at work. Mudge is a thoroughly reactive creature — treats and bouncing balls get his attention; everything else is window dressing.

Then there’s the uproarious, utterly original Annie. Though Annie is a character from Ms. Rylant’s books, it’s unlikely anyone could have envisioned her in the way Ms. Cody plays her — as a karate-kicking motormouth in a pink dress, delighting us with her precocious pronouncements. (At one point, panicking over the stains on her dress, she gives us a child’s-eye view of dry cleaning that is worth the price of the ticket.) In Annie’s many dance-inspired sequences, Devanand Janki’s choreography reaches zany heights.

But Ms. Cody’s bravura performance isn’t runaway vamping — it has a distinct point. She makes it easy for us to understand how Mudge could be dazzled by Annie, and thus, momentarily forget about Henry — a development that leads to the piece’s poignant finale.

The tuneful, competent songs for the three-piece orchestra (lyrics by Ms. Cody, music by Brian Lowdermilk) don’t rise to the level of the book, but they don’t get in its way, either. Then again, it’s hard to imagine what could block the advance of a lovable boy, his bounding dog, and a pink whirling dervish of a girl. “Henry and Mudge”may be a small show, but it has quite an engine.

“Meet Me in St. Louis” until January 28 (132 W. 22nd St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-727-2737).

“Henry and Mudge” until January 20 (121 Christopher St., between Bedford and Bleecker streets, 212- 279-4200).


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