Tempting but Trivial

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The New York Sun

Musical-theater guru Lehman Engel proselytized to his students about the virtues of the “charm song,” the sort of show tune that lets the audience sink into a state of undemanding pleasure. As a fictionalized Engel described in the 2000 musical-about-musicals “A Class Act,” the charm song is “the Southern belle of musicals — it don’t have to do a lick of work, it just makes the audience smile” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” and “Hello, Dolly!” are among the best-known examples.

No fewer than eight additional ones can be found in “The Diary of Adam and Eve,” the first and by far the best of the three one-acts that comprise “The Apple Tree.” The idea of an entire musical made up of the showstopping climaxes known as 11-o’clock numbers (“Memory,” “Rose’s Turn”), or those introductory statements of purpose called “I want” songs (“Something’s Coming,” for example), is distinctly unappetizing. And yet “Adam and Eve” gets by with nothing but charm songs, interspersed with whimsical gags, before its bittersweet finale. Although the two subsequent pieces are weak tea by comparison, the Roundabout’s revival of this fairly obscure 1966 work by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (which came right on the heels of their “Fiddler on the Roof”) generates more than its share of smiles.

This has little to do with director Gary Griffin, who has taken few steps to reimagine the semi-staged concert version he did last year for City Center’s Encores! series, and plenty to do with his three stars. For all their above-the-title experience, Brian d’Arcy James and Marc Kudisch circle like moths around the 4-foot-11-inch light bulb that is Kristin Chenoweth, a real-life Southern belle. Those who have already given over to her Kewpie-diva charms will find abundant satisfaction in her role(s) here. By turns ingenuous and voracious, mousy and slatternly, she has a lot to work with. That said, Ms. Chenoweth’s disinclination to stray from her comfort zone casts a worrisome pall over her considerable efforts and abilities.

(The piece was originally written for Barbara Harris, Alan Alda, and Larry Blyden, three engaging performers with only adequate vocal range. To anyone familiar with the current trio’s work, hearing them confined to Mr. Bock’s appealing but relatively limited melodic parameters can be frustrating.)

The first half of the evening is devoted to “Adam and Eve,” based on Mark Twain’s quippy short story. (Jerome Coopersmith contributed to the books of all three pieces.) Next up is “The Lady or the Tiger?,”Frank R. Stockton’s familiar will-she-or-won’t-she tale of a jealous princess who controls the fate of her condemned lover, and Jules Feiffer’s “Passionella,” in which a bedraggled chimney sweep finds fame but not fulfillment as she morphs nightly into a sex goddess.

While Mr. Griffin emphasizes Ms. Chenoweth’s sex appeal in the second two pieces (at least a half dozen gags focus on her chest), “Adam and Eve” is in many ways the raciest. “I’m not used to anything coming so close up to me,” Adam (Mr. James) mutters with a prelapsarian tingle. “It makes me feel hampered and, uh, somewhat — anxious.”

The song, in which a baffled Adam confuses their infant son for a menagerie of wild animals, is a gem of witty economy and delayed rhymes from Mr. Harnick, and Ms. Chenoweth follows that with a simply wonderful (and wonderfully simple) take on the evening’s loveliest song, “What Makes Me Love Him?” The toothless gender stereotypes — you’ll never guess which character likes to decorate the hut — offer little preparation for Messrs. Bock, Harnick, and Coopersmith’s surprisingly moving finale.

It’s a hard act to follow, which is why some theater companies call it a night then and there — “Adam and Eve” turns up at one-act festivals a lot — and Mr. Griffin’s zipless renditions of the following two pieces endorse the wisdom of this logic. “The Lady or the Tiger?” does virtually nothing to build upon its slight but compelling source material, and not even an endearing twist ending can make “Passionella” more than a dated trifle.

Despite a handful of chorus members — undulating concubines in “Lady,” frugging swells in “Passionella” — “The Apple Tree” is essentially a two-and-a-half-person show. Mr. Kudisch gives capable support in all three pieces, particularly as the Snake in “Adam and Eve” and as a dapper narrator in “Passionella.” And while “The Apple Tree” is clearly Ms. Chenoweth’s show, the versatile Mr. James gives Adam an oddly endearing frat-boy bravado and plays at heroic melodrama amusingly in “Lady.” He also does what he can with his glorified “Passionella” cameo as Flip, an über-hipster with the accent of a Beatle, the affect of Bono, and the hair of a drowned Chia Pet.

As for Ms. Chenoweth, she has found a persona that works and seems content to stick with it. The endearingly splayed elbows, chirpy voice, and herky-jerky head movements will be familiar to many — her Eve is a virtual repeat of her Tony-winning Sally in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”— and she even offers a raised-arm “Evita” homage straight out of “Wicked.”

Very few of these tried-and-true gambits disappoint or even feel out of place in “The Apple Tree,” but the wide variety of material affords a chance to add some adventurous new angles to her beloved persona. Ms. Chenoweth has an underrated coloratura soprano and impeccable comic timing; it would be a shame if, still a few years shy of her 40th birthday, she had closed the book on discovering new ways to showcase her gifts.

With the musicians relegated to the balconies on either side of Studio 54, “The Apple Tree” is the first Encores! transfer not to feature its orchestra onstage. (The other two were “Chicago,” still going strong after 10 years, and “Wonderful Town.”) Any new opportunities created by this reconfiguration remain untapped: Mr. Griffin, a Chicago mainstay whose main New York credit so far has been the rather haphazardly directed “The Color Purple,” has done virtually nothing to adapt to the new arrangement. He has plunked almost the entire show, including John Lee Beatty’s spare set elements, in the very front of the stage, resulting in a debilitating visual stasis. And his few more ambitious stage pictures — including a series of furtive gropings in the second piece — are cluttered and unconvincing.

Granted, the first half of “The Apple Tree” requires little beyond staying out of the material’s way. But the other pieces could use the help, and even performers as talented as this trio might benefit from a little prodding now and then. What was that quote about not doing a lick of work?

Until January 7 (254 W. 54th St., between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-719-1300).


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