Re Hallelujah Baby:
Der B said it best last night on the way home: "If I were a critic, my lead paragraph would read A train wreck occured last night. Fortunately, since none of the cars were connected, no one was seriously hurt."
I'm not familiar with the original Hallelujah Baby, but this revisal simply does not work. It is disjointed, not only not connecting with the audience but with itself as well. And the blame for this is mostly Mr. Laurents'. He speeds from moment to moment, with little time givin to explain how we get from point A to point B, which is on another track entirely. Cardboard characters popped in and out, which is great when portraying a cardboard villian, but not so great when they're supposed to be supporting heros. Situations just "happened," instead of being led into.
Worse, the heroine, Georgina, is as cardboard as the rest. She decides that, to raise her position in life, she's going to become an entertainment star. Hasn't that cliche gone past hoary? Not to mention elitist, as comparatively few people work in the entertainment industry in any capacity. It would have been far more interesting if she had become a businesswoman, working her way up to independency first by working for others, then by striking out on her own. But I guess that would have eliminated the easy show-biz parodies, none of which landed last night.
The songs were mostly great. The diction used to sing them was less so.
The set was a central playing area with tacky projections on a scrim behind, with part of the band visable through the scrim at various times for no reason whatsoever. (Jose was tucked off to the side where we couldn't see him; the musical director was centrally placed at a piano, flashing a big smile every time he could shuck and jive.) The cast of nine was swamped by the overly-wide stage, with no place to hide. The lighting was spotty, the sound gave out at inopportune moments...
There were enough good moments sprinkled through the evening that I enjoyed myself, so the time was not entirely wasted. Ann Duquesnay, as Momma, knocked the house flat with her rendition of "I Don't Know Where She Got It," and Curtiss l' Cook was good as the major love interest. But Suzanne Douglas lacked the attraction necessary to be the star of the show.
