This is a sumptuous and beautiful revival of a challenging 1941 play-with-music. The timing couldn't be better, since the script includes references to "these difficult times" and national emergency. Early in the show, the troubled magazine editor, Liza Elliott, says to her psychoanalyst: "I feel ashamed to sit here whining about myself, with the world at war." The show's structure is unusual, starting cold, without music, and the scenes in Liza's office and the psychiatrist's office are straight Moss Hart dialogue. But when Liza starts relating her troubling dreams the sets dissolve into surrealistic mini musicals, with lovely Kurt Weill melodies and some of the cleverest lyrics on Ira Gershwin's career. Written two years before Rodgers & Hammerstein's first show, Oklahoma!, Lady in the Dark pioneered what R&H normally get credit for: using ballet and dream sequences to tell a story.
Liza is a creative executive in the fashion business who tells women how to dress and behave so they can catch a man while she herself is terrified of marriage. She's prim in her office but dazzling in her dreams. The big ballad in Lady in the Dark, "My Ship," appears in fragments while Liza tries to find out what's wrong with her and then appears in full form as Liza remembers things from her childhood and achieves a psychological breakthrough. Lady in the Dark is a mysterious, disturbing comic drama with gorgeous music and colorful dreamscapes. The original production starred Gertrude Lawrence, Danny Kaye, Victor Mature and Macdonald Carey.
Director Ted Sperling wisely doesn't try to update the story, which is timeless in its picture of an executive's effort to balance personal and business lives. One change is casting a woman as Liza's psychiatrist. This takes away the chauvinistic aspect of a domineering male and makes the play a sisterly search for the truth. Andrea Marcovicci is perfect as Liza -- more beautiful of face, form and voice than Lawrence ever was. Her singing of "My Ship,""The Story of Lucy and Jenny" and the rest of the score is every bit as good as you'd expect from this fine artist and her acting is affecting. Mark Vietor, Beau Gravitte, Brian O'Brien, Maureen Mueller and Alison Fraser make strong contributions, with O'Brien displaying an exceptionally rich baritone voice.
Costumes are brilliant, the staging and lighting are of top Broadway quality, and it's great to hear Rob Berman conduct the larger-than-usual 20-piece orchestra.
