The great accomplishment of the new production of Wonderful Town is that it transcends the show's limitations. The music is the least distinguished of Leonard Bernstein's Broadway career: not as poignant as On the Town, not as dramatic as West Side Story, not as dazzling as Candide. But it's not meant to be distinguished; it's funny. The young Lenny, with his cabaret buddies Betty Comden and Adolph Green, wrote the score in a hurry -- starting just five weeks before rehearsals began. They did it with an exuberance they never again equaled. (Right afterwards Bernstein became music director of the New York Philharmonic while Comden and Green became Hollywood celebrities when they wrote Singing in the Rain.) In the spirit of their earlier nightclub parodies, they spoofed bucolic ballads, football fight songs, swing, jazz, the conga, Irish jigs and corny love songs.
Kathleen Marshall, this production's director and choreographer, captures the writers' intentions perfectly as she underlines the silly aspect of the material. She succeeds so well that audiences laugh at the start of "Why oh why Ohio" and at Gregg Edelman's arms-flung wide rendition of "It's Love." Topping the craziness of New York cops claiming Eileen (half Swede, half Scot) as an Irish lass, Marshall picks a black cop to belt the blarney, and the whole platoon burst into their version of Riverdance during "My Darlin' Eileen."
Donna Murphy gives a wonderful performance as Ruth Sherwood, the intellectual who moves, with her sister, from Ohio to Greenwich Village in 1935. The vocal line is limited in range because it was written for Rosalind Russell, but Murphy brings out a myriad of colors in it, and her comic timing and physicality are superb. She captures the essence of screwball comedy that was a trademark of the period. Jennifer Westfeldt makes a strong Broadway debut as an appealing Eileen, while Gregg Edelman is excellent as the editor who eventually falls in love with Ruth, singing more lyrically than the original's comically-blustery George Gaynes. Every role is well cast, and conductor Rob Fisher is a co-star leading the 25-piece band in the original Don Walker orchestrations.
The band is appropriately placed center stage, raised in mid-air to allow scenery and action below and in front of it while Manhattan skyscrapers rise behind it. Thus this production is richer than the same team's Chicago, which has its much-smaller band fill most of the stage. Like Chicago, this is a crowd-pleaser that deserves a long run.
