Mad about the Boy accurately describes how Theater Works audiences seem to feel about Noel Coward, judging by some of the theater's major successes with works by and centered on him. It's the way I feel about how B. G. Fitzgerald performs them. To celebrate the theater's 15th anniversary and centennial of Coward's birth, a glutinous concoction of his songs, doses of autobiography, sketches, and play scenes is enriched by Fitzgerald's perfect pronunciation and urbanity. Whether admonishing"Mrs. Worthington," the stage mother, not to let her daughter on the stage or romancing Ann Morrison with "You Are There," he's smashing. She, too, adroitly handles a sophisticated piece like "London Calling," in which she practices reactions to news of her husband's suicide by trying out various phone depictions of it. Her slurpery singing about the party she's been to is as marvelous as the time she claims to have had; each repetition of praise gets higher as she does. (Too bad about that harsh-toned dress and pulled-back hair.)
Dapper Fitzgerald also works well with older Michael Drayton and younger Robert Morgan as a trio of unsynchronized sailors in"The Passenger's Always Right" sequence, but they're better reversing the usual gaiety of predictions with "There Are Bad Times. . . Just Around The Corner," and best nattily dressed, satirically revealing what goes on behind the scenes of "The Stately Homes of England" tours. Despite a frumpy red velvet dress that shines while hiked up in back, Jane Strauss packs a punch with her straight rendition of "Twentieth Century Blues," a departure from her otherwise almost-operatic soprano bits. Best dressed of the women, blonde Donna Delonay appears weakest, almost always as some ditzy wife, though she comes through with the right amount of loathing in"Bronxville Darby" as half of a couple mutually in hate. Logan Brown charmingly supplies all the music, setting each scene better than the dripping-with greenery but still impoverished scenery. Happily, most of the choreography is well motivated.
