Put aside worrying about how close Avenue X’s Italian vs. black underclass strife comes to West Side Story’s white vs. Hispanic underclass since both musicals involve frustrated youth and simmering street violence, and this a cappella musical will hook you quickly and for keeps.
Librettist John Jiler’s setup has the benignity of every doomed dream: it’s the night Pasquale (Ted Brunetti) hopes to bring his two doo-wop singing partners, Ubazz and Chuck (Roger Mazzeo and John Leone) to Brooklyn’s Fox Theater for a career-breaking talent show. Ubazz’s slow-wittedness causes no trouble, but Chuck has it bad for Pasquale’s sister Barbara (Colette Hawley), who has her sights set way past local losers like him. Chuck’s sudden defection from the trio causes Pasquale to take what for him seems a very natural step: ask Milton, the nice guy and great singer who also practices in the local sewer to join the group. After some tentative bargaining, a hesitant agreement is made; it is the snowball that starts the avalanche.
The new singer is black.
What follows is predictable only in that it feels unavoidable given their time (1963) and our time (1994). John Jiler’s lively script doesn’t hesitate to jolt us with ugliness from both sides: Chuck’s compulsive race-baiting, the vitriolic xenophobia of Milton’s embittered (and embottled) stepfather. Even the Nation of Islam takes a ribbing as Milton’s friend Winston (Keith Johnston), at first a mellow island of comic relief, becomes a spouter of garbled doctrine, half the time calling for a return to African culture, the other half babbling about white and Jewish evil. By the time tragedy strikes, enough damage has already been done to make death the final nail in an already secured coffin.
The story is old, but the telling grabs us, and in theater it’s all in the telling. In writing his all-vocal score, Ray Leslee does get to skirt the usual mandates of book musicals; lyrics to doo-wop tunes are supposed to be of moon-June-spoon banality. Also, rather than have to deal with character-based “I want” songs, Leslee can tuck in a tune whenever the plot calls for a rehearsal (or for Milton’s parents to strut their stuff). But to call Mr. Leslee’s job easy is to miss the subtleties.
We hear it at the very beginning, when the black characters’ humming starts sweet and gospelly while the Italians have a brassy edge. Throughout the show, the “black” songs will embody musical extremes (religious fervor and profane ditties about sex), while the Italians’ (except for Barbara’s appropriately raucous “Woman of the World”) will stay more virginal, more closely related to current commercial doo-wop. Although a cast CD of Avenue X probably wouldn’t stay on anyone’s playlist for very long, the a cappella numbers don’t all sound the same, yet don’t sound out of place or period, either.
So while the score displays talent, it is the story that gives great hope for John Jiler, not because he has potential, but because Avenue X already shows him in mid-bloom.
