Ben Bagley was a mid-20th century musical theater impresario whose specialty was creating and producing intimate musical revues on a shoestring budget. Later in his career, Bagley produced through his own Painted Smiles Record label nearly 50 albums that featured songs taken from shows by Broadway greats such as Rodgers & Hart and Jerome Kern as performed by eclectic assortments of artistes.
Probably the best known among Bagley’s revues was The Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen Through the Eyes of Cole Porter. A major off-Broadway hit in 1965, the show offers a gallery of several dozen among Porter’s less remembered songs from his Broadway scores.
For example, the numbers heard here from Gay Divorce are the delightful “I’ve Got You On My Mind” and “After You, Who?” but not the immortal “Night and Day.”
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★ review here.]
The songs, culled mostly from Porter’s musicals of the 1930s and early 1940s, are usually loosely linked by somewhat facetious remarks such as the passing comment about a busy Hollywood star who “worked at Warner’s by day and Fox at night.”
A revival of Decline and Fall now arrives at the Theater at Saint Peter’s in The York Theatre Company’s “Musicals in Mufti” series, which presents neglected tuners as staged in concert performances with minimal design circumstances and little rehearsal time. Conceived by Bagley as a light entertainment rendered by a small company backed only by a piano and scant visuals, Decline and Fall promised to be an ideal project for the Mufti series.
In his pre-show remarks at the Sunday matinee, the York’s Producing Artistic Director, James Morgan, noted that the show was being produced with merely 30 hours of rehearsals. Even so, allowing for performances more rough than ready, Decline and Fall proves to be a less than impressive affair.
What makes the show worthwhile is the tasty material. Porter’s ever clever, at times comical or touching, lyrics and his suave, delectable melodies represent vintage Broadway champagne.
“The Tale of the Oyster” is a witty parody of an art song. “Let’s Fly Away” is a quintessential expression of Depression-era escapism. “Farming” is a classic example of the name-dropping numbers that often popped up in Porter’s musicals. And for the folks who like to hear Porter’s big hits, the two-act show concludes in a mega-mix finale of many among his best remembered songs such as “Begin the Beguine” and “Easy to Love.”
Eric Svejcar, the music director who energetically works the keyboard of a grand piano, does nobly by the music. But then there are the performances…
Lee Roy Reams, typically an affable and expert entertainer, registers best among the four-member company. Handling most of the narrative duties with aplomb, Reams tosses into the proceedings several impressions of yesteryear stars; most notably a swaggering Sophie Tucker whose florid presence is matched only by her orchidaceous corsage. Reams also does nicely by the lavender-scented mockery of “I’m a Gigolo” and sincerely delivers the positive sentiments of “Experiment.”
Danny Gardner, a pleasing song-and-dance man, easily breezes through a tap-happy rendition of “I Worship You” and teams with Reams on a raucous duet of “Well, Did You Evah?”
Sometimes Gardner and to a lesser extent, Reams, are given to overly emphasizing the comic points among their lyrics; a fault magnified considerably in the broad performances by Lauren Molina and Diane Phelan, neither of whom appear to have the slightest notion of period style.
Considering that the production is staged by Pamela Hunt, the smart director of The Musical of Musicals—The Musical!), who knows full well the charms of vintage technique, it is shocking to watch Molina and Phelan comment so excessively and coyly upon certain songs with cutesy-poo accents and wink-wink satirical attitudes.
Porter’s sophisticated material requires no embroidery by its performers. Let’s hope that Molina and Phelan modify their dubious interpretations for subsequent showings.
In these coarse times of The Voice and American Idol, it is likely that certain viewers have become conditioned to believe that the more blatant artists are preferable to ones who perform with subtlety and thoughtful taste. If so, this Decline and Fall is likely to better satisfy them than anyone who appreciates the old-school values of Porter’s own era.
The Decline and Fall of the Entire World As Seen Through the Eyes of Cole Porter opened October 13, 2019, at the York Theatre and runs through October 20. Tickets and information: yorktheatre.org
