A personably charming but somewhat quirky New Yorker haltingly approaches the audience to bashfully introduce himself. (He’s a composer of advertising jingles, aspiring to something greater like show tunes; so of course he is personably charming, quirky, and bashful.) Before he says much more, he stops to drop a buck in the tip hat of a convenient street musician. Then he—and the four other denizens of Harry’s world (his name is Harry)—launch into a jauntily sprightly tune with bright and intelligible words in Darling Grenadine, at the Roundabout’s underground Black Box Theatre beneath the Laura Pels.
A young composer/lyricist/bookwriter named Daniel Zaitchik makes a most auspicious big league debut with this ingratiatingly delightful pocket-sized musical. (Darling Grenadine has been around since 2016, having been developed at the O’Neill Theater Center; presented as part of the NAMT Festival of New Musicals; and staged at both Goodspeed and the Marriott in Chicago.) Zaitchik writes honest-to-goodness songs, with melody, humor, and what you might call musical comedy know-how. These were, formerly, common traits on our musical stages. Not so much anymore, in this age of pop/rock and pop/rock-catalog jukebox musicals.
Darling Grenadine is one of those boy-meets-girl affairs, with a shaggy dog. Not your typical boy-meets-girl story. Harry (Adam Kantor) is the recalcitrant composer, blessed/cursed by his one-time creation of a highly lucrative fast food burger jingle which keeps him in greenbacks. He spends most of his time not writing but playing “standards” in a bar called Standards, run by his more-or-less brother Paul (Jay Armstrong Johnson). The place—which seems mostly empty, although that might be due to the cast of only five—is heavily underwritten by Harry’s burger-jingle residuals.
Louise (Emily Walton) is yet another one of those aspiring actresses we see from time to time, but not of the clichéd variety. She is in the chorus of a major hit Broadway musical, understudying the leading lady. (That leading lady, unseen here, is—in one of the too-cute coincidences that sometimes intrude on the plot—a former waitress at Standards.) Harry falls in love, or in at least potential love, watching the comic bits Emily adds onstage while doing her chorus work, which is realistic-sounding enough to those in the business but certainly a novel notion to non-show-biz civilians.
The pair meet cute, in unique fashion: Noticing that Harry’s jacket is full of dog hair, Louise pulls out a lint brush and more or less give him a literal brush off. Matters proceed, accompanied by a string of sprightly and slightly offbeat songs. There is a chink in the armor, if you will, signified by what turns out to be the silver-plated flask Harry carries in his pocket.
This plot element leads precisely where you might expect, which is to a significantly darker and more treacherous second act. This at once turns what might have been a light-as-air musical with no emotional heft to something weighty which veers slightly towards preachiness. While it is always dangerous to suppose that musical comedy heroes are informed by autobiographical authorial glimpses, the plot twists—in which said charming-but-quirkily personable leading man is revealed to have an insurmountable-until-the-final-curtain inner demon—raise the suggestion, and double it.
Grenadine, by the way, is a syrup concocted from pomegranate juice and sugar with a hint of lemon; a non-alcoholic flavoring, this is the stuff they use to make that juvenile quasi-cocktail named after dear old Shirley Temple (although nowadays they use phony grenadine, with cherry flavoring and corn syrup). Grenadine is featured in a back-on-the-wagon title song, which opens the second act to rousing effect. It doesn’t seem to in any way define the musical, however.
But small matter if Zaitchik flirts with delving into the bottom of the bottle. (Both boy and girl, it turns out, were raised by alcoholic fathers—which makes at least this viewer wonder how Emily seems to be so easily fooled when Harry keeps pouring Maker’s Mark into his Starbucks cup.) Even so, Darling Grenadine serves up musical comedy joy at a time when concoctions of that flavor are rarely in evidence.
The cast is all-round attractive, including Kantor (the telephone guy from The Band’s Visit) charming his way through the affair; Walton (a replacement in August: Osage County and Come from Away) doing likewise, with a bit of a showpiece (“Paradise”) in the second act; and Johnson (On The Town, Hands on a Hardbody) giving yet another one of his fine performances. Aury Krebs and Matt Dallal chip in as diverse supporting characters, while trumpeter Mike Nappi makes a prominent canine contribution. Michael Berresse, the song-and-dance man (Kiss Me, Kate) turned director/choreographer ([title of show]), handily fills the chore here. Given the 70-seat in-the-round staging, Berresse and his designers provide an interesting environment, with especially effective in-the-round pen-and-ink projections from designer Edward T. Morris that seem to draw themselves as you watch.
There was a time when low-investment, high-value entertainments of this variety were aimed at and could flourish in the off-Broadway arena, back when there used to be an actual off-Broadway that could support intimate musicals (The Fantasticks, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, Godspell, et al.) with wide potential. Starting its New York life as part of Roundabout’s low-frills, low-cost Underground series, Darling Grenadine—despite a no-name cast and creative team—is already sold out (although we suspect an occasional ticket can still be had).
That in itself is a victory for Zaitchik, but Darling Grenadine is worthy of an increased and healthy life. Perhaps upstairs at the Laura Pels, the same trajectory that projected Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews—an early Underground offering—to deserved, mainstream prominence.
Darling Grenadine opened February 10, 2020, at the Black Box Theatre and runs through March 22. Tickets and information: roundabouttheatre.org
