Director Daniel Fish garnered awards and kudos – as well as some brickbats – for his radically reconceived 2019 Broadway Oklahoma! Without textual changes it found, within Rodgers and Hammerstein’s familiarly sunny classic, complex psychologies and an explicit critique of the American West’s heroic mythos. The dirty-fingernailed revival was raw as hell, but could be defended (I found it stunning) as a principled awakening of darker themes already present in the material.
The presentation of Most Happy In Concert at the Williamstown Theater Festival may presage a Fish rethinking of another timeless classic: The Most Happy Fella, Frank Loesser’s 1956 part-musical comedy, part-opera adaptation of Sidney Howard’s They Knew What They Wanted. But you will search in vain, during this brief (70 minute) cavalcade of Fella songs, for clues as to what the helmer would do with – I almost said “to” – the show in full, if the Loesser Estate lets him loose on it.
Forget about the thin but charming story of the aged Napa Valley vineyard owner, and the young San Francisco waitress he engages under false pretenses as a mail-order bride. Even if you knew the synopsis, you’d be baffled. By wrenching 33 numbers utterly out of context, and presenting them in an echt-Brechtian, emo-tinged context by singers who mostly look like they’d rather be anywhere other than the Nikos Stage, Fish has assembled the vainest and least compelling of cabaret events.
This is as apt a moment as any to point out the minimal impact made by the much-vaunted casting of an exclusively female or non-binary company, who are all immensely talented as soloists and in groups. Handing numbers traditionally sung by males, over to others, proves remarkably easy to accept; what’s not is the often dumbfounding use to which the numbers are being put.
On an exposed, unadorned bare stage (set credited to Amy Rubin), the presence of a gold fringe curtain at center offers at least a hint of showbiz. That hint is promptly belied when Fella’s ordinarily amusing opening number “Ooh, My Feet” – a waitress’s complaint at shift’s end – starts to be sung offstage left by someone, can’t quite make out who or what she’s singing, but she’s sitting on the floor against the back wall.
That remote musicianship goes on for quite a while, executed by a bunch of dimly-lit figures and offstage accompaniment. Would the ensemble ever appear? Be careful what you wish for. Eventually the cast of seven is moved to pick itself up and shuffle – there is no other verb for it (Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is credited as choreographer) – achingly onto the stage proper, where one of the most gorgeous scores ever crafted for the theater, alternately lilting and engaging, will be presented to greater bemusement than delight.
I counted exactly three musical coups. Mary Testa, the only performer who seems to be having a good time, sings a postman’s litany of letters to Napa locals and suddenly switches, mid-musical phrase, to become the hopeful groom himself (“’Atsa me! I’m-a the most happy fella” etc.). Tina Fabrique finds in “Young People” tremendous longing and truth, and the cast’s seven-part harmony in “Standing on the Corner” stirs the soul, though the staging doesn’t; it’s just milling around.
But that’s pretty much it. The orchestrations by Daniel Kluger and Nathan Koci, strongly executed, are heavily influenced by ‘50s jazz motifs, lots of sax and muted trumpet. This suits some of the sultrier ballads but quickly turns repetitious. “Big D” is a big dud; “Abbondanza,” meant to be a joyous comedy-relief celebration, is left knocking at the door to a meager feast. Nothing in the lyrics is connected to recognizable character or behavior.
As the lighting pipes and fixtures raise and lower to mysterious purpose, and the fringey curtain becomes suspended and starts spinning in midair, the cast members start to wander off to reappear in silver lamé gowns. Later they change back into rehearsal garb, fully or partly. Or just lie on their backs on benches in exhausted repose.
Had the Chico Hamilton Quintet (you may recall them from the 1957 classic Sweet Smell of Success) assembled a bunch of Manhattan torch singers to do a late night riff on Frank Loesser’s latest hit, it might have sounded a lot like this, though presumably much livelier and less pretentious. Later, as the seven dejected performers sat in a row on an upstage bench, some in lamé, others in mufti, it occurred to me that if the denizens of Genet’s The Balcony volunteered to do community theater, that’s exactly how they’d look.
Ironically, plenty about The Most Happy Fella could inspire the sort of reimagining that Oklahoma! received, particularly in the treatment of the immigrant experience and the tensions of a May-December romance. There’s a lot of subtext that could be profitably and excitingly mined, and if Fish turns his talents to it I’ll be first in line. Until then I shall listen to the original cast album to reconjure up Loesser’s greatness, and try to forget this misbegotten undertaking. And I don’t reckon I was the least happy fella in that audience.
Most Happy In Concert opened July 13, 2022, at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (Williamstown, MA) and runs through July 31. Tickets and information: wtfestival.org
