A legendary musical that has never been seen on Broadway since its original production of the early 1940s, Lady in the Dark has made a fleeting appearance for three performances at the New York City Center.
This MasterVoices production, inventively staged by conductor-director Ted Sperling in a grand concert format performed with a chorus of more than 100 singers arranged upon onstage bleachers, offered a luscious-sounding and lustrous-looking rendition of the musical that demonstrates why, for all of its glorious charms, it is unlikely ever to return to Broadway.
Crafted by writer Moss Hart as a comedic drama interspersed by three extended musical sequences, Lady in the Dark regards an anxious middle-aged woman in the midst of a mental breakdown. Liza Elliott, a successful fashion magazine executive stricken by an identity crisis, hits the couch of a psychiatrist and starts relating her dreams, which become the musical segments composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Ira Gershwin.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★ review here.]
Between these surreal interludes—the Glamour Dream, the Wedding Dream, and the Circus Dream—Liza copes with the stresses of her job even as she deals with the men in her life, notably Kendall Nesbitt, her publisher and married lover; Randy Curtis, a Hollywood hunk who pursues her; and Charley Johnson, the ad manager who challenges her “boss lady” nature. As the story proceeds, Liza explores and finally resolves her inner conflicts.
This was all daring stuff way back when in 1941 when psychoanalysis was mostly a mystery to the general public. Today, Liza’s rapid cure through a couple of talk therapy sessions appears a tad ludicrous while the conflicting feminine values she struggles to balance are obviously dated.
Still, the drama essentially works, and the musical sequences are truly fabulous in every sense of that overused word.
Weill’s score offers a gorgeous mid-20th century mix of operetta, jazzy pop tunes, and patter numbers, driven by various dance rhythms including rumba, fox-trot, bolero, and waltz, all of which the composer himself suavely orchestrated for a 20-member orchestra. Gershwin’s lyrics are very clever, frequently amusing, and far more sophisticated than anything currently heard along Broadway (with the notable exception of Kiss Me, Kate).
Sure, Lady in the Dark might be an elegant antique that’s too fragile for mass appreciation today, but Sperling’s production does the old girl proud. The text has been pared back by Christopher Hart (Moss Hart’s son) and Kim Kowalke, mostly through some minor dialogue trims and eliminating entirely the comical character of Alison Du Bois, a chi-chi feature writer on the magazine. (A young Natalie Schafer, of later Gilligan’s Island fame, created that role, so you can imagine.)
Smartly cast with personable leads, the show moves along fleetly, thanks to choreographer Doug Varone, whose 10-member dance ensemble, barefoot and clad in tuxedos (until they later appear in colorful garb for the Circus Dream), sleekly glide about the stage, contributing eloquent gestures and flourishes to the visuals, as when they whip around blue streamers to suggest the fountain at Columbus Circle.
The massed chorus, also formally dressed until they get into mufti to witness the circus, lend lush voices to the show’s choral passages. Performing as intermediaries between the principals and the choir, 20 or so choristers speak and sing smaller roles in conjunction with the Doug Varone Dancers, who neatly mime their characters.
Beautifully decked out in a billowing, blue-black, bouffant frock designed by Zac Posen for the Glamour Dream and otherwise primly attired for everyday 1940s city life by Tracy Christensen, Victoria Clark does nicely by the extremely demanding role of Liza Elliott.
A major reason why Lady in the Dark is rarely staged is securing a stellar actor who can persuasively sing and act the character’s conflicting nature. They say that Gertrude Lawrence, who created the role, was incandescent. Whatever, at least Clark gives Liza a calorific personal glow that also warms her vocals. If she intermittently sounds somewhat operetta-ish in quality, Clark insouciantly gambols through the honky-tonk moves of the “Saga of Jenny” number and delicately warbles “My Ship,” the dimly recalled childhood song that haunts Liza’s memories.
Ron Raines looks suitably distinguished as Kendall Nesbitt, Christopher Innvar soft-pedals Charley’s snarky disposition, and Ben Davis good-naturedly twinkles as the movie star. One wishes that any of these three gents might be able to strike a few sexy sparks with Clark, but alas, there’s nothing in the way of chemistry happening here.
Speaking of sex, Liza’s shrink was written as a male character, but here Amy Irving depicts Dr. Brooks with a kindly manner. David Pittu breezily portrays the effusive persona of a Cecil Beaton-type photographer who nimbly reels through a catalog of 50 Russian composers in the bravura “Tschaikowsky” number that helped to make Danny Kaye a star. Montego Glover, Ashley Park, and Bradley Beakes deftly play others in Liza’s busy world.
Considering that Lady in the Dark is their stunning dream child, it is a pity that the show’s playbill does not provide the bios of the Messrs. Hart, Weill, and Gershwin, nor mention that Weill created the musical’s rich orchestrations, which are so sonorously performed by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s under Sperling’s baton. Regardless, it’s a rare pleasure to see and hear this fantastical masterpiece presented in such a thoroughly lovely rendition.
Lady in the Dark opened April 25, 2019, at City Center and runs through April 27. Tickets and information: mastervoices.org
