It can take a village to raise a musical, but there are times when a parent’s love and perseverance seem especially crucial. Such is the case with Vanities—The Musical, Jack Heifner’s adaptation of his own long-running off-Broadway hit tracing three young women from their teens into adulthood. The play premiered in New York way back in 1976, and since 2009, Heifner and composer and lyricist David Kirshenbaum have been trying to make it sing, with different incarnations popping up here and in London.
The latest version has now arrived via the York Theatre Company, long a forum for both new and neglected musicals, and it’s a modestly charming chamber piece that, like the play, works best as a vehicle for its stars. Happily, they include young Broadway and regional veterans Hayley Podschun and Amy Keum and, in her New York stage debut, fast-rising non-binary performer Jade Jones, who all thrive under Will Pomerantz’s sprightly but sensitive direction.
Like the play, Vanities—The Musical explores the challenges posed by a close friendship between very different gals, whom we first meet in 1963 as high school cheerleaders. Joanne, played by Podschun, is the most traditional and, apparently, superficial, desiring only to sustain her popularity and virginity until settling down to become a wife and mother. Kathy, Keum’s role, is the efficient, hyper-organized one; Mary, played by Jones, is the rebel, already sexually active and poised to embrace the countercultural explosion just around the corner.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
As we follow the trio through college and into the 1970s, watching their paths diverge and eventually clash, Kirshenbaum’s breezy, accessible score reflects the changing times, segueing from feisty girl-group textures to Bacharach-inspired pop to the kind of singer/songwriter-informed musical theater pieces that started filling Broadway houses about a half century ago. It’s all beautifully sung; Jones’s powerhouse mezzo is the most flamboyant, but Podschun’s and Keum’s vocals are just as fluid and expressive.
Scenic designer James Morgan and costumer Barbara Erin Delo establish a minimalist foundation that accommodates unapologetically feminine flourishes. The actors dress in black, but add more colorful accessories here and there—hair ribbons, headbands—while a series of white mannequins behind them display a range of fashions corresponding with different eras and stages of life. Kirshenbaum’s lyrics nod cheekily to Chanel, Givenchy and finally Eileen Fisher, as the musical, expanding on the play, carries the women into middle age.
If none of this sounds terribly progressive, it should be noted that while the racial and gender diversity of the cast brings this production of Vanities assiduously into the present, the characters seem distractingly dated. In the musical’s penultimate scene, which finds the women only in their late twenties, Joanne is already an exhausted housewife whose happy marriage is obviously a sham, and the still-single Mary appears lonely and prematurely jaded, despite her success selling pornographic art. They embody, respectively, liberal and conservative clichés of the pitfalls facing women.
With Pomerantz and his winning company on board, Vanities—The Musical nonetheless remains not only diverting but endearing, right up to the feel-good conclusion that Heifner and Kirshenbaum have provided. Heifner’s play was never a searing piece of social commentary to begin with, and by continuing to brighten both the presentation and the resolution of this spinoff, he’s giving his nearly 50-year-old baby room to grow.
Vanities—The Musical opened March 30, 2023, at the Theatre at St. Jeans and runs through April 22. Tickets and information: yorktheatre.org
