For a musical largely set in the Garment District, I Can Get It for You Wholesale sure has a lot of seams showing. This 1962 musical based on a 1937 novel by Jerome Weidman is mainly remembered today for its smashing debut by a then-unknown Barbra Streisand, who made herself a star largely with one comic number, “Miss Marmelstein.” It has now been given a rare revival by the Classic Stage Company, which has assembled a terrific ensemble that would put many Broadway productions to shame. But despite the extensive tailoring, it’s easy to see why the show has largely been forgotten.
This version, featuring a revised book by the original author’s son, John Weidman, gives the material a decidedly darker turn. A first-person narration by its lead character, the prototypical anti-hero Harry Bogen (Santino Fontana, Tootsie), has been added, and several of composer Harold Rome’s numbers have been cut or rearranged. Not that many theatergoers will be aware of the differences.
The story begins in 1937, with shipping clerk Harry frustrated by a strike by his fellow employees that has put him out of work. He makes a daring proposition to his beleaguered employer (Adam Grupper) in which he promises to deliver the garments with his own newly formed company. He doesn’t actually have a company yet, and the fact that what he’s proposing is strikebreaking is only the first of the many moral compromises he’s willing to make on the fast track to success.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
To facilitate his plans, he persuades his longtime friend Ruthie (Rebecca Naomi Jones), who’s been in love with him for years, to provide funding, and he enlists his buddies Teddy (Greg Hildreth) and Meyer (Adam Chanler-Berat) to become partners. The resulting success prompts Harry to even bigger aspirations; he establishes his own dress manufacturing company, financed largely by Ruthie, with whom he has become romantically involved. But he winds up betraying both his business partners, through a series of shady financial manipulations in which he uses company funds for his own use, and Ruthie, by cheating on her with Martha Mills (Joy Woods, Six), a sexy, gold-digging Broadway star whom he showers with expensive gifts.
It’s generally assumed that one of the reasons the original production wasn’t more successful is because Harry proves a thoroughly dishonest figure with few redeeming qualities other than his obvious love for his adoring mother (Judy Kuhn). Unlike the similarly amoral J. Pierpont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which premiered the previous year, Harry lacks the comic charm and twinkle that would make you root for him. More problematically, his flaws are on display from the very beginning, meaning that the character has little dramatic arc other than his financial rise and fall.
Fontana’s inherent appeal goes a long way, but despite his charismatic, beautifully sung performance it’s still hard to care about his Harry. Fortunately, the supporting characters provide some much-needed emotional depth, especially Jones’ betrayed Ruthie and Kuhn’s mother who watches helplessly as her son loses his moral bearings. Chanler-Berat’s Meyer, who trusts Harry implicitly and lives to regret it, and his wife Blanche (Sarah Steele, endearing as always) are also characters for whom you come to care.
And then there’s Julia Lester as Miss Marmelstein, Harry’s loyal assistant. The talented performer, who wowed last season as Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods, performs similar magic here, delivering showstopping turns with her “Miss Marmelstein” and lead vocal on the powerful Brechtian song “What Are They Doing to Us Now?” Only 23 years old, Lester clearly has a major career ahead of her.
Rome’s score, largely inflected with Jewish folk music influences, is more serviceable than memorable, but it does offer consistent pleasures, including the charming “Have I Told You Lately?” And director Trip Cullman has provided a vibrant staging, although he seems to have inherited his predecessor John Doyle’s penchant for tables and chairs, which mainly comprise Mark Wendland’s scenic design. Indeed, the performers are forced to dodge around and move the furniture so frequently you begin to think they should be earning extra pay as stagehands.
