The semi-contemporized re-envisioning of Rodgers & Hart’s classic 1940 musical Pal Joey, now playing at City Center, can’t rightly be labeled a revival or an Encores!-style restoration. The premise and setting – drawn from a suite of John O’Hara New Yorker stories turned novel – survive essentially intact: Chicago, late 1930s. The titular Joey, self-identifying as an “international singing star,” hits town, dreams big, overreaches, gets his comeuppance.
This time out, however, book revisers Richard LaGravanese and Daniel “Koa” Beaty got to toss in some clever contemporary grace notes, and the creative team – co-directors Tony Goldwyn and Savion Glover, music supervisor Daryl Waters – were granted access to the broader R&H vault.
The updated Joey (talented singer/dancer Ephraim Sykes) knows the score. He resents the fact the music that he and his Black contemporaries are still in the process of pioneering has already been co-opted by the white establishment.
A chance encounter with smoky-voiced radio crooner Linda English – Aisha Jackson, topping her knockout performance as Snow White’s bestie in Once Upon a One More Time – torpedoes Joey’s vow to jettison the ladies on his upward climb. Linda, Joey’s antithesis, is no aspiring spotlight-hogger. Self-conscious about her appearance (she’s sensitive about failing what Joey alludes to as “the brown paper bag test”), she prefers the aural anonymity of a sound studio. Joey succeeds in coaxing Linda out of her defensive stance; she in turn revives the romantic in him.
Lurking in the wings, however, is club owner Vera Simpson (Elizabeth Stanley), a rich, WASP-y widow who’s a ready-made trellis for a climber like Joey. (Think Doris Duke: costume designer Emilio Sosa and wig designer J. Jared Janas clearly have, to excellent effect.) Turned on by Vera’s superficial froideur, not to mention the prospect of ready money, Joey hurls himself at her. For their all-but-inevitable assignation, scenic designer Derek McLane and lighting designer Jon Goldman trade the louche Reginald Marsh palette that prevails at the nightclub to summon a cool, sleek, cathedral-ceilinged boudoir. Vera proves as hot in bed as she is icy in public. (Joey woos her by calling her out with “The Lady Is a Tramp,” borrowed from Babes in Arms.) Stanley is a fine singer, but her bawdy, belabored “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” is simply discomfiting. Let’s not even mention the scatting.
Still, the story line remains more or less on track so far. It’s in bumping a hitherto peripheral character – the nondescript, nonsinging, nondancing club manager – to the fore that the rewriters simultaneously triumph and overstep. As the updated counterpart, de facto den mother Lucille Wallace, Loretta Devine (who achieved stardom with Dreamgirls) is assigned a number of songs that challenge her current vocal capabiity. Text-wise, she’s fantastic, “Lu” having been assigned all the wittier, more insightful lines. As for her side-plot romance with Vera’s fixer, Tony? Conveying not the slightest trace of thuggish menace (would that be un-PC?), Jeb Brown plays the gangster like a benign Park Avenue toff who thinks that he’s the main story.
In choreographing Lucille’s bevy of chorines, Glover has succeeded perhaps all too well in making them look amateur. If you want to see some superb dance, pay attention – you’ll have no choice – to Brittany Nicole Parks’s sinuous turn as a griot bookending Joey’s story arc.
Another highlight: Brooks Ashmanskas’ all-too-brief vignette as the society reporter Melvin (née Melba), who – in the repurposed “Zip” – mockingly embodies the intellectual pretentions of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.
The eight-member orchestra, under Alvin Hough Jr.’s direction, is excellent throughout, especially Alphonso Horne on trumpet: he’s often the centripetal force holding the show together through many an awkward moment. As arranger, Waters appears determined to treat the tempi like taffy, pushing them to extremes or reversing them entirely. Lento sections drag on onerously; other passages, not meant to be sprightly, scamper right along.
All the songs – including those interpolated – are classics for a reason. An audience composed of confirmed R&H admirers will naturally approach the show with certain expectations. Most will likely be surprised by the liberties that this team has taken with what little remains of the original score. Pleased? That’s another question entirely. But go, if only to be bowled over by Aisha Jackson’s extraordinary gift: her “My Funny Valentine” will turn your heart inside out.
Pal Joey opened November 1, 2023, at City Center and runs through November 5. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
