A Catered Affair: Heartfelt and Sweet

This past weekend was a big one for me: I met up with a whole slew of my fellow bloggers in NYC. A bunch of us went to see Cry-Baby together on Saturday night (look for my review later in the week), and even more of us met for brunch at Angus McIndoe on Sunday.

I must say that I was apprehensive about this confab: so many opinions, so few cattle prods. But the weekend wound up being an unqualified joy for me, and I'm hoping we can make this a regular (annual?) event. (Whaddya say, Esther? You up for being Julie the cruise director?)

So, anyway, on with the shows. Overall, I caught five this past weekend: The Seafarer (a play!), A Catered Affair, Cry-Baby, In the Heights, and Juno. I'll be posting my reviews throughout the week.

Let's start with A Catered Affair. A major caveat: I caught one of the very first previews, and I've been told that there are plans to make a lot of changes. I just hope that the changes don't radically alter what's already there, because the show, while slow at times, is already a quiet delight. Overall, it's a very sweet, unassuming little show, with a terrific score and a bunch of very strong performances.

At first, there appears to be a bit of a disconnect between the old-fashioned feel of the show's setting and composer/lyricist John Bucchino's modern music and sensibility, but eventually Bucchino won me over. His lyrics are intimate and heartfelt, without descending into schmaltz, revealing an emotional honesty that pervades the production. His music is haunting at times, at other times challenging. One highlight of the score is "Our Only Daughter," a remarkably moving number, given a stirring reading by Tony winner Faith Prince.

It's refreshing to see John Doyle direct without the whole actor/musician thing (e.g. Company, Sweeney Todd). Doyle proves he's not a one-trick pony with his empathic approach to Harvey Feinstein's remarkably serious book. (Harvey does reserve some choice one liners for himself, however. Well, wouldn't you?) Doyle elicits subtle and credible performances from his remarkable cast. There are a few quizzical choices in his staging at times (Why is Harvey Fierstein's character lurking in the shadows during much of the show? Why are Matt Cavenaugh and Leslie Kritzer climbing the fire escape during one of their numbers?), but these can easily get ironed out in the preview process.

One of Doyle's major accomplishments is preventing Faith Prince from chewing the scenery, as she is wont to do. Prince is far more restrained here than she was in, say, A Man of No Importance. In fact, Prince crafts a powerful and heartbreaking performance as the mother who wants to give her daughter a "proper" wedding. The tension this creates allows co-star Tom Wopat to truly shine. Wopat is a revelation: for most of the show, he remains terrifically understated, until his big number, "I Stayed," when he really lets loose, to positively stunning effect.

Most of the cast keeps a lid on the mugging, but Harvey Fierstein, as the "confirmed bachelor" uncle, more than compensates for this relative moderation. Yeah, Harvey really pushes for the laughs, but the show actually needs the levity. It's pretty dour at times, and I'm sure Harvey provided some welcome comic relief to the downright geriatric crowd I saw the show with, many of whom were likely expecting to see a good old-fashioned musical, which A Catered Affair is decidedly not. (A quibble: Would Fierstein's character really have been this openly gay in the 1940s? I'm not familiar with the original play/movie, but I can't imagine that the Winston character is this in-your-face in the show's previous incarnations.)

Another highlight in the cast is Leslie Kritzer, who is simply terrific as the daughter Janey, in a performance light years away from her most recent Broadway role, Shelly in Legally Blonde. In the wrong hands, this role could have been strident or whiny, but Kritzer gives it just the right balance of feeling and restraint. Matt Cavenaugh, who recently played this selfsame Walter Kerr Theater with my beloved Grey Gardens, was a bit indistinct as Kritzer's intended. Cavenaugh's a very talented guy, but he hasn't yet found a way to make Ralph three-dimensional. Perhaps as previews progress this will occur.

Is there room on Broadway for a sweet, quiet, heartfelt show with nothing more on its mind than a sympathetic look at one struggling family? I hope so, but I have my doubts. The logo is still gawdawful, but the show that the logo represents is a charmer.

A footnote: I notice that A Catered Affair comes before A Chorus Line alphabetically, and will therefore precede the latter in theater listings. Michael Bennett reportedly added the "A" to the title of A Chorus Line so that it would appear first in the New York Times. Now it doesn't. D'ya think Bennett, were he alive, would change the name of his masterpiece to rectify this slight? Alas, we'll never know.

Comments

[Esther]

Awww Chris, I'm so glad you enjoyed our first annual theatre bloggers meetup. Everyone was just as nice and friendly and fun in person as they are on their blogs and I think we had some great discussions. I'm definitely up for being cruise director. Maybe we can do it again in the fall - on a ship!