LA Times Review
Etched in noir, a 'City' revival knows the score
By Daryl H. Miller, Times Staff Writer
The wail of horns, the shudder of a keyboard, the insistent heartbeat of drums — and over it, the purr and buzz of voices. Life pulses through any great piece of music, but jazz, moody and impulsive as it is, somehow sounds more real than the real thing. The late Cy Coleman, a gifted jazzman who found a career writing Broadway scores, brought that drama to his music for "City of Angels," the 1989 riff on film noir detective movies that became a critical darling and won six Tony Awards, including best score and best musical. That score, written with lyricist David Zippel, gets treated seriously, and with obvious admiration, in a presentation by the revival specialists of REPRISE!
"City of Angels" harks back to such atmospheric 1940s gumshoe dramas as "The Big Sleep" and "The Maltese Falcon." The crackling book by Larry Gelbart focuses on a writer who has been hired to turn his detective novel into a screenplay. As scenes from the emerging movie unfold opposite events in the writer's everyday life, we see the writer's vulnerabilities duplicated in his characters. When the writer finds himself cheapening his story to suit the tastes of a powerful producer-director, however, he begins to realize that his characters have something to teach him about resolve and resilience.
On a bandstand at the back of the stage, musical director Gerald Sternbach conducts a 14-piece orchestra from his seat at a keyboard. Big-band oomph is given jazz-combo focus in their tight, bright sound.
Stephen Bogardus portrays the writer, as he did when the Broadway staging was duplicated at Century City's Shubert Theatre in 1991. It's an intriguingly complex role, since Stine, as the writer is called, is impulsive, erratic and a bit of a heel. Bogardus channels the resulting drama through a ringing trumpet of a voice, delivering the high, final notes of his biggest numbers with exclamation points of emotion.
By contrast, Burke Moses as Stone, the fictional detective who is Stine's idealized yet still fallible alter ego, sings in a bass-baritone that rumbles with worldly self-assurance.
These may be the forceful central characters, but they meet their equals in the story's women. "City of Angels" provides a particularly good showcase for female performers, and those assembled for this cast are as feisty and alluring a group as one could wish.
In dual roles as Stine's wife and Stone's lost love, Tami Tappan Damiano delivers the score's torchiest numbers in a midnight soprano that she seems to exhale in one long sigh.
Vicki Lewis projects saunter and swing in parallel roles as the story's self-aware Girls Friday, while Marguerite MacIntyre is all breathy allure as the femmes fatales.
A sparely staged Reprise! presentation can't begin to reproduce all of the scenic wizardry that enabled the original production to unfold in a series of movie-like close-ups, scene fades and tracking shots. So director Joe Leonardo and choreographer Kay Cole focus on getting attitudes right so that theatergoers' minds can fill in the rest.
As before, however, Stine's activities are presented in color while the movie-like Stone scenes are in 1940s black and white. Set, costumes and lights delineate the parallel worlds, which are clearly labeled by the full-color blowup of Stine's novel cover hanging above his side of the stage, and a black-and-white rendition of the movie poster hovering above Stone's.
Some drama is lost when residual light after a blackout enables the audience to see that instead of the fatal scuffle suggested by taped sound effects, the stage is given over to the mundane business of a scene change.
With such strong focus on the score, though, this presentation thumps, jumps and shouts with life.
Daily Variety Review
A REPRISE! Broadway's Best presentation of a musical in two acts, with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by David Zippel, book by Larry Gelbart. Directed by Joe Leonardo.
Music Direction, Gerald Sternbach, Choreography, Kay Cole.
By TERRY MORGAN
'City of Angels'
REPRISE's production of "City of Angels" at the Freud Playhouse is a knockout. Tuner (music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by David Zippel, book by Larry Gelbart) won the 1990 Tony Award for musical and, under Joe Leonardo's smooth direction, this presentation highlights all the show's strengths. With less emphasis placed on the physical design of the show, the spotlight is on Gelbart's witty writing, Zippel's clever lyrics, Coleman's outstanding score and a sterling cast of musical stars. The result is a polished revival that arguably is more effective than the original L.A. production at the Shubert Theater.
Story follows the travails of Hollywood writer Stine (Stephen Bogardus) and his fictional alter ego Stone (Burke Moses) as one of Stine's crime novels is made into a film. As Stone is drawn into a murder mystery involving the nefarious women of the Kingsley family (Marguerite MacIntyre and Alli Mauzey), Stine is fending off the constant script alterations of producer-director Buddy Fidler (Stuart Pankin) and halfheartedly trying to save his marriage with wife Gabby (Tami Tappan Damiano). The fictional and real stories mirror each other until, finally, they begin to merge.
This story is set in the 1940s, and, as a result, it hasn't dated appreciably. Gelbart's script is still laugh-out-loud funny ("Put the cork back in your breakfast") and full of spot-on noir pastiche ("Only the floor kept her legs from going on forever"). The Coleman-Zippel songs are still impressive and varied in tone, from ballads to bawdiness, and the fantastic singers assembled here do them justice.
Bogardus, in fine voice, brings charisma to a character who could be less sympathetic. Moses is completely convincing as tough gumshoe Stone, and highly amusing when he steps out of character to chastise Stine. MacIntyre is excellent as the slinky Alaura and the unfaithful Carla, bringing a teasing sexiness to "The Tennis Song." Damiano is superb as the ill-used Gabby and the unlucky Bobbi, and she delivers lovely renditions of "With Every Breath I Take" and the mournfully comic "It Needs Work."
Vicki Lewis is impressive as dual secretaries Oolie and Donna, one a broad film noir caricature and the other an intelligent if overlooked woman, and she brings both roles together memorably with a strong voice in "You Can Always Count on Me." Mauzey makes the most of her alluring heiress in "Lost and Found," and Pankin balances humor and menace nicely as Buddy.
Bradley Kaye's minimal set design works well, particularly a pair of posters that hang over the stage -- one the cover of a novel, the other a film poster of the story -- which neatly represent the duality of the piece. Kay Cole's choreography is light and inventive, and Gerald Sternbach's music direction brings the show to rousing life.
