Festival day on the Caribbean island of Kinja is already in full swing as the curtain rises and Governor Sanders (winningly played with dignity and wise resignation by Laparee Young) leads stiltwalkers and carnival dancers in the opening number, "The Legend of Norman Paperman." The song recounts the story of a Broadway publicist who left the Manhattan rat race to run a hotel, only to find himself stuck in a maze of island custom and bureaucracy. While "Legend" sets up the remainder of the production as a flashback to 1959, it also establishes the show's moral: "Chasing illusions can get quite confusin'/And Heaven can turn into Hell."
Just after Norman (Tony Award-winner Michael Rupert) and his money man Lester Atlas (Josh Mostel) arrive to inspect the Gulf Reef Club before buying it, Norman recognizes luscious tenant "Iris Tramm" (Sandy Edgerton) as Janet West, a.k.a. the Red Flame, a blacklisted communist movie star. A boozing Iris has retreated to her Gulf Reef bungalow, which she shares with a girl's best friend -- a German shepherd marvelously represented by a puppet. While Norman's wife Henny (Susan Dawn Carson) resignedly closes up their New York City apartment, the ex-theatrical press agent makes a play for Iris as she helps him contend with earthquakes, broken cisterns, temperamental water pumps, and an escaped lunatic handyman named Hippolyte (Aaron Cimadevilla).
Buffett's Caribbean rhythms, infectiously beaten out by local legends Iko-Iko, work with Dex Edwards's twirling set pieces, Susan E. Mickey's terrifically tropical and perfectly period costumes, and Jack Gaugan's worthy-of-a-Key West-sunset lighting to place Kinja on the musical-theater map somewhere between Jamaica and Brigadoon. The songs indicate the island's coordinates: Norman learns island politics to a calypso beat, as Senator Pullman, snazzily played by C.E. Smith, explains "Kinja Rules"; "Carnival Day/Jungle Drums" pinpoints the partying latitude; and even Kinja's ruling class describes itself in terms of geography in "Up on the Hill." Then again, three of the musical's best moments forgo island views entirely, emphasizing character insights instead: As Lester tangos to the self-analyzing "Just an Old Truth Teller," he demonstrates that Manhattan, like the waters around the tropical island, teems with sharks; Henny's heart-tugging "The Key to My Man" brings home the consequences of Norman's career change; and the moving duet "Who Are We Trying to Fool" puts a human love story on the stage -- finally -- as Norman and Iris battle their feelings for each other.
Mostel, Carson, Ruppert, and Edgerton are all first-rate and technically polished, but without the support of character-driven songs or a focused book, they seldom touch our emotions. Wouk's script doesn't put enough emphasis on the Henny/Norman/Iris romantic triangle; in fact, the love interest in his old-fashioned musical turns out to be the island. Incredibly, in another example of the show's preference for Kinja's trappings over its people, the hotel's finicky pump receives as much exposition as Iris's troubled past. Then there's the problem of Buffett's unmemorable score, which provides neither a hummable show tune nor a pop song sporting a hook strong enough on which to hang a crossover hit.
Buffett has recorded more than two dozen records, and in the process has parlayed a tropical state of mind into a gold-laden pop-culture El Dorado called Margaritaville. It occurred to me long ago that he has a gift for writing compelling narrative songs ("He Went to Paris"), revealing character studies ("A Pirate Looks at 40"), and yearning ballads ("Come Monday") that wouldn't be out of place in a stage musical. As for Wouk, he's hardly a theatrical newcomer. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for The Caine Mutiny (1952) and acclaimed for his novels The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, and Marjorie Morningstar, he took the Broadway plunge with the short-lived political drama The Traitor (1949), the mildly successful comedy Nature's Way (1957), and the 1954 hit The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (adapted from his novel).
Oddly, the co-creators share Papermanesque experiences -- Wouk moved his family from New York to St. Thomas for six eventful years; Buffett owned a St. Bart's hotel that ultimately burned down -- that unite them in a love for a place that serenely withstands the tides of changing inhabitants. Very likely nothing will stop their carnival, but the pair should keep in mind that in musical theater it's the lavish production numbers that come and go, while the characters and songs endure.
The South Florida premiere of Amanda McBroom's musical Heartbeats at Actors' Playhouse finds Annie (Lourelene Snedeker) preparing to play double jeopardy -- her approaching fortieth birthday and twentieth anniversary fall on the same day. Her husband Steve (Bob Rogerson) barely clings to his job at a car plant, while she splits her time between working at the library and scribbling erotic fiction. The couple refuses to confront problems pulling them apart, leaving a bopping quartet -- Michele Neville, Margot Moreland, Timothy Johnson, Francisco Padura -- to serve as the embodiment of Annie's and Steve's inner states.
McBroom is best-known for penning the title song to Bette Midler's movie The Rose ("Some say that love is like a razor that leaves your soul to bleed"), and the 21 songs she has written for Heartbeats prove that her talent for banality hasn't waned. For example, the cast sagely reminds us that "anyone can make love break/It's gonna take a little pain, some fire and some rain, to bring it back again." Although a few of the songs feature music written by others, McBroom alone is responsible for the lyrics and creaky book ("Socks are like expectations; one always gets away"). To her credit, when McBroom backs off Annie's story to spoof daily life, she hits pay dirt, mining large doses of recognition humor. Three members of the cast, costumed as minimart Minotaurs -- half-person/half-grocery cart -- left me convulsed as I watched them roll through a hilarious ode to shopaholics.
The uniformly talented cast infuses Heartbeats with pure adrenaline. Lacking a Broadway belter's voice, Snedeker finds Annie's strength in the script's quiet moments, while Rogerson convincingly makes Steve sympathetic despite the script's anti-male undercurrent. Doubling as all of the other characters, the remaining performers also shine: Moreland is infectiously fun as Annie's man-crazy best friend; Neville and Johnson give touching performances as a young Annie and Steve; and Padura sings a duet with Annie ("Somebody") with such feeling that he almost makes you forgive McBroom's trite ballad.
The musical, developed at Pasadena's Old Globe Theatre and Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House, benefits from a little Greenwich Village supper-club atmosphere. Gene Seyffer's four-level set provides offbeat dance floors for Barbara LeGette's whimsical choreography, while simultaneously placing the orchestra upstage in the middle of Annie and Steve's house in open defiance of any attempt at realistic staging. Designer Mary Lynne Izzo's costumes convey both off-the-rack realism and comic effect. And David Arisco directs each vignette to stand independently, relying on rapid pacing to create a nearly cohesive production for this quirky cabaret-style revue trapped in the confining structure of a musical.
Without the support of character-driven songs or a focused book, the cast of Carnival seldom touches our emotions.
Don't Stop the Carnival. Music and lyrics by Jimmy Buffett; book by Herman Wouk; directed and choreographed by David H. Bell; with Susan Dawn Carson, Sandy Edgerton, and Michael Rupert. Through May 18. For information call 442-4000 or see "Calendar Listings."
Heartbeats. Book, music, and lyrics by Amanda McBroom; directed by David Arisco; with Lourelene Snedeker and Bob Rogerson. Through May 4. For information call 444-9293 or see "Calendar Listings.
