Allegro. Classic Stage Company (Off Broadway). Music by Richard Rodgers. Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Directed by John Doyle. With Claybourne Elder, Elizabeth A. Davis. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
Allegro: In brief
Attention, cult-musical fans! Classic Stage Company presents a rare revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's flop 1947 concept show, which traces the life of a small-town doctor from birth through marital disenchantment. John Doyle directs a cast of 12 (pared down from more than 40 in the original), led by Claybourne Elder, Elizabeth A. Davis, Malcolm Gets and Alma Cuervo.
Allegro: Theater review by Adam Feldman
All great artists are entitled to their failures, so one can’t begrudge Rodgers and Hammerstein for Allegro, their ambitious 1947 flop—especially since its conceptual approach to musical theater helped create space for later, more successful efforts in that vein. Nor can one fault Classic Stage Company for reviving the show, in an elegant production directed by John Doyle in his signature actors-play-the-instruments style, with smart new orchestrations by Mary-Mitchell Campbell. Trimmed to 90 minutes, the production offers a crisp account of Allegro’s plot, such as it is: the story, vaguely told, of a small-town boy, Joseph Taylor Jr. (Elder), who grows up to be a doctor like his father (Malcolm Gets), marries a social climber (Davis) and moves to Chicago, where he nearly gets lost in a world of shallow, rich-people, big-city values. Or as Hammerstein quaintly puts it: “Broccoli hogwash balderdash / Phoney baloney tripe and trash!”
Yet a failure Allegro remains, despite the best efforts of a manifestly talented cast (including Alma Cuervo as Joe’s grandmother, George Abud as his buddy and Jane Pfitsch as a loyal assistant). The main character is a handsome lump of innocence, with almost nothing to sing for himself; his wife, despite Davis’s pangs of complication, is not much more than a wicked shrew. Rodgers’s melodies lack their customary lift—most of the songs sound like ones you’d skip over on the CD of Carousel—and although Hammerstein’s paean to rural goodness owes a clear debt to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, it lacks that great play’s biting sense of perspective: When it isn’t actively sententious, Allegro’s corn-fed attitude merely seems corny. The revival, while accomplished, is thus primarily of academic and historical interest. It is, in a word, broccoli.—Theater review by Adam Feldman
THE BOTTOM LINE Doyle and company give a fine account of a stubbornly dull story.
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