Broadway review by Adam Feldman
“Resigning oneself to small is sad,” says Harvey Fierstein in A Catered Affair. “Requesting it is tragic.” But why, in that case, should anyone seek tickets to the drab, emotionally cramped new musical that Fierstein has written with songwriter John Bucchino? Faith Prince plays Aggie, a working-class Bronx woman whose son has recently died in the Korean War, and who wants to use her government bereavement check to give her underappreciated daughter an elaborate wedding. (That the daughter doesn’t want such a fuss is secondary.) Dowdy and dogged, Aggie sings her first song while changing the sheets on a bed, which is typical of this show’s approach: Nebulously directed by John Doyle, the production goes through its musical motions as though dutifully performing a chore.
In addition to Prince, the wasted cast includes Tom Wopat as Aggie’s husband, a sullen cab driver, and Fierstein as her hoarse, demanding gay brother; the tremendous gifts of Leslie Kritzer are left unwrapped in the underwritten role of Aggie’s daughter, and Matt Cavenaugh is needlessly good-looking as her wealthy fiancé. Fierstein’s book leaves all them to wallow in dourness, passive-aggression and self-pity, which are not emotions easily lent to singing—not, at least, in Bucchino’s anemic score, which weds wishy-washy tunes to generic, awkwardly rhymed lyrics. Here is a wedding in which nothing is inviting: Notwithstanding all the talent involved, has any Broadway musical ever seemed quite so joyless?
Walter Kerr Theatre (see Broadway). Book by Harvey Fierstein. Music and Lyrics by John Bucchino, Dir. John Doyle. With Faith Prince, Tom Wopat, Fierstein. 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
