Review by Raven Snook
Old-fashioned is too fresh an adjective for the musty musical rom-com Marry Harry, which is ostensibly set in the present-day East Village but feels like a 50-year-old throwback. Harry (beguiling tenor David Spadora) dreams of working for a celebrity chef but slaves away as a cook in a failing Italian restaurant owned by his father (reliable Broadway second banana Lenny Wolpe). There he meets Sherri (Morgan Cowling), who has an MBA but whose main goals seem to be getting married and getting away from her overbearing mother (Robin Skye). Sparks, complications and hoary humor fly, but it’s all de trop—or, more precisely, tropes.
Dan Martin and Michael Biello’s songs are pleasant but unmemorable—except the opening number, “A New Day,” which may be why it’s reprised twice—but Jennifer Robbins’s tepid, low-stakes book causes indigestion. A magical, invisible-to-the-characters trio (Ben Chavez, Jesse Manocherian, and Claire Saunders, solid singers all), inexplicably costumed like the Emcee in a bus-and-truck tour of Cabaret, is merely bizarre. Director-choreographer Bill Castellino (Cagney) works hard to turn this TV dinner into a gourmet meal, but his swift and inventive staging can only do so much; James Morgan’s whimsically drawn cardboard set is a good deal more colorful than the characters and plot. Marry Harry? You won’t even want to swipe right.
York Theatre Company (Off Broadway). Music by Dan Martin. Lyrics by Michael Biello. Book by Jennifer Robbins. Directed by Bill Castellino. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission. With ensemble cast. Through Sun 21.
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