Road Show
It’s been a long road for Road Show, Stephen Sondheim’s historical parable of capitalism and self-advancement (with a book by JohnWeidman). So long, in fact, it bears no relation at all to his original idea, which was for a sort of “Road” movie of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour variety.
John Doyle’s busy but curiously soulless production – performed in a traverse arrangement over 100 undivided minutes – recounts the rise and fall story of an artistic architect and his gung-ho, gambling brother as a sort of jaundiced vaudeville of the American dream.
Even though, for all the musical invention and spirited performance, it still fails to hang together in any sort of dramatic fashion, as a piece of musical theatre machinery it’s just fine and dandy: a streamlined hybrid of the original Wise Guys, workshopped by Sam Mendes in 1999, the Hal Prince production of Bounce that belly-flopped in Washington in 2003, and Doyle’s own New York version, at the Public Theater, three years ago, under this title.
The first half-hour, seen from the perspective of Addison Mizner’s deathbed, is promising and lively. He and his brother Wilson strike gold (the stage is suddenly bathed in golden light) in Alaska and build the city of Boca Raton in Florida. Then their missions divide in a shower of hundred dollar bills, fallings-out, the foundation of an artistic colony in Palm Springs and a property sting.
The two brothers are very well played and contrasted by Michael Jibson, sweetly susceptible, with a battered baby face, as Addison, and by the creepily satanic David Bedella as Wilson, all sun-baked leers and raffish razzle-dazzle. Their parents – Gillian Bevan and Glyn Kerslake – push them around on a large symbolic bed. An adept chorus of nine fill in the small parts and bits and pieces, and handsome Jon Robyns plays an homme fatale.
The score is tight, moody and punchy, with a gay love song, “The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened”, the one stand-alone item in a show for which you can’t imagine much of a commercial life beyond the admirable Menier, unlike their recent forays into Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music; this is the cynical, jaundiced Sondheim of Assassins and Passion.
Still, it’s a gripping enough show while it lasts, and Doyle’s production (which he also designed), while over-stuffed with clichaic showers of hundred dollar bills, is efficiently mobilised and considerably enhanced by Jonathan Tunick’s wonderful orchestrations and Catherine Jayes’ excellent musical supervision of an eight-strong band.
