Thoughts on Allegro

Because I am a crazy person and didn't plan ahead for my sister's medical emergency that would mean I would be paying for my Woodstock vacation without actually going to Woodstock when I should've been saving all the pennies I could, I bought tickets a few months ago for a couple of things.  Now they all seem to be coming up (I've got a show tomorrow night, too).  When Classic Stage Company offered a special "1947 Opening Night Discount" preview price for their upcoming production of Allegro, I pounced.

original cast album cover

I've never seen Allegro, I don't know the cast album, I knew nothing of the show's history before seeing it last night.  Since I saw maybe the third or fourth preview, I'll only offer a few thoughts.  I looked up Allegro on Wikipedia and got some historical background on it - the article mentions that Rodgers and Hammerstein were looking towards Our Town as a sort of model; a spare set, minimal props, and a story about the ordinary man.  I gather from the article that the original production was much bigger, cast-wise, and that the use of the Greek chorus was ahead of its time.  The show also ran about three hours in previous incarnations (I wish I had seen the production that was in Astoria early this season!).  I found all of this information so interesting after seeing last night's performance.  I can see all these influences and can appreciate them, though I found last night's production unsatisfying as a whole.  

This production of Allegro has been greatly streamlined to 90 minutes, no intermission, and a cast of twelve.  I've never seen or heard it before, as I said, so I don't know what's been cut.  I didn't feel as if I was missing any important textual information.  Of course,  since it's directed by John Doyle, the actors are playing all the musical instruments in lieu of an orchestra.  Sigh.  I believe I've mentioned that I'm not quite on the Doyle bandwagon, even when he doesn't use the actor-as-musician conceit.  I was intrigued by its use in the Cerveris revival of Sweeney Todd, but I really disliked it in the Esparza revival of Company.  I was glad he didn't have the actors play the instruments in last season's Passion, but I still didn't really enjoy his staging or his take on the piece.  I'm sorry to say I didn't enjoy his take on Allegro either and having the actors play the instruments just annoyed me to no end this time.

Doyle likes to keep his actors moving, always moving.  And when they're playing musical instruments, it's like everyone becomes a marching band.  It frustrates me.  It obscures the lyrics and turns everything into an uptempo march, even if it needs to be more contemplative.  I especially think the conceit doesn't work on a show that's so naturalistic (I know, there's a Greek chorus, but still).  This is a down home, homespun, really earnest story about Americans in small-town America; about not compromising your principles once you achieve a modicum of success.  Adding the surreal-ish sight of everyone walking around, playing musical instruments, was just too jarring to me; it took me out of the show and made it next to impossible for me to relate to anything that was happening on stage.  The earnestness versus the presentational directing style didn't work for me.  It was a long 90 minutes, unfortunately.

 



photo credit: Matthew Murphy

Again, it was an early preview, so I shouldn't really say any more.  I believe I read somewhere that Doyle is prone to overstaging shows and paring them down as the previews progress.  I can only hope that's what happens here.  The cast is good, the songs are good (of course they are, they're Rodgers and Hammerstein songs, even second tier R & H is better than a lot of stuff out there), the story is sweet, the libretto is probably the best feature of the production, though I may be inclined to give it the most credit because no one was playing the violin during the book scenes.  The confrontation scene between the mother and fiancee was fantastic (I tried to ignore the violins dangling at their sides).  But there were also other directorial choices I didn't understand - the heartbeat sound effect that came in now and then; the reason our lead character would sit downstage center with a spotlight on him as the action swirled around him; the reason our lead actor would sometimes go way upstage, turn his back to us and place his hand on the back wall.  I think I'm just not on the same theatrical wavelength as Doyle and I just can't wrap my head around what he's doing.  Which I guess is my problem and not his. 



R & H

The woman next to me HATED the show.  The couple behind me LOVED it.  I'm thinking there will be a lot of that, really opposite opinions of the production.  I hope to see another production of Allegro some day.  Then I can see if I would appreciate the show more in a more traditional staging, even though the show isn't completely traditional itself.  I just feel as if I could get more about what the original creators were going for in a production that doesn't layer so much on top.  Again, that's probably just me.