Images: Production photos from the Public Theater's Road Show featuring Alexander Gemignani (L, above) as Addison Mizner and Michael Cerveris (R, above) as Wilson Mizner. Credits: www.daylife.com
Like many avid theatregoers, I'd walk a mile or two on my knees to see a Sondheim show, so it wasn't much to ask for me to catch a cheap bus ride down to NYC last weekend to see his newest creation, Road Show. Formerly, called Bounce, this show has had a troubled history, having been played out of town but undergoing major rewrites over a period of many years. This most recent and quite stripped-down version of the musical is debuting for a short run at the Public. Directed by John Doyle, who has previously directed remounts of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Company that won critical acclaim and new audiences for those older works, we are given what I can only describe as a chamber musical from Sondheim, in contrast to his grand orchestral works of the past. But a smaller Sondheim show still has his music and its moments, both in evidence here.
Sondheim and his collaborator John Weidman (who has worked with the maestro on another chamber musical with a difficult history, Assassins) are interested in telling us the true tale of two brothers, the Mizners, who represent the highs and lows of American capitalism in their wheeling and dealing across the country in the early part of the twentieth century. The show begins and ends with them speaking to each other from beyond the grave, trying to assign blame and vent bitterness about everything that went wrong in their lives. From this opening, we travel back to their youth, as they head off to the Yukon gold rush, world travels, high society, architecture, the development of Palm Beach and Boca Raton and other adventures along the way. All throughout the brothers are fierce rivals who fall-out often, only to be drawn back into each other's lives due to an irresistible connection, even love. And all throughout their tale is told with a full chorus onstage who take on multiple roles (including their mother and father always looking on, even beyond their deaths) as they weave in and out of the Mizners' triumphs and disasters.
The show is under two hours long, without an intermission, so sets off like a freight train and never lets up, more and more paper money thrown up by the fistfuls as the brothers Mizner gamble, cheat, lie, con, and create the lives that mirror in a funhouse version of the American Dream; distorted and deceptive, now fat now thin, now you see it, now you don't. Doyle has designed the set as well as directed, and it is most effective...a stacking of boxes, crates, file drawers that open and close for actors to reach into and pull out props and to climb over and position themselves on. Costumes are suitably muted with the womens' dresses printed with newspaper headlines, but there are plenty of fun add-ons such as hats, coats and boas. The musicians are offstage, unlike Doyle's other Sondheim revivals, where the actors played the score as they sang it.
Speaking of the score, Sondheim offers some small gems here, often reminiscent of older songs in their melodies and phrasing, but that seems a slightly unfair criticism of a composer so well-known and now in his late 70's. Of course there will be echoes heard by any listener reasonably familiar with his canon of works. All the full company numbers in the show were very enjoyable, marking key points in the Mizners' life journey; "Waste", "Gold!", Addison's Trip", "That Was a Year", "You" and "Boca Raton". There is little dance in the show, but lots of action and movement that provide an effective staging of each song. Other highlights are Alma Cuervo as Mama Mizner singing "Isn't He Something" about her neglectful son Willie, who has become a New York society member through marriage to a wealthy widow, while her dutiful and loving son Addison listens on in anger and hopelessness. Addison falls in love with a young man, Hollis Bessemer, whose contacts help Addison become a successful architect to the Palm Beach elite. He and Hollis song the most moving song in the show "The Best Thing That Has Happened".
The show features a strong company, all of whom sing beautifully and can act as well (as would be expected!) But the leads carry the show and both Cerveris and Gemignani do excellent work. Cerveris has the showier of the two brother roles, as Willie is the "bad" brother who manipulates everything and everyone around him, caring little for who gets hurt or what gets lost along the way. Cerveris gives a star performance in the role, eating it up with a very large spoon, with relish. But Gemignani wins our hearts as the more nuanced and empathetic Addison, who can't escape his two-timing brother, and in the end can't even deny he loves him.
All in all a satisfying show, despite troubles with the book that doesn't offer us a more complex rendering of the Mizners or other characters in their lives. It may not rank with Sondheim's greatest achievements, but Road Show still offers us a music-filled story worth the telling...and the hearing.
