A year after the success of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (the pioneering musical that dealt profoundly with box lunch socials), musical theater collaborators Harold Arlen (composer), E.Y. Harburg (lyricist) and Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy (book writers) would opt for more social significance with their 1944 tuner, Bloomer Girl. Bloomer Girl did not achieve the immortality of "Oklahoma," but its quaint charms, enlivened by adapter David Ives, were recently revived for the popular Encores! Series at the City Center. With its Civil War era setting, and a mildly amusing plot about a Yankee family that gets involved with the suffragette movement and an escaped slave, the show, although it has virtually vanished from the revival repertory, remains a joy notably for its score.
As directed by Brad Rouse, the show centers on Evelina (Kate Jennings Grant), the most rebellious and youngest of the six daughters of stiff-necked Horatio Applegate (Philip Bosco), a New York manufacturer of hoop skirts. Horatio's attempt to marry off Evelina to Jeff Calhoun (Michael Park), a new employee and slave owner from Kentucky is conflicted by Evelina's devotion to Dolly Bloomer (Kathleen Chalfant), a zealous women's activist and abolitionist. Evelina's resistance to hoop skirts and to Jeff's Confederate philosophy is resolved romantically by the end, as is the fate of Pompey (Jubilant Sykes), Jeff's runaway slave. Hardly a timeless text, the dialogue, however, is mostly bright, often funny and occasionally even witty. But it's the tunes that count, and the performers -- all of whom get into the spirit of the show - do them justice.
Grant and Park are engaging leads and fulfill the musical lyrical and romantic requirements of the sprightly "Evelina," as well as the exquisite ballad "Right as the Rain." Mr. Park may be the most handsome and virile leading man to be seen in recent Encore! Series. Miss Chalfant, an otherwise fine actor, not particularly noted for her singing or dancing ability, gets to croak out some feminist sounds and clump gingerly along with the chorus in the rousing "Good Enough for Grandma." Donna Lynn Champlin, as the family's maid, gives her all to the show's obligatory comical number - "T'morra, T'morra." But, it's Sykes' soaring baritone voice that stops the show on the vibrant "The Eagle and Me." Remarkable as it seems, the extended Civil War-themed ballet that Rob Ashford choreographs for the end of the show and which evolves seamlessly out of a community theater performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin (predating, if not surpassing, the one in The King and I) is the show's highpoint. It features the dazzlingly beautiful and graceful Karine Plantasdit-Bageot, who, up to this point, has been seen looking forlorn sitting on the sidelines. What a pleasure to see Anita Gillette, a Broadway baby for many years, back on stage as Mrs. Applegate, but making her Encores! debut.
