If Gauguin goes to New York -- and it has all the makings of doing so--it will require a powerhouse tenor, since only seven of the score's twenty-two songs do not have the title character singing, and composer Grant Robbin is very fond of elongated final notes delivered at soar-to-the-rafters volume. This vocalist will also be required to walk nude into an upstage sunset (a modified Full Monty lighting effect providing some small camouflage) because Robbin the author visualizes Gauguin, whom all contemporary reports agree to have been a very unpleasant man, as a pantheistic pilgrim who bonds with the noble innocence of the South Sea Islands (where he may or may not have contracted the venereal disease that hastened his death) until, after having cast off all earthly pride and pretense, he more or less ascends into heaven.
The amazing thing is that it all works together pretty well. Robbin skirts the current fad for seamless recitative as well as the likewise popular tolerance for harmonic anachronism, instead leaning to symmetrical melodies and sophisticated rhymes recalling the halcyon days before Sweeney Todd made dissonance all the rage. This doesn't mean that the commercial aspects have been ignored -- choruses of fin-de-siecle bohos paying wry homage to ambition ("Her Name Is Fame"), critics ("Ah, The Critics") and themselves ("Painters, Prostitutes And Pimps") are sure-sell audience-pleasers, as are the duet and solo for Gauguin's young daughter and the ecology-anthem "Let The Flowers Grow."
A musical that takes itself seriously and earns its own seriousness, rather than short-cutting with shreds of Webber or Les Miz is rare in these go-for-the-money times. With about three songs cut from the second act and a more original title, this could have a life beyond its affiliation with the show currently drawing at the Art Institute.
