City of Angels

Dallas’s Theater Three opened City of Angels at the Norma Young Arena Stage. Set in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, this musical comedy by Cy Coleman (Sweet Charity, The Life), David Zippel (The Goodbye Girl) and Larry Gelbart (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum),ran on Broadway from December 1989-January 1992 and won Tonys for Gelbart (Best Book of a Musical) and Coleman (Best Original Score).

City of Angels is a play within a play. Stine, a writer (Alexander Ross) is trying to turn his detective novel into a screenplay but has to keep re-writing it to suit the whims of the producer (Jackie L. Kemp) in order to make it politically correct. Since the screenplay is already in rehearsal, this necessitates many comic moments as the cast has to constantly re-learn the lines.

In the screenplay Detective Stone (Gregory Lush) is hired by a glamorous socialite (Whitney Hennen) to find her missing, flighty step-daughter (Nikki McDonald). As in all good detective stories nobody is quite who they seem. The convoluted plot that vacillates between the real play and the screenplay has more twists and turns than a mountain road, but all reach their destination safely and tie everything up in a neat bow.

City of Angels is an ensemble piece with 18 cast members playing almost double the number of characters, and there's not a bad actor or singer in the cast. However, I wonder if Mr. Lush is capable of acting without a cigarette in his hand or mouth. He chain smoked throughout the play, at one point leaning against a railing and puffing smoke mere inches from a number of patrons. Fortunately for both of us I was not one of them or I would have been tempted to reach over and snatch the cigarette out of his mouth.

When we see a play, all we see is its face, i.e. the actors. What is at least as important is what happens behind the scenes that makes all this possible. Bruce Coleman's triple-threat roles as director, set and costume designer are impressive on all three counts. The same is true of T3 veteran musical director, Terry Dobson.

Sound designer, Richard Frolich did not take into account the small space of Theater Three's arena stage, allowing the music to blast at uncomfortable levels. I found myself spending the entire play inserting and extracting my earplugs depending on whether the music was blaring or the appropriately modulated dialogue was being spoken.