Few would argue Australian-born singer/songwriter Peter Allen's inclusion in the pantheon of American pop music, so why does Martin Sherman's adaptation of Nick Enright's original biodrama seem to refute that assessment?
When, at the very start of The Boy from Oz, our protagonist announces that his goal is to become a big star, his subsequent sincerity toward those in a position to assist him in his ambitions arouses a measure of skepticism. Since his canon encompasses a relatively narrow stylistic range (unlike his contemporaries, Barry Manilow and Billy Joel), a whole evening devoted thereto can grow repetitive, and when his predominant themes are love, longing and regret, audiences are in danger of succumbing to premature emotional fatigue.
For celebrity purposes, Allen was best known as a protege of Judy Garland during her final days and, later, as the husband of her daughter, Liza Minnelli—accomplishments that, taken by themselves, could have made his legacy that of martyr to the hardships endured by gay men during the pre-Stonewall/AIDS-epidemic era (the former, he reminds us, sparked by his mother-in-law's funeral). What prevents our dismissing him today as little more than a groupie who got lucky are his many collaborations with talented co-composers, producing award-winning songs recorded by top-name adult-contemporary vocalists.
What Sherman and Enright have composed, however, is not so much a play framed in Allen's life as it is Allen's life reconfigured to the artificial narrative of a musical revue. The picture it paints is not that of a handsome and hungry young son of a doting mother and war-broken father caught up in the fashionable circles of his time, recounting his progress in didactic-poetic lyrics aimed at romantics in search of a good cry. It is that of an unapologetic opportunist obsessed with fame in all its sybaritic excess, which he embraces with gusto before discovering that—yawn—life is fragile.
The Pride Films and Plays company employs a panoply of resuscitative devices toward the rescue of material reflecting a sentimentalized 2003 view of 1980s nostalgia for 1950s sensibilities.
Robert Ollis endows his arrangements of the score with a refreshing variety, incorporating exotic instruments (e.g., fluegelhorn) into his orchestral arsenal. Cameron Turner's dance choreography adds fresh vitality to his retro kinetic vocabulary, as does John Nasca and Brian Estep's wardrobe. Finally, under David Zak's direction, Nancy Hays and Michelle Lauto deliver uncaricatured Judy and Liza impressions, while Chris Logan's title character projects a stereotype-free masculinity hinting at the charisma that eludes his would-be hagiographers.
