Time and space shouldn’t make all that difference in how we respond to a highly regarded show like Falsettos, the laudable composite of William Finn’s two one-act musicals, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, that played on Broadway in 1992. Here we are almost a quarter century later, and the Lincoln Center Theater revival now at the Walter Kerr Theatre is a commendable if not appreciably more satisfying than was the previous production. Perhaps it is the casting? But all are fine performers. Maybe the direction by James Lapine? Yet he knows what he’s doing. Still, something feels remote and plastic about what is on stage and what is also happening on the stage within the somewhat gimmicky unit setting of large movable play-blocks that are set against the cut-out silhouette of N.Y.C. skyline as designed by David Rockwell.
Praised at the time for contributing to the continuing sophistication of the American musical, Falsettos reveals a libretto (co-authored by Lapine) that is brittle and witty as it also addresses some pretty complicated dramatic issues. However, for some inexplicable reason, I never found myself becoming as involved as I had before even in regional productions with the plight of the show’s rather unremarkable, if also voracious, characters. Despite their individual paths through a plot being filled to the brim with varying doses of desperation, duty, romance and, of course, the pursuit of happiness, we tend to see them in this staging more as representative rather than specific.
So the question remains as to why was I never involved in their lives and their loving? Lapine’s direction is brisk and nicely enhanced by the lively choreography by Spencer Liff as we are taken back to that benign pre-1980s of recklessly ego-indulged sexual preference, as well as to the beginning of a tremulous, death-harboring new decade. If Falsettos is no somber message musical, what is it? It is often funny and more often a frenetic fusion of one unorthodox urban family’s life. It is also a musical of life-styles and life cycles.
At the center of the story is Marvin, a married homosexual whose extra-marital romantic indulgences affect his wife, his son, his psychiatrist, his lover, and even the nice lesbians who live down the hall. It is, however, not so complicated or convoluted to make you scratch your head or lose your place in the action. And let’s praise Finn’s savvy score for defining every one of idiosyncratic characters as they are jet propelled through the harangue-filled terrain.
While attempting to fully understand the behavior of egocentric and not especially likable Marvin (Christian Borle) who wants out in order to live in with his equally egotistical male lover Whizzer (Andrew Rannells), we are asked to consider the actions of the neurotic psychiatrist Mendel (Brandon Uranowitz), who has suddenly fallen in love with Marvin’s wife Trina (Stephanie J. Block). Noticeably disturbed by the change in partners is Marvin and Trina’s son Jason (Anthony Rosenthal), an otherwise wise and resilient 11-year-old. Jason finds himself hurtled into analysis himself and into a situation he must face with a hastened maturity.
Just as Act I whizzes along its wacky course, a sobering mist envelops Act II. We first hear about the AIDS epidemic from the family friend and lesbian doctor (Tracie Thoms). We get the tremor of things to come as she shares her fears about the disease (“something bad is happening”) with her lover (Betsy Wolfe), a ditsy caterer at work perfecting “nouvelle Bar Mitzvah cuisine.” The year is 1981. Marvin has broken up with Whizzer, Mendel is living with Trina, Jason is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, and an epidemic touches their lives.
Falsettos has its time of sadness but also a bright, easy-on-the-ears score that supplies the show’s dramatic weight. In fact, it remains for the songs to keep characters from being simply types and somewhat one-dimensional. Borle, who just recently won a Tony for his role in Something Rotten is, as he is meant to be, mainly unassuming as the conflicted Marvin, whose ideas of a happily extended family are not immediately shared by the others.
As Trina, Block deploys the obligatory gamut of emotions singing the angst-driven singspiel “I’m Breaking Down” in which she does just that. Rannells, who deserved his Tony nomination as the Elder Price in The Book of Mormon, struts and sings with assurance until he succumbs as the ill-fated Whizzer.
Although young Mr. Rosenthal is making his Broadway debut, he was in the national tours of Newsies and impressed last season in A Christmas Story at the Paper Mill Playhouse. He has no difficulty holding center stage with two of the show’s most complex arias, “My Father’s a Homo” and “Miracle of Judaism.” The character of Mendel, the by-love-possessed psychoanalyst, is earmarked for neurotic shtick and gets it from Uranowitz. It’s the overall neurotic shtick, however, that eventually takes its toll on the overwhelming sadness at the heart of Falsettos.
