It shouldn’t come as a surprise to discover how many of the most romantic and comical songs contained among the countless treasures in the great American Musical Theater songbook can be effortlessly linked to the prose and poetry of William Shakespeare. The Bard’s plays, his rhapsodically inclined characters, including the rapscallions, have famously been the inspiration for many contemporary composers from Rodgers and Hart to Cole Porter to Lerner and Loewe to Bernstein and Sondheim and on and on.
It is also not a surprise to see how craftily and cleverly the links have been integrated and dramatized with an obviously deep affection for his subject by the terrific Canadian-born, Shakespearean trained, 76-year-old lauded stage, screen and film actor/singer Len Cariou (Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Applause, Teddy & Alice).
You may choose to swoon as you hear Cariou speak Orsino’s opening reverie in Twelfth Night - “If music be the food of love, play on” - leading so effortlessly into both “Love, I Hear” (from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and “Falling in Love with Love” (The Boys from Syracuse). And what a wonderfully humorous jolt it is when Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...” demands a little “Applause” (title song from the show). I could go down the list of the perfect segues that Cariou uses as he embraces the likes of Richard II, Iago, Petruchio, Benedict, Jacque and Prospero and on and on, but let the others be a pleasant surprise.
Cariou’s singing voice may be a little frayed around the edges but not so his bravura acting or the way he finds the essential emotional core of each song. Beautiful songs we have heard time and again such as Bob Merrill’s “Her Face” (Carnival) and “Lucky to Be Me,” and “It’s Love” (both from the gorgeous Berstein, Comden and Green score for On the Town) resonate anew with Cariou’s impassioned interpretation and delivery.
Aside from deftly using fragments, soliloquies and asides from the Bard’s canon, Cariou also finds suitable bridges to personal anecdotes about his long and impressive career. But mainly this one-man show is a joyous eighty-minute excursion through almost two dozen songs relating sometimes drolly but mostly divertingly in response to a brief scene or speech.
The setting created by Josh Iocavelli has the haunted-by-its-past look of a theater’s stage with its token ghost light, ropes, pulleys and various props but also with a stool (that is used) some photos and a bust of Shakespeare. The most notable prop is the piano which is expertly played by musical director Mark Janas, who contributes not only superb accompaniment but an occasional vocal assist.
As conceived by Cariou, Janas and director Barry Kleinbort, this Amas Musical Theater production is modest and intimate by design but made memorable by Cariou’s polished and personable performance. It is often emotionally affecting as it moves along making you forget how quickly the time has passed, even if you haven’t taken the time to “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.”
