Quaint and laughable, a new musical version of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, produced by The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center Off-Broadway, shows that, at least in this case, thanks to shifting attitudes on sexuality, unabashed examinations of carnality have passed into the passe.
When it first opened in 1969, Paul Mazursky’s film comedy “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” was a seismic earthquake of libido, becoming synonymous with the sexual revolution. The loose plot focuses on two middle-class California couples experimenting with adultery and orgies, revealing their own repressions. Trendy psychology was also lampooned as Bob and Carol attend a marathon weekend of therapy sessions, stripping their inhibitions and acquiring pretensions. The couple then impose their open-marriage lifestyle on their uptight best friends, Ted and Alice, with comic outcomes.
Jonathan Marc Sherman’s book hews closely to the original screenplay by Mazursky and Larry Tucker, but while the film was wildly funny and pointedly satiric, the new musical pokes fun at the fashions and attitudes of the era in a mild, elbow-nudging manner. The music by Duncan Sheik eschews the vital folk-rock sound of the era in favor of easy-listening pop with simplistic lyrics by Sheik and Amanda Green. There is an occasional witty number such as Alice’s angry, Latin-flavored declaration that all men are idiots. Unfortunately, for the most part, the songs are sleepily similar. It’s like tuning into a light-music station playing a Burt Bacharach marathon. Scott Elliott’s staging is just as tepid and soporific with no real fire or passion.
The creative team seem intent on replicating the movie without delivering a 2020 perspective on it. (Only Jeff Mahsie’s mod costumes are a total success.) The material is dated, and the formerly risque humor falls flat, excepting a scene of Alice and Ted’s hilarious bedtime negotiations over intercourse (he wants it, she doesn’t), which plays like a blue version of a Mike Nichols and Elaine May routine. This saving grace is largely due to the witty performances of Ana Noguiera and Michael Zegen as Alice and Ted. Joel Perez and Jennifer Damiano capture the goofy, blissed-out obliviousness of the newly liberated Bob and Carol.
An onstage band is led by a mellow Suzanne Vega, who takes on all the supporting roles and serves as a laid-back narrator. The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter has a lovely voice, but she seems uncomfortable in her multiple parts. Similarly, members of the audience are called on stage to take part as therapy participants and in an awkward finale, as close-dancing partners with the cast. They looked as tense and unsexy as the show itself.
