Review Page

Barbara Cook's Spotlight: Rebecca Luker

Literary Notes From Broadway's Rebecca Luker

By Nelson Pressley

The lyric soprano performed little-known songs superbly. (Kennedy Center - Kennedy Center)

Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 10, 2008; Page C03

A capacity crowd filled the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Saturday night to hear Broadway star Rebecca Luker perform songs virtually nobody knows. Everyone left happy, for Luker -- taking a brief break from her gig as the mother in the musical "Mary Poppins" -- is a spellbinding soprano, effortlessly charming and unfailingly sweet of sound.

Luker's forte is not lift-you-out-of-your-seat belting; she's a thoughtful lyric soprano, which makes her ideal for the challenging, probing new material she selected. The literary bent of "Songs for the Theater: The Next Generation" (the latest event in the valuable Barbara Cook's Spotlight series) was immediately apparent in Paul Loesel and Scott Burkell's "Ohio: 1904," which was taken from diaries about watching the Wright brothers. Detailed character and situation matched a soaring melody capturing the thrill of flight, and Luker unfurled the long refrain with a shimmering tone.

Luker featured several settings of poems by the likes of Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay -- hardly traditional Broadway fare ("Cats" notwithstanding). Composer Ricky Ian Gordon spun Marie Howe's achingly simple, elegiac poem "What the Living Do" into a five-minute epic, with Luker flawlessly navigating the melody's dramatic rush of quotidian existence and ultimate loss.

The Alabama-raised Luker settled into an authentic Southern twang for "Lovely Lies," a regional character sketch and mother-daughter heart-to-heart (music by Jeff Blumenkrantz, colloquial lyrics by Beth Blatt) that felt like a sung New Yorker short story. Capers to the lighter side included frisky comic numbers from the boudoir; "An Admission," about a lover's disappointing nude figure, was composed by Luker's superb accompanist, Joseph Thalken, while the Debra Barsha-Mark Campbell lark "He Never Did That Before" found Luker in a torchy mode by way of Nashville.

The encore-to-the-encore was, like Luker herself, a throwback -- the 1929 Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II ballad "Why Was I Born?" Nothing showcased her beautifully controlled voice to better effect, and the clearly delighted Luker practically invited herself back to the Kennedy Center for a collection of standards she says she's working on. They might want to give her more than one night for that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/09/AR2008110901963.html

Feinstein's Reviews

Cabaret Review | Rebecca Luker

A Broadway Regular Turns the Spotlight on Female Songwriters

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: May 11, 2006

Richard Termine for The New York Times

Rebecca Luker

When two cultures collide, they don't always divide into red and blue armies. On occasion they achieve the kind of magnificent fusion embodied by the Broadway singer Rebecca Luker.

Early in her show devoted to female songwriters at Feinstein's at the Regency, Ms. Luker recalls growing up in Alabama, where a typical meal consisted of "mountains of grits and a whole mess of pecan pie," and the dinner table talk was of "football, church, football and, oh yeah, football." Ms. Luker, now a New Yorker, subsequently married into a cosmopolitan family. Dinner table conversation nowadays is about art, philosophy and politics.

But as Ms. Luker's radiant stage presence suggests, art, philosophy, and politics — not to mention American theater songs — are tastier when accompanied by hearty slices of pecan pie. A glow of Southern warmth along with the confidence of a traditional beauty queen infuse everything she sings in much the same way that a welcoming aura of Southern hospitality enables Barbara Cook (who is from Atlanta) to warm up even the chilliest Sondheim meditation on love and death.

Ms. Luker is an ardent champion of new American theater songs, combining an introspective urban sophistication with musical-comedy chattiness that are scattered throughout her show.

Her lyric soprano lends a quality of robust well-being to everything she sings. As her voice swells, it gains in beauty, textural fullness and emotional power. Never do you feel that she is showing off her prodigious vocal talent for its own sake. She unfurls sweeping vocal lines without ornamentation and in perfect pitch. This doesn't preclude her from occasionally venturing toward jazz in a song like "The Best is Yet to Come." But it is most impressive in lyrical flights that demand a pure, steady, semi-operatic legato.

An early career triumph for Ms. Luker was her portrayal of Lily in the 1991 Broadway show "The Secret Garden," whose songs by Lucy Simon (music) and Marsha Norman (lyrics) strive for the kind of soaring, unadorned lyricism found in certain Richard Rodgers ballads. To hear Ms. Luker perform "Come to My Garden" and "How Could I Know?" from that show, back to back, is to hear a singer shoot the moon not only technically but also dramatically as she locates the songs' eerie romantic mysticism and rides it heavenward.

Rebecca Luker performs through May 20 at Feinstein's at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street; (212) 339-4095.

Posted: Sun., May 14, 2006, 6:00am PT
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117930499?categoryid=1265&cs=1
Rebecca Luker
(Feinstein's at the Regency; 150 seats; $100 top)
Presented inhouse. Directed by Mark Waldrop.
Musical director-piano, Joseph Thalken; bass, Dick Sarpola.

By STEVEN SUSKIN

In this busy spring full of Great White Way openings, some of the best Broadway-style singing you're likely to hear is over on Park Avenue, where Rebecca Luker is headlining at Feinstein's.

Luker first visited the Regency last December. The success of her four-day engagement merited this two-week spring return, with what is described as an "updated" show. As before, the slogan "dedicated to female songwriters" is prominent, although most of the songs have at least one male writer in the mix. Let's just call them good songs, well selected and impeccably performed.

The blond soprano came to Broadway in 1991 as a good-looking singer with a pretty, bell-like voice. The talent on display at the Regency has deepened considerably. She still has those fine, clear tones, but along with warmth and friendliness comes a knowing humor and hints of an earthy personality.

Alabama-born Luker is nowadays being compared to that other transplanted Southern songbird, Barbara Cook, and not unreasonably so. But Cook lost 20-odd years of her career to personal demons. Luker is in her prime.

If the Regency stint is any indication, she has developed charisma and acting ability that were not in evidence in her days as the sweet-and-virtuous leading lady. Get this girl a job in a new musical, now.

Other than "The Secret Garden," her debut, Luker's stage work has been in revivals, including "Show Boat," "The Music Man," "The Sound of Music" and "Nine." This only points up the sad fact that they don't write 'em like they used to -- at least not for sopranos.

Luker, with director Mark Waldrop and musical director Joseph Thalken, do their best to disprove this argument. Half of the program is devoted to songs by songwriters who haven't yet made it on Broadway, including Jeff Blumenkrantz, the team of Marcy Heisler & Zina Goldrich, and Thalken himself. Promising writers, yes; more importantly, these are highly effective theater songs.

Opened May 9, 2006, reviewed May 11. Runs through May 20
Date in print: Mon., May 15, 2006, Gotham

By Rex Reed

Finally, it is with great regret that space limitations in last week’s issue forced my review of the delectable Broadway soprano Rebecca Luker onto the editing-room floor. At Feinstein’s at the Regency, she was both fabulous to hear and lovely to look at, like the frisky blondes in the old Busby Berkeley movies. Celebrating women songwriters, she moved gracefully from classic love songs by Dorothy Fields, Carolyn Leigh and Marilyn Bergman to wrist-slashers from what I grumpily call the “Janis Ian syndrome,” but on songs of cheer or songs of angst, the voice was mellifluous, the chops impressive and the smile radiant. Never resorting to noisy belting to get your attention, this Alabama-born Scarlett O’Hara knows the value of trusting a lyric and letting the songs work for her, and she’s an accomplished actress too. Which explains the depth she pours into a profound new tune entitled “Lovely Lies,” about Southern belles raised on church hymns and pecan pie, with no preparation for independent thinking or real life on the other side of the plantation. Playing Magnolia on a big Broadway stage in Show Boat or dreamily crooning a sexy tune in the intimacy of a hotel cabaret, Rebecca Luker turns songs into three-act plays and makes the center spot burn brighter. I hope she comes back soon.

http://nyobserver.com/20060529/20060529_Rex_Reed_culture_rexreed-3.asp

This column ran on page 16 in the 5/29/2006 edition of The New York Observer

December 14, 2005

Cabaret Review | Rebecca Luker

Richard Termine for The New York Times

Rebecca Luker focuses on female songwriters at Feinstein's

The Ghosts of Broadway, Past and Future

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Correction Appended

Rebecca Luker stitches together pieces of time. In her gorgeous, full-bodied soprano, Broadway Past (an innocent blond ingénue who floats sweet, high notes into the ether) and Broadway Future (a dramatic realist with an earthy sense of humor) meet and merge. Everything old is new again; everything new is balanced with a classicist's understanding of traditional musical values and vocal technique.

What makes her New York cabaret debut at Feinstein's at the Regency, where she is appearing through tomorrow, all the more auspicious is her choice of a program devoted largely to the possible future of American theater music.

Accompanied by Joseph Thalken on piano and Dick Sarpola on bass, she sings the work of female songwriters ranging from Kay Swift (lyricist for "Can't We Be Friends?") and Dorothy Fields (lyrics for "The Way You Look Tonight") to several little-known contemporary teams, including Beth Blatt (lyrics) and Jenny Giering (music), and Marcy Heisler (lyrics) and Zina Goldrich (music).

Like the new work she performed in February in Lincoln Center's American Songbook series, the contemporary songs in her show belong to an academic school of carefully wrought theatrical songwriting that exists on its own island off the rock 'n' roll mainland.

How durable it turns out to be is hard to judge because Ms. Luker (like Audra McDonald, another singer committed to new music) lends even the most anecdotal lyrics a gravitas that keeps you hanging on every word.

Some of the newer songs are downright funny. "He Never Did That Before," with lyrics by Mark Campbell and music by Debra Barsha, describes a post-coital anxiety attack in which a satisfied lover suddenly wonders where her partner learned the surprising "new twist on our bedtime story" he introduced to their lovemaking and begins to fret over possible infidelity.

On the traditional side, romantic ballads like "On My Way to You" (by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, with Michel Legrand), and "The Way You Look Tonight" become shimmering long-lined vocal flights that breathe with life.

If you've been wondering who, if anyone, might be the heir to the great Barbara Cook, Ms. Luker, who also comes from the South (Birmingham, Ala.) and also played Marian the librarian (in the revival of "The Music Man") is the one.

Rebecca Luker performs through tomorrow at Feinstein's at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street; (212) 339-4095.

Correction: Dec. 16, 2005, Friday:

A cabaret review on Wednesday about Rebecca Luker misidentified the lyricist of "Can't We Be Friends?," because of incorrect information from a publicist for the show. It was James Paul Warburg, writing under the name Paul James, not Kay Swift. (Ms. Swift, Mr. Warburg's wife at the time, wrote the music.)

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/arts/music/14luke.html?ex=1136437200&en=10890db679151e71&ei=5070

The Siegel Column Dec 20, 2005

Rebecca Luker
(Photo © Joseph Marzullo)

We Like Luker
In her four-night debut engagement at Feinstein's at the Regency last week, Rebecca Luker was extremely impressive -- so much so that the she will return to the club in the spring, May 9-20. Although her first stint there fell in mid-December, she pointedly did not perform holiday-themed material, and we are eternally grateful for this. Instead, she built her act with songs of which either the composer or the lyricist (or both) were women, including Kay Swift, Dorothy Fields, and Marilyn Bergman.

Although some of her patter was devoted to the history of these groundbreaking women, Luker made a far more effective feminist statement by using their songs to tell her own personal story. A Southern woman married to a Jewish man (actor Danny Burstein), Luker firmly established her Alabama roots with "Lovely Lies" by Jeff Blumenkrantz and Beth Blatt. This story song about a young woman from the South having a difficult heart-to-heart talk with her mom was one of the highlights of the evening, not only because the piece is so insightful but also because Luker acted it so exquisitely.

Most of the time, however, her acting chops played second fiddle to her remarkably beautiful voice. A creamy soprano with a round, full sound, Luker doesn't know the meaning of the word "shrill." In her renditions of two gorgeous songs that she introduced when she created the role of Lily in The Secret Garden -- "Come to My Garden" and "How Could I Know?" -- the ethereal beauty of her voice was simply breathtaking. Meanwhile, her sense of humor was displayed in "He Never Did That Before," by Debra Barsha and Mark Campbell, and "The Last Song," by Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler. Luker also did a great job with Goldrich and Heisler's far-from-funny ballad "Out of Love."

Because Luker is a musical theater star, we were a little worried when the show began and she stared at a fixed point above the heads of the audience throughout her opening number ("The Best is Yet to Come," lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, music by Cy Coleman). "Perhaps cabaret doesn't suit her," we thought. But, thereafter, she made full eye contact with patrons on all three sides of the Feinstein's stage and proved herself to be a warm, personable, and most welcome recruit to this intimate art form.

********************

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/7332

Rebecca Luker
Feinstein's at the Regency
By Rob Lester

Rebecca Luker
Feinstein's at the Regency
By Rob Lester

The only thing you can really assume about Rebecca Luker's night club act is that you'll get some truly beautiful soprano singing since she's one of the most employed sopranos in musical theater. Don't make too many bets beyond that. You might assume that since it's two weeks before Christmas, you'd get a cluster of holiday songs. No, she announces that she's going to be our respite from the ubiquitous holiday songs. (I wonder if she knows that Christmas tunes are piped into the bathrooms at The Regency.) She decided to do a show of material written (or co-written) by women. That means no selections from most of her Broadway turns (leads in Show Boat, The Music Man, Nine, The Sound of Music, The Phantom of the Opera) or studio cast albums like Brownstone. Her first album was all Cole Porter songs, so that's out and she did a song here and there on composer albums (all male: Sondheim, The Sherman Brothers, Bob Ost). That leaves the logical choice of her gem of a second album, 2004's Leaving Home where half the songs have women as writers. Wrong again! She sings none of them.

The theme frees Rebecca from leaning on the material that many of her fans will have heard and also lets us focus on and appreciate the work of women writers. Of course, none of this would matter if the idea didn't result in an entertaining show - it does! Looking and sounding vibrant, the vocalist reels off one song after another, with easy grace and glorious tones. She works with Joseph Thalken on piano and Dick Sarpola on bass. They're strong, but don't get a real chance to shine on their own. The arrangements are not showy or intricate, and truly it's the lyrics and the story of the songs taking center stage much of the time.

You know the voice is there. It's a given. It's a reliable instrument with beauty, purity of tone and power. No need to worry about her struggling or coasting or faking her way through.

Opening with "The Best is Yet to Come" is a friendly hello, with smiles of greeting flashed to each section of the audience. Though it's a feel-good opener, it is actually one of the least interesting moments. A bit forceful, but jazzy, and sung in her chest voice, it doesn't hint at the more rewarding and dramatic numbers ahead. This Carolyn Leigh lyric (music by Cy Coleman) is always good to hear, but her final work, "Killing Time," with Jule Styne's melody gives an actress something to more to bite into. It's a devastating view of being at a loss of how to fill the hours after a break-up. Rebecca doesn't shy away from the stark loneliness that echoes through the song, but could probably take it a step deeper for a even more wrenching effect. A similar theme is explored in "Out of Love," by Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler, a great writing team. Rebecca also takes on their "The Last Song," a hilarious character number in which the character insists this is really her last attempt to communicate with an ex-lover ("This is the last e-mail; I'm taking you off my Buddy List"). Rebecca is not famous for being a comedienne, as she's been cast as the sincere ingenue/ leading lady, but she shows flair for comedy here and in a stressed mom's lament, "The Noises That Joy Makes," with its tale of Cheerios flying and kids who won't go to sleep. It cues Rebecca to mention her life with actor-singer Danny Burstein and her step-children, but she shares little and it's not the kind of show where you feel you've gotten to know the performer very well. Unpretentious? Yes. Revealing? Not really.

The center of the act and the most exciting and involving moments are when she's most emotionally involved and invested. Or maybe I should say when her character is. Rebecca Luker is a singing actress and when she becomes a character in a specific time and mindset, something special happens. When the melody allows her to soar and the notes climb, and it's matched with intelligent, emotion-based lyrics, "special" borders on thrilling. Songs co-written by Beth Blatt give her characters to work with, specific details and grown-up struggles to act. She succeeds and connects with the audience. "When You Start," a collaboration with Jenny Giering is especially touching and a Blatt/ Jeff Blumenkrantz song, "Lovely Lies," lets Rebecca play on her down-home roots as a woman trying to find her way in the world after being raised in a traditional Southern family. In these and other numbers, the performer finds many non-verbal ways to communicate, react and underscore feelings: a slight shrug of the shoulder on the word "perhaps," a new look coming into her eyes when her character focuses on part of a painting, leaning in to convince the unseen mother she addresses, and tensing up or relaxing her facial muscles ever so subtly.

Rebecca's great Broadway role that was written by women (Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman's The Secret Garden) is called upon, and she sounds sensational in its pleading and pure "Come to My Garden," and the strong and dramatic "How Could I Ever Know?" Rebecca and her director, Mark Waldrop, are wise enough to know that a breather from intensity is needed. The hip and charming "I Wouldn't Trade You" by Jessica Molaskey and John Pizzarelli, fits the bill; the playfully affectionate song brought appreciative laughter for its nifty rhymes, especially the references to New York City. Trotting back to the stage for encores, the singer dropped the theme and said she'd do a holiday song - and that it was written by a man. No, not that holiday: the next one: "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" by Frank Loesser. The night I attended (Tuesday), she asked the audience if they wanted another ballad or an "up" song. "Ballad!!" was the cry and she favored us with an excellent one, "Time," written by her musical director/pianist Joseph Thalken and Barry Kleinbort, from their musical, Was, impressive and satisfying. No histrionics or diva attitude, no sense of danger, it's not about flash. Rebecca Luker's act is not a musical tightrope walk, it's a lovely ride with a lovely lady.

Rebecca Luker plays Wednesday December 14 at 8:30pm, and Thursday December 15 at 8:30pm at Feinstein's at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at East 60th Street. For more information, visit www.feinsteinsattheregency.com. For tickets, visit TicketWeb.com.

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/cabaret/121405.html

Back Home Again

Luker to bring some 'old-hat standards' back to Birmingham

Sunday, June 12, 2005

ALEC HARVEY

News staff writer

Tony Award nominee Rebecca Luker, a Helena native who has starred in a number of Broadway shows, will return to Birmingham for three concerts in September.

"Rebecca Luker - Back Home Again" will feature songs from Luker's musicals, as well as material from her CDs and some songs from relatively unknown theater composers that she's recently sung in concert in New York.

"I wanted to do something that was special to me," Luker says. "I feel passionate about these new songs. I wanted to do something extra along with the old-hat standards."

The singer will have plenty of old-hat standards to choose from. She has starred on Broadway in "The Music Man" and "Show Boat," both of which earned her Tony nominations, as well as "Nine," "The Sound of Music" and "The Phantom of the Opera."

"I'll do a little bit from all of my Broadway shows," Luker says. During the first half of the concert, she'll also sing songs from her latest CD, "Leaving Home," which has more pop material than theater music.

The second act of the concert will be drawn from a concert she recently performed as part of the Lincoln Center American Songbook Festival.

"I was able to do anything I wanted at that concert, so I did all-new theater songs," she says. "It's exciting, wonderful music."

That set will include a duet with Kristi Tingle Higginbotham.

Luker, a University of Montevallo graduate, got her start in Birmingham, performing with Town and Gown Theatre and Summerfest.

At the time, Town and Gown was at the Clarke Memorial Theatre, which is now the Virginia Samford Theatre, where Luker will perform her concerts Sept. 8-10.

"I understand it's beautiful," she says of the renovated theater. "It's really like coming home."

Ticket prices have not yet been set, but details will be available at www.virginiasamfordtheatre.org and www.rebeccaluker.com.

Helena native Luker displays her vocal virtuosity

Friday, September 09, 2005
ALEC HARVEY
News staff writer
It's a rare performer who can count among her greatest hits "All I Ask of You" from "Phantom of the Opera," "My White Knight" from "The Music Man" and "The Sound of Music."
Rebecca Luker can.
It's an even rarer performer who can sing virtually unknown songs and make you feel as if you should have heard them before.
Rebecca Luker can do that, too, and she did it Thursday night during a thrilling concert at the Virginia Samford Theatre.
Forget that Luker is homegrown talent. The Helena native and University of Montevallo graduate, a two-time Tony Award nominee, showed why she is one of the most sought-after sopranos in the business.
That she sailed through Act I - singing songs from her Broadway shows and some standards that Irving Berlin and Cole Porter might as well have written for her - is no surprise.
That the second act - comprising nine songs that most in the audience were hearing for the first time - was a testament to Luker's unparalleled voice, presence and canny song choices.
Consider "Time," a beautiful ballad written by Joseph Thalken (who accompanied Luker on the piano, along with cellist Patricia Pilon). Or "Alphabet of Alcohol," a clever and humorous ditty written by John Samorian. Or the soaring "Ohio, 1904," a stunning song by Paul Loesel and Scott Burkell about a girl witnessing the Wright Brothers' first flight. Or a fun duet (sung with Birmingham's Kristi Tingle Higginbotham), "Moving Right Along," by Jeff Blumenkrantz.
Remember those names. Some will be the Sondheims of tomorrow. Right now, they should just be thanking the theater gods that Luker has chosen to sing their songs.

© 2005 The Birmingham News
© 2005 al.com All Rights Reserved.

American Songbook

February 15, 2005

MUSIC REVIEW | REBECCA LUKER

Songs With a Highish Brow Find a Sympathetic Voice

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Correction Appended

With a lustrous soprano that sheds late-afternoon sunlight on everything she sings, Rebecca Luker is one of the best friends a certain kind of theater composer could hope to have. With enunciation that's precise but not prissy, and a warm but never mawkish emotional presence, Ms. Luker is ideally matched to what has been called the New Art Song, a semipopular, semiclassical genre inspired in part by Stephen Sondheim's impressionistic music for "Sunday in the Park With George." But like that of many of the songs in that genre, her impeccable craft often suppresses defining personality.

Performing 20 songs developed by contributors to the New Voices Collective, a group that presents new theater music at the Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, Ms. Luker's concert on Saturday at the Allen Room of Frederick P. Rose Hall, came as close to highbrow as Lincoln Center's pop-oriented American Songbook series can get without sneaking over the line.

Resplendent in a black gown, her blond hair tumbling to her shoulders, Ms. Luker made a glamorous muse who suggested a combination of Renée Fleming and Diane Sawyer. Her accompaniment - by Joseph Thalken on piano and Dorothy Lawson on cello, with Ed Matthew filling in sparingly on clarinet and saxophone - had the decorum of a classical recital. The absence of drums, keyboard and bass and electric guitar signaled that this was a rarefied genre: salon music, often overly refined and lacking in humor and spontaneity, composed for boutique shows with no aspirations to follow contemporary Broadway's lunge into karaoke hell.

In committing herself to new music by mostly younger composers, Ms. Luker is following in the footsteps of Audra McDonald, whose first Nonesuch album, "Way Back to Paradise," put this hothouse genre on the map and established Adam Guettel, Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael John LaChiusa as its marquee names.

Although it's impossible after one listen to offer more than a superficial assessment of individual selections in a concert of carefully chiseled songs, here is a short list of my spur-of-the-moment favorites:

"Ohio 1904," by Paul Loesel and Scott Burkell, an arching ballad sung by a small-town girl observing the Wright Brothers; Jeff Blumenkranz's "Moving Right Along," the show's peppiest number, in which Ms. Luker and her singing guest, Sally Wilfert, scrutinized and dismissed the men in a singles bar with witty one-liners; "Love Is Not All," Mr. Blumenkranz's sad, stately setting of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a favorite poet of New Art Song composers; and Mr. Thalken's and Barry Kleinbort's ballad "Time," which ended the concert.

Correction: February 23, 2005, Wednesday:

A review on Feb. 15 about Rebecca Luker's concert in Lincoln Center's American Songbook series misspelled the surname of the writer of two songs on the program, "Moving Right Along" and "Love Is Not All." He is Jeff Blumenkrantz, not Blumenkranz

Music Man

From the May 15, 2000 issue of New York Magazine.

Theater Review

The Music Woman

Susan Stroman's lively revival of "The Music Man" may not displace the memory of Robert Preston, but it should finally make a star of Rebecca Luker.

By John Simon

Dancing as fast as they can: Tracy Nicole Chapman, Max Casella, Craig Bierko, and Rebecca Luker in The Music Man.(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)

Back in 1957, Meredith Willson's The Music Man made a star out of Robert Preston; the current revival should do the same for Rebecca Luker. As she has steadily demonstrated, she is blessed with the voice, the looks, and the acting talent of a musical-comedy diva, and only typecasting, lack of opportunity, and some sort of universal blindness and deafness have kept her from the deserved pedestal. As Marian Paroo, the librarian of River City, Iowa, who goes from tight-lipped spinster to glowing inamorata in this happy show, Miss Luker gives a performance as detailed, nuanced, and cherishable as ever turned a performer into a legend.

Susan Stroman's production has other assets as well, but let's take care first of its chief liability. The role of Professor Harold Hill, the sales- and con man who sells the dismal little Iowa town brass instruments and uniforms and promises to turn its youth into a marching band under his leadership -- though he can't tell one note from another -- was created immortally by Robert Preston. He had an infectious way of making a charlatan believable, a Lothario's wooing credible, a swindler's eventual revelation of a heart behind his billfold totally convincing.

Craig Bierko, an obscure movie actor, the incumbent Hill, gives an impersonation rather than a performance. He sounds, deliberately or not, uncannily like Preston, and has mastered a good many histrionic Prestonisms. This may not bother those who never experienced Preston -- although the movie version with him is easily available -- but is to the rest of us like a hostess's proudly displaying her flagrant copy of a Vermeer. Add -- or subtract -- that Bierko has a faintly batrachian aspect, underlined by his profuse sweating, and you wonder why the townspeople, to say nothing of the starchy librarian, would so willingly take him to their flinty bosoms.

Miss Stroman has amply proved her talent as a choreographer, and most of her dances here are on target, even if her bravura library frolic to "Marian the Librarian" is less able to balance chaos with focus than Onna White's for the premiere production and the movie. She is also as yet less apt as a director of nonmusical passages, and does not quite establish the basic gruffness of River City's denizens, the various subplots and their interrelation, or the stages by which sundry transformations take place. But she does keep things moving, often inventively.

As the pompous mayor and his pretentious wife, Paul Benedict and Ruth Williamson (especially she) may lean a little too steeply into caricature; as Marian's troubled little brother, Michael Phelan may have less charisma than previous kids in the role. But these are minor problems, and the members of the Harold Hill-induced barbershop quartet, like the remainder of the spirited supporting cast, do handsomely enough. Willson's score is consistently endearing and, for its time, innovative. Thus, the opening train number -- which Miss Stroman prefaces with the overture featuring the pit orchestra as a traveling band -- comes off as the granddaddy of all rap music. So, too, the melodic identity of Hill's rousing "76 Trombones" and Marian's wistful "Goodnight, My Someone" presages their singers' eventual compatibility. And much more to keep an audience elated.

Less felicitous are Thomas Lynch's serviceable but underimagined sets and William Ivey Long's funny but overfancy costumes. Still, salient about this revival is how far it outshines today's crop of musicals and how uncloyingly it dispenses well-earned cheer. The Stroman-invented postlude, wherein the kids and adults join in an apotheosis of marching-band music- cum-good citizenship, may run somewhat counter to logic, but as a coup de théâtre it fully earns its keep.

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/theater/reviews/3100/