AP News, May 11th, 2007
It sounds like an idea made for Man in Chair, the obsessive musical theater fan from "The Drowsy Chaperone" _ an evening celebrating the old-time Broadway revue, with some songs that haven't had the dust blown off them since the Depression.
The good news is you don't have to be able to recite obscure lyrics from shows like "Yip, Yip, Yaphank" to appreciate the relentlessly entertaining "Stairway to Paradise," making a brief, six-show run at off-Broadway's New York City Center.
It bills itself as a review of the revue, the genre that patched together song, dance and sketch comedy and had its golden age in the first half of the 20th century. (Think the Ziegfeld Follies.)
City Center's Encores! series, which had a hit earlier this year with a concert revival of "Follies," brought in the plucky, unsinkable Kristin Chenoweth to headline "Stairway." It's a perfect choice: You can imagine her mugging in a revue 70 years ago.
Here she hams it up in two sketches _ including one riotously funny bit that relies on the very simple gag of sneezing _ and takes a serious turn by lending her remarkable voice to "Guess Who I Saw Today," a poignant 1952 number about a two-timing man.
(In the other sketch she plays a vapid blond actress who only knows how to preen for the camera. It's from a 1949 show called "Touch and Go." The character's name? Miss Hilton. Go figure.)
Chenoweth is backed up by the versatile Kevin Chamberlin and by Christopher Fitzgerald, whose comic timing is masterful and who wins the biggest roars of the night by playing two exasperated parents in "Josephina Please No Lean on the Bell."
Encores! aimed to trot out classic revue songs that could still win over a contemporary audience, and wound up packing into the show more than 30 numbers originally staged from 1901 to 1952.
This is a tricky proposition: "Stairway to Paradise" whipsaws from carefree melodies to aching torch songs to stereotyped spoofs. (Chenoweth's "I'm an Indian," from the 1920 "Ziegfeld Follies," will make you happy it's not 1920 anymore.)
Sometimes the sudden shifts in mood are jarring. The transition from the upbeat "F.D.R. Jones" to "Supper Time," the lament of a suddenly single mother, is accomplished with the awkward dropdown of a giant newspaper headline about a lynching.
But that's a quibble. There's a lot more to like.
Ruthie Henshall, playing The Sophisticated Woman, delivers two heartbreaking songs about love and loss. The fresh-faced Shonn Wiley and Jenn Gambatese are engaging in the recurring roles of young sweethearts.
Capathia Jenkins _ last seen in Martin Short's "Fame Becomes Me" singing, "Let a big, black lady stop the show" _ does exactly that again here, with a raunchy take on "My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More," from 1930's "Lew Leslie's Blackbirds."
And when the deft tap-dancer Kendrick Jones clicks out the rhythm of "Going Home Train," from the 1946 revue "Call Me Mister," you almost have to rub your eyes to believe what you're seeing.
The whole thing is pulled together smoothly by director Jerry Zaks, with skillful choreography by Warren Carlyle. It delivers is a portrait of America in the early 20th century, and you wind up both longing for and smirking at its bright-eyed idealism.
One intriguing selection: The show opens with "The Land Where the Good Songs Go," from a 1917 revue called "Miss 1917," which even then _ nine decades ago _ wondered what had happened to "dear old songs."
"Forgotten too soon," the song goes. "They had their day _ and then we threw them away." It's our good fortune that 30 or so were plucked out of the garbage, if only for a short while.
