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ON THE RECORD: Ebersole and Stritch Celebrate "Sunday in New York," Durang Is Adrift in Macao
By Steven Suskin
25 May 2008
ADRIFT IN MACAO [LML Music]
Musical comedy spoofs can be treacherous. The line between what is funny and what is not is highly personal, of course, and there are always bound to be a few who hate a show that everybody else loves and vice versa. But generally these things either work or they don't; if not, they can come across as resolutely unfunny. Which is my reaction to the original cast album of Christopher Durang and Peter Melnick's Adrift in Macao.
A woman stranded in a foreign city hails a rickshaw. "I'm Rick Shaw," says a passerby. If this strikes you as the height of hilarity — and if, further, you like the notion of a mysterious villain called Mr. McGuffin and an inscrutable fellow called Tempura (because he has been "battered by life") who steps out in the second act to sing "I'm Actually Irish" — then you might well like this adrift little musical. But Dames at Sea or City of Angels it isn't, and not for lack of trying. Film noir, in this case, becomes musical mud.
The trouble here seems to stem from Mr. Durang, who has a specialized talent for offbeat humor. His book, here, didn't work when the show was on brief display at 59E59 in February 2007, and his lyrics reach for laughs which don't seem to land. Again and again and again. It is more difficult to judge the music by Mr. Melnick, which sounds like it might be rather attractive in a comic-musical-comedy style were it not for the lyrics he is forced to carry. As it is, a couple of tunes — "Sparks" and "Adrift in Macao" — are rather pleasing, and the rest of the music generally brings a smile to the ears. (Michael Starobin brings a sense of fun to the five-piece orchestration, which has been slightly expanded by Melnick for the recording.) And the performers, led by Alan Campbell and Rachel de Benedet, do their utmost under the circumstances.
But if it ain't funny — and to me, it ain't funny — then it ain't funny. Mr. Durang's liner notes inform us of Mr. Melnick's lineage, which is to say that his grandfather wrote South Pacific and his cousin wrote A Light in the Piazza. One can't quite tell whether he is likely to follow in the family footsteps, although he seems clearly to have a musical sense of humor. Of course, Durang might well have added Melnick's other familial Broadway credit: his father produced Kelly, which is the stuff of legends.
(Steven Suskin is author of "Second Act Trouble," "Show Tunes" and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. Past On the Record columns are archived in the Features section of Playbill.com. Suskin can be reached at Ssuskin@aol.com)
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