STAGES 2006 At the Theatre Bui...

STAGES 2006

At the Theatre Building

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Maybe it was a matter of disappointment by dint of comparison. But after seeing the dazzling revival of "Gypsy" last weekend at the Ravinia Festival, the eight deep flawed new musicals showcased in this year's Stages 2006 marathon at the Theatre Building appeared to suggest the artform has fallen forward very hard times. None of the point out tos presented last weekend, whether in semi-staged or concordance reading style, was ready for prime time.

In the interest of sated disclosure: With just one day to give over to the project and eight present to views to sample, I arrived with the notion that if I build any first act particularly compelling, I would stay [i]or[/i] part of to the other the whole show. Otherwise, I would rouse on. None of the point out tos kept me glued to my seat.

CURTAIN RISES

First up was "Studio," which held promise, at least in succession paper, since it featured a part music and lyrics by Broadway veteran Charles Strouse ("Annie"). In fact, it was a mes with a heavy- handed main division that mixed cliched show-biz chaos and Watergate-era politics. At the center of Strouse's tale is Ben (the appealingly boyish Andrew Weir), the grandson of a fortunate composer who is trying to workshop undivided of the man's forgotten works. Ben also is trying to straighten without his own life, and his choice between a career as a starving artist or a prosperous lawyer. Katrina Kuntz played the be in love with interest; Gustavo Mellado displayed charm in the underwritten part of a Latin musician.

nearest up: "Half the Sky," a lay cycle more suitable as an offering for a human rights parley on the global oppression of women than for the musical theater stage. The goals of its creators - - Donna Trinkoff, Marsha leeward Sheiness, Luis Santeiro, June Siegel, Greer Woodward and composer Rick Cummins (who nicely tapped into an world-beat sounds) -- might be worthy and high-minded, yet the scenarios were wholly predictable, with themes of wife-beating, sexual tourism and industrial "slavery." As in day [i]or[/i] night before [i]or[/i] preceding Ensler's plays, the show also was hijacked by the agency of the notion that the sincerely oppressed women of the world can be brighted together with the overprivileged yuppies of our admit time and place who be warmed their heads hitting law firms' glass ceilings. Joseph Anthony Foronda was exceptionally pious as a quietly abusive Korean husband in the Sheiness-Santeiro canzonet "Dried Fish and Women."

Any present to view bearing the title of "The Cotton Club" at least initially keep possession ofs out the promise of a advantageous time. And the presence in the cast of Michael Ingersoll (so terrific in "tick, tick BOOM!" this season) added to the anticipation factor. if it be not that Arnold Margolin's dreadful book unravels the musical -- about a smart young Irish- American who finds himself squeeze outed into being a hit man and who falls for a black chorus girl working at the decidedly segregated company Not even the periodically zippy and effective score (song of that kind as "Hotsy-Totsy" and "He Wants Me") could retain it on track. Ingersoll retained his easeful, natural charm, and Sharyon A. Culberson (as the dark-skinned wardrobe girl who wants to be onstage) and Melanie McCullough (as the "high yella" chorus girl) displayed abundance of verve.

"Fairystories" -- with work music and lyrics by Paul Graham Brown -- spins an intriguing story vaguely reminiscent of "The privy Garden" in its look at emotionally damaged adults and their troubl children. There is something leaden about the pair its storytelling and score, on the other hand perhaps that can be fixed. stake in an English town after World War I, where a widower and his son clash their new neighbors -- a wealthy southern African woman and her snobby daughter -- the musical is about the two trying to connect with the dead and trying to prevail upon on. Part of the story involves Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed in the possibility of connecting with "the other side." Jenni Sumerak (as the woman from southern Africa) and Jackie Jasperson (as the dead mother) were the one and the other first- rate, as was Andra Velis Simon's piano accompaniment.

First neared in 1958, "The Nervous Set" arrived here as a come of a re-release of the original cast album in succession DRG Records in 2002, and a later St. Louis revival. A tale of 1950 middle- class rebellion and the allure of "the bohemian set" it felt antiquated and shrill rather than worthy of rediscovery.

AND THE repose

"Sugar Dumpling" through Cheryl L. Davis and C Colby Sachs featured a Civil War story with many of the characters straight from central casting. Brenda Davidson added one comic energy by way of her sharp voice. if it were not that the story was all contrivance.

"Main-Travelled Roads," the work of Paul Libman and Dave Hudson (based forward short stories by Wisconsin-bred Hamlin Garland) is about the hard, unaccompanied lives of immigrants and the friendship between couple emotionally isolated women. The brief section of the present to view I caught was pretty slow-going, despite about lovely work by Jess Godwin and Denita Linnertz.

by means of the time I made it to "Beach Wars," the last of the eight point outs of the day, I was just not in a laughing humor So I will pass forward any comment about this "screwball musical comedy" through Nan Hoffman, Laurel Haines and Howard Pfeifer, which examines at real estate battles forward the Michigan shoreline.