Theatre in Review: Sweet Charity (The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center)

	Sutton Foster, Joel Perez. Photo: Monique Carboni

The New Group is currently presenting a markedly unsweetened Charity in a production that raises many questions about vintage Broadway musicals -- including how far one can go in reinterpreting them, how much they can be reduced for small-scale productions, and if there is any point in doing either. The production coasts on the charms of its somewhat miscast star, Sutton Foster, guaranteeing a good time for New Group subscribers, who cheered lustily at the performance I attended. But the director, Leigh Silverman, has opted to turn Sweet Charity inside out, an approach that does little more than expose what was always weak about the musical while failing to capitalize on its many strengths.

Foster is, of course, the title character, a "social consultant," otherwise known as a dance hall hostess, a companion for hire, at the Fandango Ballroom, one of the seedy joints that thrived in the Times Square area as late as the 1960s. For a few bucks, a guy can buy a half hour of Charity's time for a drink, a few laughs, and a whirl around the dance floor. Or, as her friend Nickie points out, "Who dances? We defend ourselves to music."

But Charity Hope Valentine -- the name is a dead giveaway -- is one of God's pure-at-heart. Despite her profession, which is just one step above prostitution -- she is quick to point out that, unlike some of the other girls, she never, ever trades sex for money -- Charity still dreams of finding a nice man, settling down in a rose-covered cottage, and raising a handful of kids -- despite the fact that the men in her life constitute a parade of creeps, lounge lizards, and swindlers.

It's an inherently sentimental premise, but, as conceived and directed by Bob Fosse, it provided Gwen Verdon with a role that fit her like one of Charity's tightest dresses. (It marked Verdon's return to Broadway after a seven-year absence and was her penultimate hit, followed by Chicago, nearly a decade later.) Federico Fellini, whose celestial film Nights of Cabiria provided Sweet Charity with its source material, treated it more astringently, if no less movingly. Neil Simon, author of the musical's book, says in his memoirs, "In the film, she was a streetwalker, but Bob had already taken the grit out when he turned her into a dance-hall girl, a change he thought right for a musical."

Silverman seems determined to put the grit back into Sweet Charity, emphasizing the oppression of the title character and the other ladies who share her profession. This is apparent in the first number, "You Should See Yourself," which typically features Charity and her man of the moment -- another loser in a trench coat and sunglasses to whom she has unwisely given her heart. While she covers him in encomiums, he remains mute as a statue -- until the moment when, hearing wedding bells, she hands over her savings -- and he grabs the cash, dumping her in Central Park.

The song is meant to set up everything we need to know about Charity -- her neediness, her dreams of romance, her shaky grip on reality. But Silverman opts to stage it so that, with each new verse, Charity appears with a different guy -- making the point that she is trapped in a vicious cycle of lousy lovers. At the end of the number, a trio of them picks her up, turns her upside down, and shakes her like a piggy bank. Simon's script already makes clear that Charity bounces from one unworthy guy to the next, but this bit of business takes an obvious point and coarsens it, rubs our noses in it. The joke is laborious, unfunny, degrading. Charity doesn't need to be made any more pathetic than she already is -- but Silverman is determined that she shall be.

This astringent, no-fun approach can be seen in certain casting choices. The scenes in the Fandango Ballroom contain some of Simon's funniest lines, many of them assigned to Charity's wised-up girlfriends Nickie and Helene. (One of my favorites features Nickie, introducing a new hire: "Girls! Girls! Good news. Besides stinkin' business, we now have a new, young, good-lookin' chick, which we need like Idaho needs potatoes.") I have never seen them fail to get big laughs -- until now. This is nothing against Asmeret Ghebremichael (Nickie) and Emily Padgett (Helene); Padgett's way with a devastating line was seen to good effect last season in the short-lived Broadway musical Bright Star. But, apparently, too much laughter would distract us from the women's plight. (The one exception is Nikka Graff Lanzarone, who, in a couple of smaller roles, cracks wise with brio.)

A similar problem afflicts the casting of Oscar, the man who almost marries Charity before balking at the very last minute. He's supposed to be an average guy, the sort of fresh-faced, pleasant-looking fellow who, when you pass him on the street, wouldn't earn a second glance -- until you engage him in conversation and realize that he is a bundle of nerves and neuroses. This is cleverly revealed in a scene featuring Charity and Oscar stuck in an elevator; while he quickly disintegrates, she holds him together with the number "I'm the Bravest Individual." (This scene is prime Neil Simon, who never met a complex he couldn't mine for laughs.) We have to believe, if only for a moment, in the possibility that they will marry and Charity's dream might actually come true. But the casting of Shuler Hensley -- a fine character actor, but one who comes with intimations of menace -- and the decision to dress him in an ill-fitting, out-of-date suit, gives away the game. We need to discover, over time, that Oscar is too much of a mess to handle Charity and her past; here, one look is all you need to know that the relationship is doomed: He looks like the sort of man who lives with his mother until well into middle age, then spends the rest of his life devoted to his stamp collection, or maybe taxidermy.

Oddly, Silverman doesn't take advantage of the darker moments offered in previous productions. She does away with the original overture, which is dominated by the dark, fatalistic vamp that precedes "Hey, Big Spender," the come-on theme of the Fandango girls. I can see why the choreographer, Joshua Bergasse, wouldn't want to ape Fosse's original staging (or the school-of-Fosse dances by Wayne Cilento for the 2005 revival), but there are few images in musical theatre more indelible than that of the girls, leaning against a room barrier, striking poses of boredom and rage while trying to entice the paying customers; it encapsulates in a single image the soul-killing daily grind of the job. Dispersing the ladies through the house, as Bergasse does here, dilutes the number's power. There are other disappointments: "Rich Man's Frug," set in a discotheque into which Charity has wandered, has been severely cut and stripped of its satirical point. "The Rhythm of Life," performed by a churchful of hipsters, has lost its tightly controlled sense of cool. And "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This," in which Charity, Nickie, and Helene dream of a better life, is well-danced -- the cast's musical theatre chops are beyond question -- but the number no longer seems like an organic expression of the ladies' frustration.

"The Rhythm of Life" is one of several numbers that seem to have lost their focus, possibly because of the decision to present the show on a thrust stage with the audience on three sides. Others include "Rich Man's Frug" and "I Love to Cry at Weddings," staged at the farewell party for Charity at the Fandango, which is designed to show, before he admits it, that Oscar isn't really prepared to forgive and forget his fiancée's past. The book scenes also suffer from this format; even seated in a prime press seat, there were times when my view of the characters was blocked by members of the company. In many cases, the set designer, Derek McLane, solves the ongoing problem of fast scene changes by putting all of the furniture on wheels. Still, some problems persist: When Charity is taken home by the Italian movie star Vittorio Vidal and is forced to hide in his closet, there isn't one; instead, she is made to lurk in and around a clothes rack that is inexplicably on display in his bedroom.

The musical theatre has no more gifted a triple threat than Foster, who delivers here, even if the role of Charity is a less-than-ideal fit. Of course, she sings and dances brilliantly, and there's something heartbreaking about the way she hands over her money to yet another unworthy guy, calling it her "dowry." She can look at a man with the most radiant of smiles -- but check out her eyes, which are decidedly wary, as if she can't help wondering if this guy will be trouble, too. But the character's essential innocence eludes her; she's a little too intelligent, too capable, for us to entirely buy her as a permanent doormat for men. The reduced casting needed for an intimate production also proves unhelpful. The talented Joel Perez is just about perfect as Vittorio Vidal, doing beautifully by his ballad, "Too Many Tomorrows," but he is far too young and handsome to play Herman, the ballroom's manager (a role that cries for someone overweight and middle-aged), and proves to be a total washout as Daddy Brubeck, leader of "The Rhythm of Life."

In addition, Clint Ramos' costumes are sometimes effective, but sometimes suggest he was waylaid by budget challenges; Jeff Croiter's lighting at least contrasts the dark, saturated-color interior of the Fandango with scenes set in the outside world. Leon Rothenberg's sound design is admirably clear and natural.

It goes without saying that the score is a pure delight: Cy Coleman's tunes range from jazzy improvisations to Latin-influenced arias of discontent to triumph-of-love marches, all perfectly mated to Dorothy Fields' impudent and heartfelt lyrics. Is there a wittier declaration of happiness than "I'm a Brass Band" ("I'm the bells of St. Peter's in Rome/I'm tissue paper on a comb!") or a vision of the secretarial life than "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" ("Then I sit on my desk on the forty-first floor/In my copy of a copy of a copy of Dior!")? The songs alone are reason enough that Sweet Charity, a star vehicle that should have been past its sell-by date the minute Verdon retired, continues to be revived.

Every production of Sweet Charity seems to fiddle with the ending, and this one is no different. The big question is, Having been dumped by Oscar, what is left for Charity? Silverman moves a number from early in Act II, "Where Am I Going?," to the end, following it with a silent epiphany that suggests that, in the long run, Charity will be all right. It's not a terrible solution and Foster makes something genuinely touching and believable of it. Still, this production left me bemused: Silverman's approach is an honest attempt at improving a show that has a number of built-in weaknesses, but her solutions prove equally problematic. You can produce Sweet Charity or not, but if you do, you probably have to leave her be. -- David Barbour