Theatre in Review: Copperfield! The New Musical (The Duke on 42nd Street)

	The company. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

People willtry to make a musical out of David Copperfield, but Charles Dickens' hero remains uncooperative, standing stalwart against those who would turn him and his story into song-and-dance entertainment. The above attraction is titled "the new musical" to distinguish itself from a blink-and-you'll-miss-it Broadway attempt from 1981. A relic of the golden age of Broadway flops, the former Copperfield featured a ruthlessly streamlined book, plenty of boisterous production numbers, and a hilariously misguided refashioning of the creepy Uriah Heep as a comedy villain along the lines of Annie's Miss Hannigan. It provided a couple of weeks' employment for a bevy of Broadway pros, including George S. Irving, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Carmen Matthews, and Lenny Wolpe. The eleven-year-old Christian Slater could also be found running around in it.

Possibly because of its derivative nature, I can still recall small chunks of that Copperfield score. I can't imagine having a similar problem with the current Copperfield!, the kind of show that tends to vanish from one's mind the morning after seeing it. It's not just that Jeffrey Scharf's score veers from wan, energy-free ballads to weirdly inappropriate bursts of old-school vaudeville. (Why the soft-shoe number in a grim factory driven by child labor?) And we will, for the minute, waive the simple-minded lyrics (packed with rhymes like "revealed/concealed," "out/doubt," "past/last") that you can see coming before they are out of the actor's mouths. Even when delivered by a talented company of actor-musicians, they never make the faintest claim on one's memory.

The real problem is that neither Scharf, who also wrote the book, nor (I suspect) anyone else involved has a clue about why David Copperfield should be a musical. To his credit, the librettist works hard to wrangle Dickens' sprawling plot, retaining many more characters and situations than its 1981 predecessor (which, among other things, eliminated the subplot featuring David's charming false friend Steerforth and the innocent Em'ly Peggotty). The downside, however, is that characters come and go like commuters at Grand Central Station, rarely making an impression. Dickens was interested in the lifetime's worth of events and people that shape David's character; here, they get caught in a narrative traffic jam.

The score does little to endow the story with meaning or even a sense of sweep. For the most part, songs like "It's a Boy," "Mr. Murdstone is the Master Now," and "Time for You to Earn a Living" announce their intentions straightaway, leaving them with little to do but repeat themselves. Others, like "Love is Blind" and "If You Only Knew My Heart," work their mundane sentiments to death. It's worth noting that the second act, when David and his loved ones face a series of escalating reverses (including bankruptcy, fraud, and unexpected death), Dickens' plot reasserts its authority, and the show becomes briefly moving. Then again, this is the longest stretch of the evening without music.

Gabriel Barre's staging finds occasional moments of real emotion, when the adult David, seeing his younger self bullied, slams a hand on the stage deck in fury; when the odious Heep, shrinking in terror from the prospect of being hit, reveals a sudden vulnerability; and when, just before intermission, a brief moment of triumph is overtaken by a cacophony of voices representing David's assaultive memories. At least Barre has cast the production with names one expects to see again. In the title role, Bobby Conte, a well-established performer, relies on his strong presence and piercing voice; his psychologically acute, often tormented David is arguably too strong for this frail vehicle. The same is true of Owen Squire Smith's Steerforth, who has more energy and charm than his role allows. Will Reynolds sneers expansively as Mr. Murdstone, David's villainous stepfather, and grovels deliciously as Heep. It's quite a challenge to ask an actress to play both the ice-cold Jane Murdstone and the intelligent, quietly yearning Agnes Wickfield, David's true soulmate, but Tatiana Wechsler pulls it off with apparent ease. At the performance I attended Henry Witcher was charming as the young David.

Edward Pierce's two-level set is an elegant solution, providing plenty of space for the characters' comings and goings. Jeff Croiter consistently delivers the most beautiful lighting in New York theatre; here he ranges from delicate pastels for the domestic scenes to saturated colors for the big numbers to twitching, black-and-white geometric floor patterns to suggest the miseries of factory work. Jen Caprio's costumes are sensible period creations. Shannon Slaton's sound design is admirably clear throughout.

Still, nothing onstage at The Duke on 42nd Street convinces one that a David Copperfield musical is desirable or necessary. Ever since the success of Oliver! six decades ago, writers and composers have been having at the Dickens canon, but, aside from The Mystery of Edwin Drood -- a one-off with its audience participation gimmick -- success has been illusory. Maybe it's time to move on. --David Barbour