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Drastically uneven, sometimes affecting and just-right, sometimes jarringly wrong, the 2005 Broadway musical of Little Women is a mixed blessing. The best of it is good enough to make it worth attending. The rest is sufficiently disappointing to make you wish the whole thing were better.
No one could say, however, that the cast of Masquerade Theatre's energetic Houston premiere is not giving its all to the show's cause — especially tireless Beth Lazarou in the dominating role of tomboy heroine Jo March.
Musicalizing a work as beloved as Louisa May Alcott's classic novel is a double-edged sword. Given basic competence, the creators can ride much of the way on the source's coattails, the audience's affection for the saga of four sisters growing up with their wise mother while their father is serving in the Civil War. At the same time, you want the new elements, the script and songs, to be worthy of the source — meaning, consistently excellent.
Librettist Allan Knee includes most of the key episodes that define the sisters: feisty and outspoken Jo, the family life-wire and aspiring writer; romantic yet decorous Meg; sweet, self-effacing Beth; and spoiled, materialistic Amy. One can understand his stressing Jo, always the focus of adaptations. But he's made her character too aggressively comic and blatantly modern.
He's also included enactments of the "blood and guts" stories Jo writes, silly melodramas meant to show her enthusiastic naivete. These pointless scenes add nothing of value, and they go on and on — this in a show that (at three-plus hours) could profitably lose 15-20 minutes. Worse, two of these scenes open each of the show's two acts on the wrong note, instead of starting at the heart of the story, Jo's relationship with her sisters.
About a half-dozen times, the score by composer Jason Howland and lyricist Mindi Dickstein hits its marks. Beth's dainty-jaunty Off to Massachusetts, like a 19th-century parlor song, actually sounds like something characters in this time and place would sing. Five Forever, a robust march celebrating the sisters' acceptance of neighbor Laurie as the brother they never had, is a solid tune ideal for its moment in the story. Some Things Are Meant to Be, a wistful ballad in which Jo and the ailing Beth tacitly reconcile themselves to the latter's early death, is subtle and touching. Small Umbrella in the Rain makes a pleasantly understated duet for Jo and love interest Professor Bhaer.
Most of the rest is undistinguished, generic and inappropriate for the period. Laurie's hyped-up solo Take a Chance on Me seems better suited to The Wedding Singer: word choice, musical style, everything wrong for the character and setting. Most of Jo's solos are like that: restless, jumpy music with quirky stops and starts, hampered by Dickstein's prosaic, cliché-ridden lyrics. More Than I Am, a bland love song for Meg and her suitor John (though beautifully sung by Kristina Sullivan and Michael J. Ross) has no identity whatsoever.
Jo's Astonishing and Marmee's Days of Plenty, the big "power ballads," achieve some of the intended impact, but they feel a bit forced.
Phillip Duggins has directed in his usual gung-ho fashion, everything big and broad, especially in early cutesy comic scenes that could stand some reining in. Still, the emotions usually feel genuine, especially as the characters mature and the story takes its darker turns in Act 2, and the heartstrings do get tugged.
Lazarou brings a rich, potent belt to Jo, as well as the requisite qualities of spunk, vigor and determination. But as Knee has already written the stage Jo a shade too "pushy," Lazarou needn't punch so hard. Her already solid performance will be still more affecting when it relaxes into more easeful and natural shadings.
Stephanie Bradow exudes quiet wisdom, dignity and restraint as Marmie, with forceful delivery of her two big solos. Sullivan's romantic yet responsible Meg, Libby Evans' graceful and kind-hearted Beth and Catherine Taylor's vivid brattiness as Amy round out the sisterhood appealingly.
Corey Hartzog's coltish Laurie is peppy and sparky as a firecracker, his voice powerful if inclined to go a little wild on the top notes. As Professor Bhaer, John Gremillion finds the genial nature behind the role's stodgy surface.
For the rest: Richard Spitz's conducting is solid, costuming fair and production design (as usual for Masquerade) minimal but OK. You go to this group for the voices (though a bit too amplified this time), not the sets.
I wish the musical's creators had stayed truer to the spirit of Alcott's original. Let the Marches be the Marches and the mid-19th century be itself, too. Must every show with a strong-willed heroine imitate Wicked's Defying Gravity?
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