"Wonderful Revue" / Wonderful Review

courant.com

'Make Me A Song' Will Make Fans For William Finn

Wonderful Revue Showcasing 30 Of Composer's Hits Had Audience Laughing, Singing, Tapping And Crying

By DEBORAH HORNBLOW Courant Theater Critic

August 21 2006

The brand-new revue "Make Me a Song: The Music of William Finn" had its world premiere Friday night at Hartford's TheaterWorks, and if the audience response is any indication, this is a show that will make you laugh out loud, tap your feet, nod your head in rhythm, sometimes sing along, and, before you know it, dampen a tissue or two because your heart is breaking.

Finn is the pioneering Tony Award-winning composer currently represented on Broadway by "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," a theater veteran whose works "In Trousers," "Elegies: A Song Cycle," "A New Brain," and "Falsettoland" and "March of the Falsettos" have broadened the scope of the American musical to contend with such topics as unconventional families, the AIDS crisis and serious considerations of mortality. His tunes explore topics as mundane as the joys of fishing with a father and watching baseball to the games played by lovers and the loss of a loved one. His memorable melodies shift stylistically from the spiritually infused "Heart and Music" to the roadhouse swinger "Billy's Law of Genetics" to ballads such as "I'd Rather Be Sailing," but they share in common the composer's unique sensibility, one that combines honesty, humor and heart with an optimistic faith that life brings goodness, and that love, even in death, will endure. TheaterWorks' longtime associate artistic director Rob Ruggiero, who conceived and directed "Make Me a Song," knows what he has in Finn's songbook, and his simple but effective production keeps the composer's talents center stage.

"Make Me a Song" opens on a set by Luke Hegel-Cantarella that might be a rehearsal space. White, balloon-size stage lights frame a proscenium painted only partially in orange. The floor is covered in bits of yellow and blue blocking tape. A piano sits on a raised platform with a haphazard clutter of chairs and tables surrounding it. Above the piano sparkles a small chandelier and behind it, a few ghost lights dangle. But the brightest spot on stage hovers disembodied, a rendering of Finn's bearded, bespectacled face in cool blue neon.

Onto this set wander four powerfully voiced Broadway veterans, Sandy Binion, Joe Cassidy, Adam Heller and Sally Wilfert, who, accompanied by the spirited pianist John DiPinto, drift in as though a rehearsal were about to start. Costumed by Alejo Vietti in street clothes — jeans and loose tops for the women, relaxed trousers and T-shirts for the men — the actors simply begin to sing. What follows is a string of 30 of Finn's top hits. Ruggiero's show spares us the application of an overriding narrative device linking the tunes. The only transitions between songs involve the actors rearranging set pieces — moving chairs and occasionally spinning the piano.

Props also are kept to a minimum. Finn's song about a Jewish family gathering for Passover produces a few rabbinical robes and a Torah that unscrolls to suggest the Red Sea. A copy of The New York Times is all that's required for "Stupid Things I Won't Do." The actors don kidlike costumes — a superhero's cape for Cassidy, pigtails for Wilfert — for "Why We Like Spelling." Ruggiero does break up the song "Republicans," Finn's response to the 2000 presidential election, inserting verses here and there. They are all sung with devilish glee by Heller, but the device is less a narrative thread than a bit of running comic political commentary.

The power of Finn's material is such that less is often more. The most moving moments in "Make Me a Song" occur when the actors simply sit or stand to sing as Cassidy does for the funny, sweet ballad "I'd Rather Be Sailing" and Heller does in the achingly tender "When the Earth Stopped Moving," a tribute to Finn's late mother, Barbara.

The actors' four voices singly and together could not be finer, although Binion tended to push a bit in some of her earlier tunes Friday. Singing together or solo, this company makes the most of Finn's songs and his three- and four-part harmonies.

The show's highlights are innumerable. Cassidy swung his way through the funny "Law of Genetics" and sung it sweet and fine on "Sailing." Wilfert put her powerful honey tones to great use on "I Have Found" and "Anytime (I Am There)." Binion did wonders for "Only One," the "Elegies" tune in which a teacher wishes to get through to just one single student, and movingly performed "That's Enough for Me." Heller, the show's clown, brings to each song the gifts of a born cabaret star, injecting personality and attitude into every note. He played it goofy on "Marvin's Breakfast" then let his emphatic side show for "Stupid Things." But his duet with Cassidy on "Unlikely Lovers" and his sober-eyed solo rendition of "When the Earth Stopped" brought many in the house to tears.

"Make Me a Song" is nicely paced with the production maintaining a fine balance between Finn's upbeat tunes, his comic ones, and his torch songs.

All told, Ruggiero and his cast do a superb job making Finn, who was in the audience, the biggest star of the show. "Make Me a Song" is a show of heart and great music.

"Make Me a Song: The Music of William Finn" continues through Sept. 24 at TheaterWorks in Hartford. For information, www.theater workshartford.org or 860-527-7838.

HOMEPAGE