Susan Granger’s review of “On the Twentieth Century” (American Airlines Theater: April, 2015)
While Kristin Chenoweth and Peter Gallagher are delightful, this lavish revival turns out to be a frivolous farce that’s musically disappointing, despite book & lyrics by Betty Comden & Adolph Green and music by Cy Coleman. Seriously, there’s not one singable tune.
Set aboard a streamlined 1930s luxury train from Chicago to New York, the zany operetta introduces egomaniacal Oscar Jaffee (Gallagher), a Broadway producer whose recent flops have left him penniless.
Oscar dispatches two flunkies – press agent Owen O’Malley (Michael McGrath) and company manager Oliver Webb (Mark Linn-Baker) – to reserve a drawing-room compartment next to Academy Award-winning actress Lily Garland (Chenoweth), whom he discovered when she was Mildred Plotka, a dowdy rehearsal pianist from the Bronx.
His plan is to spend the 16-hour trip convincing Lily to sign a contract to do his next, albeit-non-existent play. Complications arise since Lily is accompanied by her vainly preening leading man, Bruce Granit (Andy Karl). In addition, entrepreneurial Oscar needs the necessary financing from Letitia Peabody Primrose (Mary Louise Wilson), a religious fanatic who happens to be on-board.
While director Scott Ellis frantically juggles the screwball silliness, he seems to hold each scene a bit too long. After a while, that gets tedious, as do the uneven, unremarkable songs and Warren Carlyle’s uninteresting choreography.
Kristin Chenoweth (who created the role of Glinda in “Wicked”) and Peter Gallagher (Sky Masterson in the 1992 revival of “Guys and Dolls”) push their over-the-top flamboyance as far as it can go, but even their mischief derails with repetition.
Kudos to David Rockwell’s dazzling art-deco set design, William Ivey Long‘s sumptuous period costumes Donald Holder’s lighting and Jon Weston’s sound design.
FYI: If the concept sounds familiar, there was an unproduced play, “Napoleon of Broadway,” by Bruce Millholland about his experiences working for legendary impresario David Belasco, which inspired Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur’s screwball comedy, “Twentieth Century” (1932); that, in turn, became a 1934 Howard Hawks film, starring Carole Lombard and John Barrymore.
Back in 1978, Harold Prince’s Tony Award-winning Broadway cast included John Cullum, Imogene Coca, Kevin Kline and Madeline Kahn, who abruptly left the production after her understudy, Judy Kaye, became an overnight sensation.
The Roundabout Theatre Company’s “On the Twentieth Century” is at the American Airlines Theater thru July 5.