Life Could Be a Dream

Writer-creator Roger Bean’s Life Could Be a Dream, a musical about young hopefuls aiming high, aims ironically low. Uninterested in being confined to a single artist or composer, but also unwilling to bend song selections to the complexities of plot or character, this jukebox musical uses a hackneyed high school–level problem as a thinly veiled excuse to lob close to two dozen 1960s hits at its audience. Now in its Michigan premiere at Meadow Brook Theatre, director Travis W. Walter’s catchy nostalgia vehicle answers Bean’s empty vessel for harmless, escapist entertainment the only way it can: with dueling pep and banality.

The show takes place where so many dreams begin: Mom’s basement. Recent high school grad Denny (Lucas Wells) is resisting all demands to get a job, instead scheming for stardom. His big break appears to be an upcoming local contest with a recording contract as the prize, but since singing groups are the trend, he needs help from reluctant Eugene (Mathew Schwartz) and goody-two-shoes Wally (Joe Lehman) to be saleable. The instant trio of “loser doozer” nerds, in need of sponsorship, reaches out to a local auto garage, which brings heartthrob mechanic/ringer Skip (Sam Perwin) and the boss’s daughter, Lois (Allison Hunt), into the story’s orbit. The introduction of A Girl means that only one type of plot can follow, and indeed, an early lopsided love pentagon gives way to a standard wrong-side-of-the-tracks tale of woe. If only the guys can reunite in time for the big contest, which the show never doubts they’ll win, despite their inexperience, insufficient rehearsal time, and incessant quibbling over who should have the most solos.

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The Constant Wife

Historically, a woman’s rightful place in the world was invariably with her husband; only very recently have these attitudes and social mores begun to evolve. W. Somerset Maugham’s early-20th-century play The Constant Wife is a groundbreaking treatise on what happens when a woman’s obligations to herself diverge from her wifely responsibilities, with themes and arguments that resonate to this day. In Meadow Brook Theatre’s production, director Karen Sheridan stretches social graces to the limit and poses questions of duty, fidelity, double standards, and liberation, all on the strength of comic brightness and a lead performance that dazzles.

The name on everyone’s lips is “Constance” (Cheryl Turski), an upstanding wife and mother unwittingly made the object of gossip by her philandering physician husband, John (Chip DuFord), and dear friend Marie-Louise (Leslie Ann Handelman). Not only does everyone in her family and social circle know about the ongoing infidelity, each has a distinct and justifiable opinion about the group’s collective shielding of the sunny, self-possessed, and none the wiser Constance. But a scenario that begins with philosophical rumination on whose business it is, and whether ignorance is bliss, gains comic potential with the fond return of a long-ago suitor (Stephen Blackwell). Here, in the flesh and quick to confess his unceasing love, is a tantalizing reminder that turnabout is fair play. In tension-rife interactions akin to balancing a hand over an open flame, it becomes increasingly, consistently clear that whatever she knows, by what means she discovers, or however she reacts, the ball is very much in Constance’s court.

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Next to Normal

Meadow Brook rocks and shocks in polemical Michigan premiere, reproduced with permission from EncoreMichigan.com.

With a rollicking sound (music by Tom Kitt) and a plot centered on the foe and friend that is one woman's mental illness (book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey), "Next to Normal" is by no means a conventional musical. For the Michigan premiere at Meadow Brook Theatre, directed by Travis W. Walter, the viewer is rewarded for obliging the production's audacious and startling choices, which not only do emotional justice to an astonishing, illuminating, Pulitzer Prize–winning text, but also proves to be musically splendid.

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White's Lies

When it comes to comedy, one school of thought holds that playing it straight ushers in the biggest laughs. Another makes no apologies for ladling up serving after serving of ham. In an unusual turn, Meadow Brook Theatre’s production of White’s Lies, by Ben Andron, endeavors to split the difference. This duplicitous Michigan premiere finds director Travis W. Walter leveling a steady gaze at the central story of a titillating familial farce, then tumbling outward into increasingly outrageous flights of fancy at the margins.

Attorney Joe White (Ron Williams) has been at the one-night-stand game for so long, his autobiography would be called Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em. Amid his wake of broken hearts, though, the most egregious is that of his mother (Henrietta Hermelin), who makes no bones about wishing Joe had given her grandchildren. When a revelation about Mrs. White’s health ramps up the guilt factor, an opportune reunion with a contemptuous college flame (Sarab Kamoo) and her willful post-collegiate progeny (Katie Hardy) seems like the perfect recipe for a long-lost daughter hoax. What’s one little white lie if it grants a dying woman’s dying wish? It’s not as though sweet old Mrs. White’s health will miraculously resurge and the fib will be cited as her single prevailing reason for…oh. Or that Joe will meanwhile fall for his pretend daughter while they try to keep up the ruse over the protestations of her forbidding mother, who will go to any lengths to stop…well.

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Xanadu

Leave your restraint at the door. Excesses are rampant in Xanadu (book by Douglas Carter Beane, music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar), the recent smash musical based on the 1980 film of the same name. The Michigan premiere at Meadow Brook Theatre presents a dizzying camp calliope, in which director Travis W. Walter couples controlled artistic proficiency with shamelessly fun comic entertainment.

Hearkening back to a 30-year-old source whose story deigns to borrow from ancient mythology, the past-upon-past framework makes the production feel doubly dated, in a good way. In 1980s Venice Beach, California, pedestrian artist and unfortunate cutoff shorts aficionado Sonny (David Havasi) draws a mural straight out of his dreams and summons seven muses of Greek mythology to inject the creative spirit into the modern age. Praise is due costume designer Liz Moore for conjuring divine togs through the visage of 80s fashion, in its monstrously garish synthetic ruffled wonder. Similarly, Kristen Gribbin’s scenic design draws on a classical aesthetic, offering a semicircle of Greek amphitheater seating right onstage for viewers who want to be part of the action, but with a concerted dappled faux-finish feel. In concert with Reid G. Johnson’s carefully portioned go-for-broke disco lighting, the design gives equal credence to classical and long-since-“modern,” engendering a hokey fondness that stays at the forefront of the production.

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