Closer Than Ever
((Pasadena Playhouse; $ 31.50 top; 700 seats))
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Cast: Gary Beach, Meg Bussert, Sally Mayes, Jason Workman; Gerald Sternbach on piano, Robert D. Renino on bass.
Created by lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. and composer David Shire, whose 1983 "Baby" was a Broadway success, "Closer Than Ever" won the 1990 Outer Critics Circle Award for best Off-Broadway musical and best music and lyrics--and with good reason. There's not one weak number in the show.
As directed by Maltby, who also co-wrote the lyrics for "Miss Saigon," the performance delivers extra layers of subtlety not seen in the otherwise superb staging earlier this year in Long Beach.
The evening opens with "Doors," which explains that what follows is "about people moving on, doors opening before you, doors closing behind you."
Quickly, one sees that whimsy and humor accompany the heartfelt emotions. In "She Loves Me Not," a man yearns for a woman who yearns for another man who yearns for the first man. "You Wanna Be My Friend" has a scorned woman show her Peter Pan of a lover just what she feels.
The songs, beautifully rendered with the accompaniment of Gerald Sternbach on piano and Robert D. Renino on bass, are nicely paced between male and female points of view and between group powerhouse numbers and those sung by an individual.
The performers are dynamic actors as well as singers. Jason Workman shows his operatic range in "One of the Good Guys." Sally Mayes, reprising her role from the Off-Broadway show, reveals the molten core of a "plain," efficient secretary in "Miss Byrd."
Gary Beach, who showed his farcical side in the recent "Lend Me a Tenor," not only uses his comic flair throughout but demonstrates a vulnerable and sincere side in "If I Sing," an homage to a father who has passed on his love of music.
Meg Bussert rips into "Life Story," where a woman reflects on her life after her divorce and, though she's not complaining, regret becomes a painful chord.
Pianist Sternbach, too, gets to vocalize, joining Workman and Beach in the piercingly tender "Father of Fathers," where a man realizes his children made "it matter that I walked the face of this earth."
The only less-than-vigorous spots in the evening, comparatively speaking, reside in "The Bear, the Tiger, the Hamster and the Mole" and "Back on Base," both of which sizzled in the Long Beach production.
Philipp Jung's set--a three-sided cloud-painted backdrop with four doors--betrays a wonderful complexity throughout the show. A silhouette of a tree becomes a window on a cityscape, for instance. Another moment, a moon and stars appear.
Jon Gottlieb's sound design, while offering clarity, overmikes the actors so their voices project too much from the ceiling rather than the stage.
Joshua Starbuck's lighting design is terrific, as is costume design by Claudia Stephens.
Lighting, Joshua Starbuck; costumes, Claudia Stephens; sound, Jon Gottlieb; musical director, Gerald Sternbach. Opened, reviewed May 24.
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