By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 19, 2005; C01
For the first several minutes of Molly Smith's solidly built revival of "Damn Yankees," you suspect the director may have found a cheeky way to comment on the show's passe sensibility. The opening number "Six Months Out of Every Year" recounts the plight of 1950s baseball widows and the neglect they endure as their hubbies choose the game over them.
"Instead of praising our goulash," the ladies sing, "they're appraising the plays of Willie Mays." In Smith's imagining, the number, wittily choreographed for Arena Stage by Baayork Lee, becomes a sly sendup of the rigid idea of American matrimony in the '50s: Wives in aprons are encircled by their men, who dance with rolling TV sets tuned to pastel-colored screens.
Smith's baby-boomer mockery, however, cannot hold. She must eventually submit to the rickety conventions of an earnest Faustian fable about a middle-aged fan from Chevy Chase who, magically transformed into a superhuman version of his younger self, leads the hapless Washington Senators to a pennant. So "Damn Yankees" lumbers along, at a pace established in the Eisenhower era, to lecture us in how the glories of hearth and home are as hard-won as those on the ballfield.
But even if the show was never destined for musical-comedy immortality -- the score, packed with reprises, has just two first-rate numbers, "Heart" and "Whatever Lola Wants" -- Smith does a swell job, thanks to clever casting and musical staging.
At the apex of her lineup is a fine Brad Oscar, late of "The Producers," playing a bulldog of a Mr. Applegate, the devilish soul-taker who turns paunchy Joe Boyd (Lawrence Redmond) into powerful Joe Hardy (Matt Bogart). And for temptress Lola, Smith finds a dancer of vivacity and allure, Meg Gillentine, who can fully execute Lee's stylish steps. (On the evidence of this and Karma Camp's work in Signature Theatre's "Urinetown," dancing in Washington musicals is for the moment taking a lively leap forward.)
Smith has remarked often on her devotion to the show tune, and in "Damn Yankees," it truly feels as if she's indulging a passion. It's not Broadway pizazz she seeks to evoke as much as the old-fashioned craftsmanship of the Broadway tunesmith. As she has shown in her excellent "South Pacific" and even in her less successful "Camelot," her sentimental attachment is a match for the emotional undercurrents in a vintage Broadway score. This is especially in evidence in "A Man Doesn't Know," the bittersweet ballad so well sung (and sung and sung) by three excellently chosen actors: Bogart, Redmond and, as Joe's long-suffering wife Meg, the warmly sympathetic Kay Walbye.
Of course, Arena has ancillary motives for mounting this production right now. In fact, it's as if the company had one eye on the Fichandler Stage and the other on the Metro section. With the Nationals as a new neighbor, the theater has a perfect excuse for a baseball musical. One could wish, however, for Arena to tone down some of the boosterish gimmickry it has added, such as selecting an audience member to "throw out the first ball" and asking patrons in the front row to hold up placards. For transparent reasons, too, an actor playing a stadium vendor sells both Senators pennants and Nationals programs. (This is supposed to be 1955.) Must the company stoop to this sort of provincialism? It smells an awful lot like desperation.
One embellishment does work: the theater has recruited a rotating roster of local elementary schools to supply the chorus of kids for a cheerleading reprise of "Heart." On opening night Thursday, the students were from Sangster Elementary School in Springfield, Va., and they proved to be a well-rehearsed and very sweet addition.
All this shtick seems an acknowledgment that "Damn Yankees" needs extra kick. The Neolithic Era take on womanhood, as honed by the songwriters, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, and book writers, George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, would today almost justify chasing these gents down with a Louisville Slugger. In "Damn Yankees," there is no middle ground between women who are eager to seduce a guy and women who are happy to keep his dinner warm. When Joe abandons Meg to join the team (without a word or even a letter) he shows his soft side with a number he sings to himself, "Goodbye Old Girl." "Old Girl"? Where's that bat?
But Walbye's winning presence erases some of the effects of chauvinism. She never permits us to look down on tolerant Meg, or to question her unwavering faith in AWOL Joe. (The portrayals of Meg's friends are, by contrast, alarmingly caricatured.) Meg's reserve is reinforced in the sensitive treatment of her by both Redmond and Bogart, who manage the trick of appearing to be vague reflections of each other. Their voices mix together extremely well. And though the moments at which the actors' amplification system is turned on can be too easily discerned, the lyrics sound at all times crisp and in tuneful balance with the orchestra, conducted from below the stage by George Fulginiti-Shakar.
The apt design elements include costumes by Martin Pakledinaz that look as if they could have been worn by Donna Reed, and the sculptural set pieces by Rachel Hauck that could have been hung from the ceilings of hotel lobbies a half-century ago. Their work is put to sumptuous use in an Act 2 scene drenched in scarlet and set in Limbo, where Lee gets to show off her slinky choreography.
Dancing is what Lola -- the part that established Gwen Verdon in the 1955 original, choreographed by Bob Fosse -- must carry off with effortless panache. Happily, Gillentine has the sexy athleticism the part requires. What she and Bogart still must develop, however, is a stronger physical rapport, so that Joe's temptation pulls him compellingly in two directions. As Bogart is playing it, Joe is almost too nice; his final decision seems to have been determined before the plot can thicken.
Oscar, who got the well-earned break of his career being cast as the loony Nazi sympathizer in "The Producers" on Broadway, and who eventually moved up to Nathan Lane's starring role, Max Bialystock, makes of Beelzebub here an unreconstructed baddie. If he's not quite as dashingly gleeful as he could be -- his Act 2 "Those Were the Good Old Days" is begging to be the jazzy show-stopper -- you get a sense that his Mr. Applegate will only get juicier as he settles into the run. Even at this stage, his tough-guy persona occupies the magnetic center of the musical.
The ballplayers, led by the astute Michael L. Forrest as their manager, have the pleasant task of serving the evening's fattest pitch, singing "Heart," the anthem of the also-ran in all of us. It's the closest "Damn Yankees" comes to sure-fire. And though a great musical's gotta have more than heart, Smith and the strong team she fields have theirs in the right place.
Damn Yankees, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop. Directed by Molly Smith. Choreography, Baayork Lee; music direction, George Fulginiti-Shakar; sets, Rachel Hauck; costumes, Martin Pakledinaz; lighting, John Ambrosone; sound, Timothy M. Thompson. With Cindy Marchionda, J. Fred Shiffman, Stephen F. Schmidt, Tracy Lynn Olivera, Harry A. Winter, Stephen Gregory Smith, Steven Cupo, Diego Prieto, Kim Shriver, Christopher Bloch. About 2 hours 40 minutes. Through Feb. 5 at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW. Call 202-488-3300 or visit http://www.arenastage.org/ .
