When Louchiey or Baldwin or some of the valuable supporting players open their mouths to sing after a wild bout of terpsichore, you’re shocked that mellifluous melodies come out and not just exhausted panting.įrom left: Sarah Dearstyne, Candice Hatakeyama, Carina-Kay Louchiey, Eloise Kropp and Lamont Brown as hard-working dancers in Goodspeed's "42nd Street." (Diane Sobolewski) The advantage of seeing the dances done live is that you appreciate how much work goes into them. Berkeley’s movie dances are generally impossible to recreate live, since they use special camera effects, unusual angles, close-ups and sets that grow and change before your eyes. The film’s director is Lloyd Bacon, but his work is overshadowed by the spectacular dance numbers staged by Busby Berkeley. “42nd Street” is based on the classic 1933 Hollywood musical based on a novel by Bradford Ropes. It’s one of the few scenes from the show-within-a-show that may make you think “Hey, maybe ‘Pretty Lady’ really isn’t as good as they think it is.” “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” which in the original movie becomes a multidimensional train ride and in many previous productions involves a bisected Pullman car setting, looks pretty cheap here, framed just by small curtains. The projections set the scenes so quickly and cleanly that the numbers that don’t rely on them suffer by comparison. It focuses more clearly on its main characters: the tough, bitter director of the Broadway-bound musical “Pretty Lady,” Julian Marsh (played as harsh but not mean by the handsome Max Von Essen) the heartsick, undeniably talented and infuriatingly self-centered star Dorothy Brock (played by Broadway veteran Kate Baldwin) and Peggy Sawyer, the naive and innocent chorus girl who’s abruptly called upon to save the show, played by Carina-Kay Louchiey who has a lot in common with the role. It’s more human-sized, which befits a show about creating a show.Īt the Goodspeed, “42nd Street” is less of a sprawling ensemble piece. The conversations are more intimate, the insults more stinging, the pushing pushier. At the Goodspeed, “42nd Street” is more straightforward. The show’s peppy tone and colorful trappings haven’t actually changed a great deal over the years (and some of the changes made for the 2017 London revival haven’t made it to the Goodspeed rendition), but the Goodspeed’s is very much a reconfigured “42nd Street.” Skinner is making a genuine attempt to scale down the show not just size-wise - from a cast of over 40 actors and dancers in the original Broadway run to around 20 here - but emotionally.
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