Fanny: New York City Center, February 4, 2010

New York Times, February 6, 2010

Amour and Song Return to Marseille Waterfront

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Is that the salty air of Marseille stinging your eyes, or the bittersweet finale of the musical “Fanny,” which arrives at an improbably happy climax even as one of its central characters succumbs to death?

A full chorus of sniffles will probably not drown out the last strains of the latest revival from the Encores! concert series at City Center, but those susceptible to Broadway musicals in which doomed romance is set to soaring melody may find themselves getting a little choked up.

This resurrection of a rarely staged 1954 musical is not likely to establish “Fanny” as an achievement equal to the great shows of the period’s leading lights, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. (Broadway’s A-list team was sought for the project but refused to work with the upstart producer David Merrick.) But the enduring charms of “Fanny” are affectionately showcased in this beautifully sung staging, directed by Marc Bruni.

The score by Harold Rome is rich in melody and employs a sophisticated fabric of musical motifs to weave together the destinies of its characters. The book, by the playwright S. N. Behrman and the director Joshua Logan, takes a lighthearted tone in unfolding the tear-tugging story of a young girl tossed in a sea of troubles when the man she loves leaves her behind to pursue his dream of a life as a sailor.

In adapting a trilogy of Marcel Pagnol movies from the 1930s, Behrman and Logan did a fair amount of condensing, resulting in an incident-packed story that sometimes seems to focus too much time on the wrong couple. That’s because the marquee stars of the original production were Ezio Pinza, fresh from “South Pacific,” playing the father of the seducing sailor, and Walter Slezak as the older businessman, Panisse, who rescues the pregnant heroine from a life of shame by marrying her. (Florence Henderson was the original Fanny.)

In David Ives’s streamlined adaptation, the prickly friendship between these two is still apportioned as much (or more) stage time as the romance between the young lovers, Fanny (Elena Shaddow) and Marius (James Snyder), who declare their affection, confess its impossibility, mate and part ways in a matter of a few minutes of stage time and a few lush strains of song.

The fate of the lass left behind as Marius goes seafaring is left to the machinations of Panisse (Fred Applegate) and Marius’s father, Cesar (George Hearn), with an assist from Fanny’s wry, calculating mother, Honorine (Priscilla Lopez).

Both Ms. Shaddow and Mr. Snyder make the most of their somewhat sketchy roles. Ms. Shaddow could easily pass for French and has a soprano of lovely warmth and agility. She sings her confession of love, “I Have to Tell You,” with a soft ardor that is matched by a fuller tide of feeling in Mr. Snyder, also possessed of a gorgeous voice, in the show’s title song.

“My heart isn’t mine to give,” he sings, with a passion that secures his love’s blessing to set sail.

Mr. Snyder, who starred in the ill-fated Broadway musical “Cry-Baby,” also leads a glowing rendition of “Restless Heart,” a surging tribute to the siren song of the sea. When Marius returns in the second act, his dreams of the sailor’s life tarnished, he and Fanny exchange melodic motifs. He vows undying love, while she has now become the one with “no heart to give.”

Rome, who was mostly known for lighter comic and topical fare (he got his start with the “Pins and Needles” revue), unleashed his inner romantic in this, his most accomplished Broadway score, which often sounds much like a vintage operetta.

The veteran Mr. Hearn is a welcome presence as Marius’s forbearing father. In solid if not stentorian voice, he leads a jubilant waltz, “Why Be Afraid to Dance?,” in which he subtly nudges his diffident son toward the loving Fanny. His delicately emotional performance of “Welcome Home,” Cesar’s tribute to the comforts of the familiar, is a highlight of the show, a model of unfussy but dramatically assured musical interpretation.

As the older man who knows that he’s no great marital prize for a young woman not out of her teens (the ick factor is definitely an issue in the scenes in which Fanny’s fate is debated), Mr. Applegate cuts loose in the joyous song “Panisse and Son,” in which he exults in the securing of an heir, even if the boy’s paternity will be no secret to anyone in town. And he gives a touching performance of Panisse’s quiet enumeration of the joys of married life, “To My Wife.” Rome’s lyrics in the love songs are declamatory and direct, at times seeming even crude, but they reflect the feelings of these earthy characters with a fitting simplicity.

Simplicity was not to be a hallmark of Merrick’s career, of course, and the delicate colorings in Rome’s score, and the sorrow-tinged seaside love story at the show’s center, are sometimes grossly intruded upon by standard divertissements of Broadway convention.

Midway through Act I there is a peculiar interlude at a bar where belly dancing is the specialty (“Shika, Shika,” this number is called). In the somewhat plot-cluttered second act, the stage is cleared for a splashy circus number for a birthday party for Fanny’s son, Cesario (the perky Ted Sutherland), with tumbling and magic tricks. (Lorin Latarro provided the acrobatic choreography in both sequences.)

As at many Encores! productions, these absurdities must be met with indulgence, since the essential mission of the series is to give primacy of place to the score.

If the score includes several hundred bars of circus music, so be it. Under the baton of the music director Rob Berman, the Encores! orchestra plays with its customary vigor and warmth. And as at many Encores! productions, the smirks and squirms that these diversions, now silly, inspire don’t overshadow the more worthwhile moments, when the Broadway musical’s great magic trick — the transmuting of everyday romance into something transcendent — surprises and dazzles us again.

Fanny: New York City Center, February 4, 2010