You Want Some Thighs With That? – Bang Group Shows down at Joe’s Pub

A year ago, David Parker and the Bang Group created a buzz with Showdown, a forty-minute pop tart of a dream ballet for 8 dancers set to recordings created for the film version of Irving Berlin’s 1946 Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun. This “pilot version” had only a two-night run at, of all places, Joe’s Pub, as part of Dance Now [NYC]’ s Dancemopolitan Modern [Dance] Musicals initiative.

Members of the cast of David Parker's "Showdown" giving us head in their Western shirts.
Thursday evening, the octet plus 3 returned to the scene of the climb with an ”expanded” version for a four performance encore that will end on Saturday with a two show closing night. I quote the producers advisedly, since expanding anything on the tiny stage of the hip cabaret, let alone a balletic quadrille, certainly seems like someone’s crack pipe dream. The performers enter onto literally a bandbox stage through a curtained opening in the acoustical baffles that line the back wall. That curtain hides a public hallway that leads directly to the backstage kitchen and bathrooms. You dance hard by someone's dinner.

The first hint that Dancemopolitan might actually succeed in its expansionist notions arrived with the appearance of the archly deadpan Monica Bill Barnes and Deborah Lohse through that curtain to a recording of a live concert by Johnny and June Carter Cash.  Dressed in black leather-like vests over red full body thermal underwear, complete with rear button fly, and brandishing silver snub nosed pistols, the pair strutted, threatened, and dryly idled its minute upon the stage until Lohse unfolded a welcome mat as the duet stalked off through the audience.
 
The mood changed abruptly as members of the Bang Group, first Bryan Campbell and Jeffrey Kazin, then Marissa Palley and Megan Flynn, then Nic Petry and Terry Duncan burst onto the stage dressed in jeans and checked work shirts to a recording of the musical’s overture. This segued to a lusty ensemble dance alongside “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” the show’s most enduring song.  Showdown’s score features the voices of Judy Garland and Howard Keel as recorded but never used for the 1950 MGM screen adaptation by erstwhile director Busby Berkeley.

Jeffrey Kazin rides high in the saddle in one of the easier lifts from "Showdown" (below)
 
This seems all of a piece with the ways in which Parker’s choreography bends, plays off of and defeats our expectations by its re-assignment and re-purposing of gender roles, relationships and formal structures.  In the first two numbers for example, the hips and derriere feature extensively in movement that swivels, sashays and displays as the sextet moves from balletic arm and leg extensions to cheeky ride ‘em cowboy hip mounts. Only occasionally will the couple in the various partnering, lifts and rides be of mixed gender.
 
Moreover, stylistic flourishes one most often associates with one sex will more often than not end up on the opposite sex, such as the ring of arms surrounding a soloist in a quote from Balanchine’s choreography for Episodes.  When the stalwart Amber Sloan takes on Kazin and Petry in dancing to “Doin’ What Comes Naturally,” it’s the two men who start a variation on the famous “Dance of the Cygnets” from Swan Lake before Sloan joins to round out the trio.
 
These three performers embody the choreographic spine and the presentational soul of Parker’s work clawing their way to the top of the heap in a piece in which who gets what attention – from either the audience or potential partners onstage – makes up a large part of the comic subtext. One marvels at Kazin’s multiple pencil turns, fearless attack when lifted and repeated spiral descents from such lifts, Petry’s barefoot soft shoe; the redoubtable Sloan’s take-no-prisoners dancing and straight man’s sense of bewilderment when, for instance, she lifts Kazin only to find her face scissored between his calves.

Amber Sloan's face (at bottom below) seems more at ease anchoring the cast. Nic Petry brackets the totem at its top.

But the matter of fact cleanliness and understated goofiness of this core group extends throughout the company and underpins the subversion at the heart of Parker’s wit.  For the choreographer’s send ups range beyond ballet tropes to a fan circle ala Busby Berkeley (sans fans), Broadway hoofing from DeMille to Fosse, and the cult of ta-da!  Parker’s intricate formal structures begin, end or continue as often outside the bounds of individual numbers as they coincide with their musical demarcations. And while the general levity would not suffice to produce a laugh track, the choreographer consistently amuses even as he devilishly pulls the rug from beneath our feet.
 
These qualities dovetail perfectly with those of Barnes and Lohse as they return to bookend the evening. Originally, this pair had been scheduled to present a piece of its own entitled Southern Comfort, which would have alternated with Showdown this weekend.  Instead, artistic directors and producers Robin Staff, Sydney Skybetter and Tamara Greenfield have wisely cast them as “silent hosts” for the evening’s frivolities.  Lohse exits with a sign reading “The End” leaving us with the fading sound of the Cash’s in our ears after bringing back and holding up the entire Bang Group at gunpoint for a final bow.
 
But the true encore has already occurred. After the Big Finish, with Sloan’s shadow Annie fronting the company to a full chorus version of “There’s No Business…,” Parker takes the mic to introduce a charmingly political “bonus track.”  In a warm baritone to live keyboard accompaniment, he launches into “Old Fashioned Wedding,” a bonus hit itself from the 1966 Broadway revival of the musical.  When joined by Kazin, his real life and artistic partner and principal muse, the two turn into a vaudeville song and dance team trading rat-a-tat taps and vocal parts in the longest and most poignant number of the night.
 
At this point even the busy-ness of the cabaret seemed to settle as people put down their forks and glasses, and the waiters went into waiting. Parker’s innate New England reserve often serves to mute his wicked wit and socio-political incisiveness.  But beneath the cool exterior of his work as both creator and performer beats the vital heart of a champion entertainer.

“She Rises!” Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography for the musical 9 to 5. Call me Ishmael.

Before his choreography for In the Heights won the 2008 Tony, as well as the Lortel, Calloway, Outer Critics, and Drama Desk awards; before he choreographed the Broadway revival of The Apple Tree, the West End production of Desperately Seeking Susan, and the world premieres of Andrew Lippa’s A Little Princess and Frank Wildhorn’s Waiting for the Moon, Andy Blankenbuehler, currently a contributing choreographer for Dancing with the Stars, worked as both a Disney and a Broadway gypsy. In the latter capacity, he appeared in the original cast of Fosse beginning in 1998. The experience seems to have left a lasting impression, for the shadow of several Bob Fosse compositional structures falls heavily across Blankenbuehler’s designs for the musicalization of the 1980 “feminist” revenge film comedy 9 to 5.

The shape of such memorable set pieces as “The Rich Man’s Frug” and “The Rhythm of Life” from Sweet Charity and “I Believe in You/Gotta Stop that Man” and “A Secretary is not a Toy,” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying can be glimpsed on the horizon in Blankenbuehler’s work here. But he mostly fails to echo any of the idiosyncratic dance vocabulary, social satire or cynical wit that gave those earlier dances their tang and bite.

The choreography for 9 to 5, seen in its ninth preview Monday night at the Marquis Theater, seems to function essentially as transitional window dressing to cover set changes, link numbers or flesh out scenes. As such it constitutes only the merest tissue, albeit stylishly turned, in connecting or embodying dramatic elements while providing minimal muscle in advancing the action or developing character.

To be fair, there doesn’t seem to be a lot to advance or develop. With Dolly Parton as composer/lyricist and a book by the film’s original screenwriter Patricia Resnick, 9 to 5 sets sail on Broadway with a raft of accomplished hands. Director Joe Mantello, scenic designer Scott Pask, costume designer William Ivey Long, lighting designer Kenneth Posner and lighting/imaging designers Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, have among them accounted for a total of no less than 30 Tony awards out of 47 nominations, only one having won less than twice. But along with the rest, Blankenbuehler finds himself a castaway, lost in the wake of this two-hour tour of the film’s script set off by Parton’s tuneful but not memorable songs.

I find it hard to figure out who has taken on the role of Ahab in pursuit of this white whale of a show. The surprise-hit film relied heavily on the chemistry of its principal cast to produce box office magic. The revenge fantasy idea at its core seemed far less seaworthy with each of two subsequent refittings as a television sitcom. Even after an extended shakedown cruise at the Ahmanson Theater in L.A. featuring the same principal cast, this freighter ties up in New York as a derelict rust bucket decked out as a Carnaval liner.

The two-dimensionality of the characters on this love boat give it all the depth of a travel poster juxtaposing Allison Janney, Megan Hilty, Stephanie J. Block and Charlie Pollock as stand ins for the film’s original stars against a close-as-we-can-make-it stage cut out of the movie’s plot, dialogue and settings. The show seeks to sail past the shoals of its dated “feminist” parable without rocking the boat of the audience’s expectations for a pleasant cruise around a tried and true filmic formula.

Ms. Janney’s acting prowess has largely been tossed overboard, though she exceeds expectations fronting an all male chorus in Blankenbuehler’s most successful and elegant number. The fact that the number celebrates her ability to operate as “One of the Boys,” underscores just how glibly the show lip services its feminist stance. Hilty and Block, both veterans of the Wicked empire, get less dancing to do but predictably belt out the blonde-and-brunette style set piece ballads that made that musical re-imagining of the Wizard of Oz’s witches the box office darling of tween girls throughout the land.

Mantello appears to have repeated some of the same type of casting choices that made his direction of the Roundabout’s revival of Pal Joey, which I caught near the end of its limited run, so compelling and timeless. But choosing a strong actor (Janney) not known as a singer to portray the central female character and surrounding her with strong voiced but lighter dancing interlocutors cannot ground such a frothy book and score, and the choreography lacks the heart to help. The director may have found himself constrained in this regard by the production’s need to find reasonable body doubles for the Jane Fonda (Block) and Parton (Hinty) roles. With no depths to plumb the characters find themselves at sea, save for the scene in which Janney’s Violet finally faces up to her pining colleague and courtier Joe as played by Andy Karl. The show ultimately founders on its own effects.

No one should be surprised that the ark the producers of 9 to 5 have fashioned seeks to lift its passengers clear of the rising tide of economic deluge two by two; allowing both those who first floated along with the film’s foamy buoyancy to sit warm and dry alongside their daughters or granddaughters newly swimming in the world of work. I found myself a bit queasy in the face of the windy enthusiasm buffeting many of the youthful half of the audience, given what I see every day of the continuing challenges that younger women face in a social and economic order that has learned to say all the right things while charting and navigating ever more insidious and ruthless courses of commercial exploitation.

Would this be the kind of show Melia and Sasha might be likely to take in with their parents? Oh, that’s right, they already have a water dog. Then again, have you ever seriously pondered the success of Lobster Fest?