A multiple 1972 Tony winner, the musical "Two Gentlemen of Verona," with its admirable, messy book by John Guare and Mel Shapiro, often erudite lyrics by Guare, and soul-infused music by Galt MacDermot, has been needlessly absent from the city's stages for more than 30 years. No more.
The book admirably makes quick, smart work of Shakespeare's typically convoluted tale, this one about two Veronese romantics, Valentine (Norm Lewis) and Proteus (Oscar Isaac), each with differing views of amore amid crisscrossing, love-scarred story lines. It's also messy because the writers -- maybe owing to their youthful exuberance -- musicalize scenes like emaciated carnivores thrown meat. What results is a sprawling 39-song score (including seven reprises) that accelerated the trend toward today's sung-through tuners.
But no matter: It also reveals "Hair" composer MacDermot's seemingly unlimited talent for melodic, pop-flavored stage music. Does that mean the score sounds dated? For some, yes -- if you think its '70s sound offers no musical fertility, then or now.
Rather than split this revival from its freethinking era, director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall's production delivers a show staged without showiness, and she elicits no performance -- to quote the Bard -- "cross'd with adversity."
Rosario Dawson is Julia, Proteus' lover, who disguises herself as a boy (Shakespeare's old trick) to visit him in Milan with her friend Lucetta (the pricelessly funny Megan Lawrence). When Julia finds him wooing leggy Silvia (Renée Elise Goldsberry), daughter of the Duke of Milan (Mel Johnson, Jr.), Dawson hits her notes, musically and emotionally. Long-locked Isaac is a dreamy but bumbling Proteus -- not a lover, not yet a Lothario. As hunky Valentine, Lewis is more believable as Silvia's true love; the chemistry he shares with Goldsberry is hotter than a summer Italian dusk. Finally, one flat note: John Cariani as Speed, Valentine's servant, is up to the same tricks we saw in his Motel in the Broadway revival of "Fiddler on the Roof." Oh, and ditch the surfer inflections, dude.