The song list is superb, the singing's mostly okay or better, and musical director Michael Harren's grand-piano playing is eloquent. So why are the charms in A Grand Night for Singing, Theater Ten Ten's Rodgers and Hammerstein revue, so intermittent?
Maybe the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook, so praised in its day for being so plot- and character-specific, doesn't lend itself well to this kind of musical fricasseeing. Walter Bobbie's concept was lauded in 1993 for discovering new contexts and treatments: The Sound of Music's "Maria," for instance, is now a perplexed young man's love ballad (it works fine), and South Pacific's "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair" becomes an Andrews Sisters-like trio. But as the songs are programmed here, the singers have to keep discarding and donning new identities before we're sufficiently acquainted with them. Anything from Oklahoma!, delivered in twangy Sooner dialect, is supposed to segue neatly into something from Cinderella or Flower Drum Song — but it doesn't. And when David Tillistrand scowls his way through "We Kiss in a Shadow," we've no idea who the "we" is.
Tillistrand tends to overpunch his consonants and occasionally goes sharp in his upper register, but he does do splendidly by "This Nearly Was Mine." More assured is tenor Mishi Schueller, who delivers a gorgeous "Love, Look Away" and can even soft-shoe a bit. Most impressive among the women is Kerry Conte, who oozes ironic bitterness in Allegro's "The Gentleman Is a Dope" and even makes the second-rate "It's Me," from Me and Juliet, work. Jessica Greeley is assigned most of the soubrette material ("I Cain't Say No," "When the Children Are Asleep") and doesn't vary it much, though she's satisfyingly pensive on "If I Loved You." And we know from past Theater Ten Ten productions that Producing Artistic Director Judith Jarosz is a marvelous vocalist, but her natural ebullience is muted in numbers like "It Might As Well Be Spring" and "Something Wonderful," and she sure seemed to be straining vocally on the latter.
Rodgers and Hammerstein are often accused — unfairly — of overworking their cockeyed optimism and denying life's harsh realities. But in this blandish A Grand Night for Singing, with Giles Hogya's generic set and David Fuller's cruise-ship staging, it's not an easy charge to refute.
Presented by and at Theater Ten Ten,
1010 Park Ave., NYC.
April 26-May 25. Mon., Fri., and Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (Additional performance Thu., May 22, 7 p.m.)
(212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111 or www.theatermania.com.