Turning films into musicals does not always work. A Man of No Importance, by Stephen Flaherty (music), Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), and Terrence McNally (book), is a case in point.
Based on the titular 1994 film starring Albert Finney, the musical received a lukewarm critical response when it was presented at Lincoln Center Theater in New York in 2002. This production, at Cleveland's Beck Center for the Arts, falls into the same zone. I expected more from the team that gave us Ragtime, a superior entertainment.
Flaherty's lackluster score -- a mix of Irish folk tunes and pop -- begins to sound the same after 20 or so musical numbers, and Ahrens' lyrics are mostly uninspiring. McNally's book adheres to the structure of the film, which makes the slow-moving production, with its many scene changes, feel more cinematic than theatrical. Scott Spence's plodding direction doesn't help any.
The story centers on Alfie Byrne, a middle-aged bus conductor who escapes the humdrum life of working class Dublin by reciting Oscar Wilde's poetry to his passengers. After hours, Alfie, who resides with Lily, his spinster sister who won't get married until Alfie does, runs an amateur theatre group at the local church. What Lily doesn't know is that the object of Alfie's affection is another man.
A Man of No Importance is a tenderhearted tale about a man coming to grips with his homosexuality in a devoutly Catholic country at a time -- the early 1960s -- before gay rights. The ghost of native son Oscar Wilde, an icon of the gay community, serves as the deus ex machina of the piece. The musical is also a valentine to the theatre and to the importance of art in a person's life.
Matthew Wright's acutely sensitive performance as shy, repressed Alfie is a perfectly honed portrait of a sexually conflicted man for whom the theatre is both an escape hatch and a raison d'etre. Alfie's transformation from self-loathing to self-acceptance never feels mawkish or false in Wright's balanced interpretation. The versatile George Roth does double duty as a butcher with theatrical aspirations as well as the ghost of Wilde. Lenne Snively is as good as one can get in the role of Alfie's long-suffering sister who keeps house for her brother, even though he's the one doing the cooking.
The intimate confines of the smaller of the Beck's two theatres suits this chamber musical well, but with so many short scenes and set changes, the production would be better served by a revolving stage.
A Man of No Importance runs June 2-25 at the Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, Ohio. Tickets: (216) 521-2540. Website: www.beckcenter.org.