The Robber Bridegroom

[edjames]

Now previewing at the Laura Pels Theater by Roundabout Theater, this revival of the 1975, and again in 1976, musical is a silly and almost hee-haw-ish production.

Slapstick and sophomoric, the energetic cast mugs its way through a so-so bluegrass/country score. The story, based on a 1942 novella by Eudora Welty tells the tale of a Robinhood-like hero in the backwoods of Mississippi in the late 18th century. In a somewhat convoluted tale, Jamie Lockhart (the hero) runs around unwinding a tale of mistaken identity, robbery, murder, and mayhem.

It's waaay too long to unwind and relate here.

The cast is good, especially, actress Leslie Kritzer, who brings a Carol Burnett quality to her role as Salome, the jealous and evil wife.

90 minutes, no intermission.

[edjames]

And what did BenB say in today's NYTmes. A decidedly mixed review, but all-in-all, he seemed to enjoy this production:

 

Review: ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ Is Heavy on the Twang

The Robber Bridegroom

By BEN BRANTLEY MARCH 13, 2016

 

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Steven Pasquale in the musical “The Robber Bridegroom.” CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

• Do you like your corn pone on the salty side? How about with hot peppers and a pinch of arsenic mixed in, to be served with country ham, beefcake and cheesecake, with, of course, plenty of moonshine to wash it all down?
   
  If that’s what your robust palate craves (and my, what big taste buds you have), you’ll be happy to hear that a hot dish of such fare is available at the Laura Pels Theater, where “The Robber Bridegroom” opened on Sunday night with Steven Pasquale discovering his sense of humor in the title role. Alex Timbers’s exceedingly high-spirited revival of this 1975 musical about a Mississippi that never was will not be to everyone’s liking.
   
  But even those allergic to Southern-fried shtick are unlikely to go away feeling entirely empty. Mr. Timbers — whose varied credits include the immersive Imelda Marcos-centered disco frolic “Here Lies Love” and the punch-drunk “Rocky” on Broadway — uses visual wit and gleefully macabre gags to provide awakening jolts during this sustained singing hayride.
   
  Even within a genre known for combining unlikely ingredients, “The Robber Bridegroom” stands out as a curiosity among American musicals. First seen by New Yorkers in a fondly remembered repertory productionfrom John Houseman’s Acting Company in 1975 — a production that starred two newcomers named Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone — “The Robber Bridegroom” suggests a classic European folk story reimagined by Charles Addams and staged by the Grand Ole Opry.
   
  The show, which has a book and lyrics by Alfred Uhry and music by Robert Waldman, is based on one of Eudora Welty’s most curious literary concoctions. Published in 1942, this novella transplanted a Brothers Grimm story into the forests of the Natchez Trace.
   
  It is a strange and beautiful little book, which retains the poetry and cruelty of its source, while subtly excavating our abiding attraction to ruthless fairy tales. “A journey is forever lonely and parallel to death,” goes one typical passage, “but the two watch each other, the traveler and the bandit, through the trees.” Welty’s prose undeniably sings, but in the otherworldly voice of a dark, Jungian dream.
   
  This is not a tone that translates into a crowd-pleasing musical, a form in which dreams are usually relegated to dance breaks. Mr. Uhry and Mr. Waldman brought Welty’s shadowy fantasyland down to earth and into the light, setting the plot to the rambunctious rhythms of a hootenanny, where tall tales are swapped and party drinks come in jugs.
   
  Mr. Timbers knows from tall tale telling. He directed two of the most imaginative examples of story theater in recent years: the emo-musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” (a rowdy ancestor of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton”) and, with Roger Rees, the charming “Peter and the Starcatcher.”
   
  Photo
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  From left, Greg Hildreth, Steven Pasquale and Leslie Kritzer in “The Robber Bridegroom.”CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
  For “The Robber Bridegroom” (a Roundabout Theater Companyproduction), he has brought in a designer from both productions, Donyale Werle, who has transformed the Laura Pels into a cross between the set for
  and Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop. Stuffed fowl and animal heads on the walls and ceiling observe the action, which is illuminated by what look like candles in Mason jars. (Jake DeGroot designed the crucial lighting.)
   
  The show is stocked with a genial, five-member bluegrass band and a rogues’ gallery of oddball comic performers. Mr. Timbers has always favored faces that bring to mind the caricatures of Goya and Daumier, and you’ll find prime examples of such types here, including Andrew Durand and Evan Harrington (as a nasty-minded thief and his severed head — yep that’s right — of a brother) and the priceless Greg Hildreth, as a dolt named Goat.
   
  An aggressively funny Leslie Kritzer shows up, looking like a late-career Judy Garland on a really bad day, as a gold-toothed, cleavage-sporting variation on that fairy tale staple, the wicked stepmother. She’s named Salome and has a predilection for tearing the heads off baby pigs. (Cue gross-out sight gag.) But even the show’s pretty ingénue, the fair Rosamund, is played by Ahna O’Reilly with a goofy, innocent grin that borders on demented.
   
  Plopped into the midst of these bizarre creatures is a man who might have stepped straight from the cover of a Harlequin Romance paperback. That’s Mr. Pasquale, the Broadway love god who wooed Kelli O’Hara in
  who here plies his voice of gold and matinee-idol swagger to ingratiatingly eccentric comic effect. (This is the part that earned Barry Bostwick a Tony Award in 1977.)
   
  The winding plot sends Rosamund — the daughter of a rich plantation owner (a jocular Lance Roberts) who is married to the scheming Salome — into the woods to encounter Mr. Pasquale’s double-faced character. He’s both the handsome and heroic Jamie Lockhart and, his face stained with berry juice, he’s a dashing but dastardly brigand.
   
  It is his dark side that wins the heart (and body) of Rosamund. And because their lovemaking takes place in the endless night of the forest, neither is aware of the other’s daytime self. If you choose, you are free to draw lessons about the nature of love versus lust, and romance versus marriage. But “The Robber Bridegroom” is not asking you to think deep.
   
  Mostly, it just clomps, two-steps and square dances along its relentlessly exuberant way, with sprightly choreography by Connor Gallagher and rowdy barn-dance music, performed by the band onstage. There’s a whole lot of twanging going on, vocal and instrumental.
   
  But every so often, the score and the staging melt into a quieter, creepier form of enchantment that summons some of the shimmering mystery of Welty’s book. This includes the woodland idyll in which Rosamund and her handsome stranger consummate their love, while a voyeuristic Goat looks on in rapt silence.
   
  Such moments are rare but resonant. And they offer a welcome respite for theatergoers who have yet to acquire a taste for energetic hillbilly hokum.