Word: charleyisms
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...musical revolves around the escapades of Charley Wykeham and Jack Chesney, two Oxford University students. As the musical opens, Charley and Jack have invited their respective girlfriends, Amy and Kitty, to lunch in their rooms with the intention of proposing to them. Their chaperone is supposed to be Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez, Charley's Brazilian aunt, who is due on the next train. Unfortunately, Donna Lucia sends a note saying that she won't be coming after all, and Jack decides that Charley should impersonate his aunt. Donna Lucia, however, happens to be a millionaire, and Charley soon finds himself...
...performance actually represented a 50th anniversary performance of the musical, which opened on Broadway in 1948 and ran for an impressive 792 shows. Featuring music and lyrics by Broadway great Frank Loesser, Where's Charley was later turned into a movie in 1952. The movie starred Ray Bolger, better known as the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, who won a Tony for his performance as the original Charley...
Matt Bauer, endearing as an energetic, tap-dancing dynamo in the part of Charley, would have done Bolger proud; he exuded a reckless spirit in defiance of the implicit boundary between performer and audience, even inviting the audience to sing with him in the rousing "Once in Love with Amy." Bauer's high tenor and reedy voice made his deception as Charley's aunt believable, and he slipped with ease into the role of his own aunt, offering pouty and witty observations about women and relationships while playing "hard-to-get" with Sir Francis and Mr. Spettigue...
...made hilarious counterparts to each other, the fiery Scottish Spettigue howling lustily as he dashed after Lucia, while the dignified Sir Francis simply offered "her" a white carnation from his buttonhole. Ultimately, every member of the cast was perfect for his or her part, from the boisterous group of Charley and Jack's Oxford chums to the "real" Donna Lucia (Margaret McCormick), who made an entrance about halfway through the performance but didn't reveal her true identity until the end of the musical...
...overall cheeriness of the production, however, it wasn't at all unidimensional. Several of Loesser's songs deserve recognition for their diverse, rather surprising content, which ran the gamut from Latin to lyrical and highlighted the differences between the two primary couples in question, i.e. Kitty and Jack versus Charley and Amy. Whereas Kitty and Jack were content with their love, a fact reflected in the unvarying sweetness and joyful lyrics of their songs, Amy and Charley were more spontaneous as people and had less equanimity as characters. At one point, Amy sang a solo expressing her mixed feelings about...