Word: nabel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This is just as well, since the beginning is pretty disappointing. The first rumble is confused and unmenacing, the first few songs drag and don't get much of a beat, and Bill Nabel and Jane Eichkern are understandably unable to make their sudden ecstasy of inexplicable love convincing. About the only thing that does work is Peter Agoos's set, which has a fine flavor of New York to it, although even given the city's infinite variety it seems unlikely that Doc's drugstore would charge 30 cents for a Coca-Cola and 29 for a milkshake...
...production builds steadily, reaching competence towards the end of the first act and threatening to surmount it for the rest of the evening. Nabel and Eichkern both sing well, and though his characterization isn't terribly heroic, her threat to shoot everybody on stage at the end (oh, dear!) is surprisingly solid. Bob Berger's choreography for the dream sequence, and Lindsay Davis's costumes for it -- a set of immaculate white robes for the solemn lookers-on, spotless black for the duellers -- is particularly effective...
...actors are funny, although Martin, Greenberg, Paul Jackel as Dick and William Nabel as Captain Courageous are the best. They all play with the right amount of archness, overacting just enough to remind us that we are, after all, superior to this sort of thing nowadays. It's a little bit like taking candy from a baby, but it makes for a pleasant enough evening at the theater...
...Steve Harris keeps his "failure face" determinedly straight throughout the show, his shlemiel personality becomes more endearing the more he gets dumped upon. Like master, like dog. It would be hard to imagine a funnier and more appropriate piece of casting than Bill Nable's Snoopy. Not only does Nabel manage to look like a human facsimile of the darling dog, but he also has the gestures down pat, even to keeping his teeth bared while asleep. He surpasses even his master in over-sensitivity and sentimentality, and becomes, with his R.A.F. accent and adventure fantasies, the most human...