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| Show | Did He Like It?* |
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Sean Hayes and Jane Krakowski star in Damn Yankees at New York City Center! Summer Stars series. John Rando directs, with music direction by Rob Berman. It tells the story of Joe Boyd, the ultimate baseball fan, who sells his soul to the Devil for the chance to help his team, the Washington Senators, win the pennant race against the Yankees. Click here for tickets. |
Faust on Third, Lost Soul at Bat
*By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Published: July 11, 2008
Attention, Yankees fans. Do you yearn for the era when ballplayers made headlines for feats on the field rather than in the bedroom or the courtroom? Do you fervently wish the world still gnashed its teeth as New York’s pinstriped paragons strolled to yet another championship? Do you pine for those glorious yesteryears when giants like Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle bestrode the Bronx?
A sliver of solace can be harvested on 55th Street, where the musical “Damn Yankees” has been revived for a brief summer run, courtesy of City Center Encores! This Broadway confection from 1955 tells the fanciful story of a despairing fan of a losing ball club who sells his soul to the very Devil to help his team snatch the pennant from the big, bad, baseball-ruling Bronx Bombers.
Although it does not rank among the first tier of classics from Broadway’s prime years, “Damn Yankees” was a popular hit. It sports a handful of still-lovable songs by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, and was the second show choreographed by Bob Fosse, whose dances have been retained here. (The first was the similarly fizzy “Pajama Game” of the year before, from the same songwriters.) The stars who headline this staging — Sean Hayes of “Will & Grace” as the conniving Devil, Jane Krakowski of current “30 Rock” fame as his sex-kitten helpmate and Cheyenne Jackson from Broadway’s “Xanadu” as the slugger who pines for the wife he left behind — seemed to be expertly aligned.
And yet the production, directed by John Rando (“Urinetown”), is pleasant but a little pizazz-deficient. Everyone involved performs his or her chores capably, but the show does not shimmy off the dust of 50-plus years truly to tickle us anew. It’s a solid double, maybe, but hardly the grand slam that was last summer’s “Gypsy,” which subsequently transferred to Broadway and scored three Tonys.
That was a foregone conclusion of course. The show itself is no “Gypsy,” although a mere four years separate them. A work of flossy showbiz craftsmanship rather than artistry, “Damn Yankees” has little more on its mind than happy diversion. The choppy book was written by the legendary George Abbott, who also directed the original production, and Douglass Wallop, the author of “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant,” the novel on which it is based, a variation on the ever-durable Faust story. (The sets by John Lee Beatty wittily send up midcentury wallpaper patterns.)
Mr. Hayes, making his New York stage debut, is known for his adorable performance as Jack, the flamboyant gay flibbertigibbet on “Will & Grace.” In that role he could zip through a half-dozen comic personas with dizzying speed, jumping from clown to queen, to goof, bumbler or imp in a matter of nanoseconds.
As Mr. Applegate, the Madison Avenue Beelzebub who entices the middle-aged Joe Boyd (P. J. Benjamin) into trading his soul for a chance to play in the big leagues, Mr. Hayes shelves most of them. The imp steals onstage with some frequency to fling an expertly aimed zinger. And when he sits down at the piano for his second-act solo, “Those Were the Good Old Days,” a comic ode to the age when deviltry ran rampant round the globe, Mr. Hayes is a malign delight (even if the voice is a little shaky). But for much of the show he seems hesitant to put a distinctive imprint on the part.
Ms. Krakowski, luscious as lemon meringue in a fluffy Marilyn wig and slinky dresses by William Ivey Long, is sweet, tart and funny as the good-hearted bad girl, Lola, formerly “the ugliest woman in Providence, Rhode Island.” But she is ill served by the decision to employ the choreography Fosse created for Gwen Verdon, his long-limbed wife and muse, who originated this dance-defined role. (She dazzles immortally in the movie, with the original Applegate of Ray Walston.)
Ms. Krakowski executes the signature numbers — the striptease “Whatever Lola Wants” and the hipster mambo “Who’s Got the Pain?” — with determination and sufficient skill, but she’s like an eager student recreating moves learned by rote. The steps are not naturally in her bones, so the wiggling hips and the rolling shoulders never transmit the sizzling jolts of electricity they should. (She’s best in the more free-form “Two Lost Souls.”)
Vocal honors for the evening go to Mr. Jackson, in a walk. Although “Whatever Lola Wants” and the cheery anthem “Heart” became familiar standards, the show’s score contains a couple of lovely if lesser-known ballads, mostly sung by Mr. Jackson’s Joe Hardy, who has no sooner become a slugging sensation than he begins to regret in melody leaving the good wife and the comfy armchair behind. Mr. Jackson has a nice comic moment when Joe sinks blissfully back into that armchair, but his laid-back performance enchants primarily when his lustrous voice soars into one of the tender phrases from “A Man Doesn’t Know” or “Near to You.”
That last is a duet with Randy Graff, whose performance as Meg, the abandoned wife, is among the production’s supplementary assets. Her wry delivery and understated warmth are a pleasing combination; the musical’s opening scene, in which Ms. Graff’s Meg laments the half-yearly emotional absence of her baseball-crazed husband, gets the show off to a cozy start.
Veanne Cox and Kathy Fitzgerald deliver the broader laughs as her likewise baseball-obsessed bridge pals, and the other supporting roles are filled efficiently. Megan Lawrence, as the snappish sportswriter Gloria Thorpe, effervescently leads the ballplayers in the buoyant jig “Shoeless Joe From Hannibal, Mo.” Michael Mulheren and a trio of the players — Jimmy Ray Bennett, Robert Creighton and Jimmy Smagula — harmonize sweetly on “Heart.” John Selya, former star of Twyla Tharp’s “Movin’ Out,” bounds through the Fosse choreography with an airy buoyancy.
Should any actual Yankee fans with no knowledge of the show find their way to City Center, perhaps a word of warning is in order. Things don’t really go well for the New Yorkers in the end. But really, that should be a comfort. Consider “Damn Yankees” a nostalgia trip to a time when a bad season for the Yankees was the stuff of wildest fantasy, requiring the machinations of the Devil himself to bring defeat. A Devil in red socks, naturally.
DAMN YANKEES
Words and music by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross; book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, based on Mr. Wallop’s novel “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant”; directed by John Rando; musical director, Rob Berman; choreography by Bob Fosse, reproduced by Mary MacLeod; sets by John Lee Beatty; costumes by William Ivey Long; lighting by Peter Kaczorowski; sound by Scott Lehrer; company manager, Michael Zande; production stage manager, Karen Moore; wig and hair design by Paul Huntley; music coordinator, Seymour Red Press; original orchestrations by Don Walker. Presented by New York City Center Encores! Summer Stars, Jack Viertel, artistic director. At New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan; (212) 581-1212. Through July 27. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.
WITH: Sean Hayes (Applegate), Jane Krakowski (Lola), Cheyenne Jackson (Joe Hardy), Randy Graff (Meg Boyd), Michael Mulheren (Benny Van Buren), Veanne Cox (Sister), P. J. Benjamin (Joe Boyd), Megan Lawrence (Gloria Thorpe), Jimmy Ray Bennett (Sohovik), Robert Creighton (Smokey), Jimmy Smagula (Rocky), Kathy Fitzgerald (Doris), John Horton (Mr. Welch) and John Selya (Eddie/Mambo Dancer).
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