Beyond Frilly Derrières, a Couple of Romances
Charles IsherwoodOctober 14, 2014: Frothy skirts spin like pinwheels, black-stockinged legs fly skyward, and ruffled derrières are flashed with piquant frequency in the revival of the 1953 musical Can-Can at the Paper Mill Playhouse here. We are back in Paris during the decadent Belle Époque, when the demimonde thrived and Montmartre teemed with loose ladies and louche artistes. Ooh la laaaaaah. Sorry — that old-fashioned French exclamation inadvertently became a yawn. Naughtiness ain’t what it used to be, I’m afraid. The production, directed by David Lee, a television veteran (Frasier, Cheers) who has rewritten the original book by Abe Burrows with another television writer, Joel Fields (of the FX series The Americans), features a Broadway-caliber cast. The luminous Kate Baldwin (Finian’s Rainbow, Big Fish) plays La Mome Pistache, the proprietress of the sizzling nightspot where much of the action takes place, and Jason Danieley (The Full Monty, Curtains), in virile voice, portrays the judge who loves her but tosses her in the clink anyway. And yet despite the energetic efforts of the cast and creative team, which includes spirited contributions from the choreographer Patti Colombo, this hard-working production cannot overcome the material’s fundamental problems: a Cole Porter score that’s distinctly second tier, and a labored plot trimmed in stereotypes of gay Paree that have not exactly aged with the grace of a classic Bordeaux.
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