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REVIEW: Lucie Arnaz's inherited talents make the Reprise! production worth seeing.
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August 2,1998
By PAUL HODGiNS
The Orange County Register
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'Wonderful Town'
· Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
· Continues: Last performance 2 p.m. today
· How much: $16-$49
· Ticket availability: Good
· Length: 2 hours, 20 minutes
· Suitability: All ages
· Call: (714) 740-7878
The blessings of heredity were amply displayed Thursday night at the Orange County Performing, Arts Center. Every so often, the ghost of Lucille Ball seems to possess her daughter, Lucie Arnaz, who lights up "Wonderful Town" far beyond her role's modest demands.
A laugh here, a look there - Arnaz's inherited talents, no doubt honed by years of observation on the "Here's Lucy" set (not to mention a lengthy career in TV, film and musical theater), have given her a first-rate comedian's crucial instincts for timing, facial expression and physical comedy.
Arnaz plays Ruth, a struggling writer who, with her aspiring-actress sister Eileen, has journeyed to Greenwich Village to seek fame and fortune. Unfortunately,. their timing stinks. It's the mid-'30s and the Depression is in full, malevolent swing.
Ruth gets nowhere. "I feel like I'm mailing these things to myself," she complains about her returned manuscripts.
Eileen, though, discovers her true calling as a world-class vamp. She charms nice-guy editor Robert Baker into attending a potluck at the sisters' dumpy basement apartment, even though he has dismissed Ruth's writing. There, Robert discovers he's part of a trio of similarly bewitched men including a determinedly amorous newspaperman (Andy Umberger, effectively weaselly) and a nerdy Walgreen's clerk (Joe Joyce in a pitch-perfect performance).
This is the kind of silly tale that deserves the reviewer's timeless summation: Hijinks ensue. Somehow, a boatload of dancing Brazilian sailors and a jailhouse full of singing Irish cops are dragged into the mix. The Joseph Fields-Jerome Chodorov story is trite, even by golden-age standards, and the plot is propelled by implausible complications arising from Eileen's congenital need to flirt and Ruth's desperate need to find a writing job.
Still, "Wonderful Town" is worth reviving, even in the stripped-down format afforded by the Reprise! series (this production bowed last fall in Los Angeles; the center's incarnation retains the bare-bones feel).
Buoyed by Betty Comden and Adolph Green's arch, Cliff Bemis, a wonderfully stentorian tenor, can back off when necessary; he owns some of the musical's most tender musical moments. Chameleonic Tony Abatemarco, a master of accents and disguise, is in nearly every scene as one character or another, though he's most memorable as Appopolous, a mercurial artist who doubles as the sisters' deceitful landlord.
As with all Reprise! productions, the band is onstage, and director Don Amendolia craftily weaves music director Peter Matz and his crew into the action. (In an amusing cameo, Matz even plays a drunk.) Although the band's presence pushes the action into a narrow downstage strip, the arrangement seems appropriately respectful. It's the music that makes this show worth reviving - why not showcase it?
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*Special thanks to Amy G. for this article*
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