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The word "glee" has been bandied about quite a bit over the last season in pop culture, most probably because of the groundbreaking series of the same name on the Fox Network, which has made household names of Jane Lynch, Matthew Morrison, Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele and Chris Colfer, among others. It therefore, must have seemed a natural step for writer/composer/lyricist John Gregor and the Prospect Theater Company to name his latest musical opus With Glee, as a means of capitalizing on this new phenomenon.
A not-completely-uninteresting tale of five male misfits in their early teens shipped off to a corrective boarding school in Maine, it would seem that this would create an untapped marketplace in the theatrical world for youngsters. The show, running at the Kirk Theater (410 West 42nd Street), and which has been extended through August 22nd, falls regrettably short, however. Not so much as to give it no merit as a viable production, but the holes therein are not merely glaring, but appear as open and pulsating wounds.
We're greeted at the outset by Nathaniel, Scott, Kip, Clay and Sam, who all have varying degrees of criminal intent coursing through their veins, ranging from pyromania to grand theft auto, and the various parents who govern their lives. Four of them seem completely unwilling to "get with the program," save for Clay, who has happily attended the school since the age of five, literally keeps a skeleton in his closet and has an unnatural attraction to the model schooner of his own creation. We, as an audience, are dragged as though by our hair, like cavewomen clubbed over our heads, through their trials and tribulations. The simple fact, is that the characters just don't make us feel warm towards any of them, in any fashion whatsoever. This is not to say that the play is lacking completely in riveting moments, and particularly not those that show true musical or dramatic promise. The five do a beautiful job with the song "Normal," as well as the country-flavored "We're Going to Worcester," involving a car theft and escape gone horribly wrong, and "Tomas, A One-Act Musical," which is often more entertaining than the book surrounding it, or any of the action before or after. But the performances contained within this production, for the most part, can only evoke the tiniest breath of sympathy for the actors onstage or their creators.
The largest problem seems to be that the five actors as the teenagers (whom, it must be noted, are working as hard as they can and giving it their all), are completely unbelievable in the age they portray, with the single exception of Jason Edward Cook as Kip, though even he, as a flamboyant "fancy boy," never quite conveys the necessary vulnerability of a teenager; in point of fact, he plays the role as though one was watching Noel Coward portray one of Peter Pan's Lost Boys with the sophistication of a drawing-room comedy. Dan Lawler provides equally fine dimension to the role of Clay, inasmuch as the fact that he appears, for want of a better term, disturbingly disturbed. Max Spitulnik emerges as the best of the five as Sam; appropriately chunky and clunky, and making no bones about his dirt-poor upbringing in Pittsburgh. And both Christopher Davis Carlyle as Nathaniel and Zach Bandler as Scott, unfortunately, prove almost completely unremarkable. The performances of the evening go singlehandedly to Greg Horton and Erin Jerozal, who manage to embody at least ten roles each as the various adults involved in the plot, and both come up swinging at every turn.
This reviewer would like to say that With Glee is worth catching, but can't bring himself to do so. This is not to say that the actors employed aren't worth catching in future productions, or that either John Gregor or the Prospect Theater Company couldn't do a lot better. They could, and they should. But this show proved a bitter disappointment, and we can all only hope they come up with something a great deal more worthwhile. And soon.
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