StageSceneLA

HONEYMOON IN VEGAS

Musical Theatre Guild has concluded its 20th-anniversary with a Honeymoon In Vegas so thrillingly staged, choreographed, and performed that yesterday’s audience could be excused for forgetting that they were seeing a mere “concert staged reading” put together in a mere twenty-five hours from table read to showtime.

If there were any justice on Broadway, Honeymoon In Vegas would already have gotten at least one major local staging. The 1992 movie on which it is based may not have been a blockbuster, but fifteen years of home-video viewing should have at the very least guaranteed name recognition on The Great White Way, and with Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Last Five Years) writing the songs, Honeymoon In Vegas movie scripter Andrew Bergman writing the book, and the New York Times leading the cheering section, Honeymoon In Vegas The Musical ought to have run a whole lot longer than three measly months.

Even more unfortunately, a Broadway flop doesn’t tour and that means no sets for rent and that has meant no SoCal regional theater willing to take a chance on a musical that’s not Sister Act, Disney The Little Mermaid, Newsies, or Mamma, Mia.

It’s their loss (and audiences’ as well) since Bergman’s book is smart and funny, Brown’s songs as clever and hummable as songs get, and if that’s not enough, who can beat a stage filled with skydiving Elvis impersonators?

Some aspects of the plot may have been turn-offs–an overly possessive mother whose dying breath has her cursing her adult son should he ever decide to marry, a middle-aged card shark who threatens our hero with dismemberment unless he lends the louse his fiancee for the weekend, and said card shark’s late wife’s cause of death, Vegas sun-induced melanoma.

But hey, the film made over $35,000,000 at the box office (that’s like $65 mil today), so if these things didn’t bother movie audiences, why should Broadway have been any different?

Suffice it to say minus a fully-staged L.A. production, audiences at Glendale’s Alex Theatre can count themselves blessed to have been at MTG’s one-performance-only, almost fully-staged “reading.”

Blocked by master director Jon Lawrence Rivera as if the show were scheduled to run for weeks and featuring choreography by Lee Martino that could just as easily have been for the real thing, about all that distinguished this staged reading from a major professional run were scripts in hand (to which performers seemed rarely to give more than a casual glance) and a scarcely missed scenic design. (Rarely have straight-backed chairs done so much with so little rehearsal time.)

Heck, the show even seemed costumed (by Jeffrey Schoenberg) and lit like the real thing, and with musical director Anthony Lucca at the piano conducting an onstage orchestra that sounded like twice as many pieces and a fully professional sound design, you could close your eyes and think you were at at Broadway national tour.

From the full-cast production number that turns Brown’s brief orchestra into a singin’-in-the-rain treat to the show-girls-and-boys who back up lounge singer Buddy Rocky’s “When You Say Vegas” to the island hula moves of “Hawaii/Waiting For You” to the dozen or so Elvises that back lead impersonator Roy Bacon’s Presely-esque “Higher Love,” choreographer Martino gets almost the entire cast up and dancing, with special snaps to featured quartet Gillian Bozagian, Jasmine Ejan, Chris Holly, and Louis Williams, Jr.

Lead couple Will Collyer and Ashley Fox Linton have been paired in so many MTG shows that their Jack Singer-Betsy Nolan romantic relationship rings particularly true, his glorious tenor soaring in “I Love Betsy!” and “Isn’t That Enough” and her exquisite soprano proving equally stratospheric in “Anywhere But Here” and “I’ve Been Thinking,” four of Brown’s melodious best.

Indecent propositioner Tommy Koran fits silver-foxy Robert Yacko like a glove in the same way that “Out Of The Sun” and “Come To An Agreement” suit Yacko’s silky pipes, and when Roberta B. Wall’s Bea belts out “Never Get Married” like a force of nature, Merman may have met her match.

Bill Ledesma nails both Buddy Rocky’s Dean Martin-like “When You Say Vegas” and the Elvis-ready “Higher Love,” John Massey is a hoot as Tommy’s goodfella sidekick Johnny Sandwich, Paul Wong gives native Hawaiian speakers a run for their money with Raymond’s “Hawaii” (backed to perfection by Glenn Shiroma’s Teihutu and Jennie Kwan’s Mahi, the latter delighting equally with her funny, seductive “Friki-Friki”), and anyone who’s ever flown will get a kick out of “The Airport Song” and MTG star Zachary Ford and talented up-and-comers Miyuki Miyagi and Kevin Matsumoto as three of the most obnoxious ticket agents ever. Linda Igarashi and Monica Quinn complete the all-around stellar cast.

Art Brickman is production manager. Jamie Salinger is production stage manager. Paige Loter is stage manager and Seira Murakami is assistant stage manager. Barbara Carlton Heart is production coordinator.

A season-opening Sugar set the bar high for the Musical Theatre Guild 20th ahead. Seven months later, Honeymoon In Vegas concludes it with one of the best MTG shows ever. Season 21’s upcoming Mame, Zorba, Minnie’s Boys, and Sunday In The Park With George will have to work extra hard to even come close.