Seven stellar triple-threat featured performers and some particularly ingenious directorial touches made Musical Theatre Guild’s one-night-only concert staged reading of the 1980 Broadway hit Barnum worth seeing despite a title performance not up to MTG standards.

Like the surprise 2017 movie musical smash The Greatest Showman, Barnum The Musical (book by Mark Bramble) recounts the life and legend of P.T. Barnum (Kirby Ward), the American businessman/huckster renowned for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus, whose acts included “World’s Oldest Woman” Joyce Heth (Regina LeVert), “World’s Smallest Man” Tom Thumb (Matthew Patrick Davis), and most significantly “Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind (Kelley Dorney), half of Barnum’s passion-fueled marriage break from his wife Chairy (Tracy Lore).

Both movie and musical have Barnum building a downtown Manhattan museum/zoo/freak show before disaster strikes and a bigtop-housed three-ring circus bearing his name is born.

 Musically speaking, however, Barnum’s traditional Broadway score (and its echoes of 19th-century American “pop”) and The Greatest Showman’s power-ballad-infused contemporary songs (including the Oscar-nominated “This Is Me”) could not be more dissimilar, and though Barnum’s Cy Coleman/Michael Stewart ditties have their advocates, I much prefer Coleman in the more modern mode of Sweet Charity, Little Me, and City Of Angels.

Still, with its undeniable pizzazz and feats of circus spectacularity, it’s easy to see why Broadway’s Barnum ran for an estimable 854 performances, winning Tonys for its sets and costumes, and above all for its leading man Jim Dale.

And no wonder. P.T. Barnum is a bear of a part, onstage almost entirely throughout and featured in ten of the show’s sixteen musical numbers, including four major solos and at least one show-stopping tap number.

It’s the kind of title role that Musical Theatre Guild members Michael Kostroff (Zorba) and Kelly Lester (Mame) dazzled in last season, and not just because (like Ward’s Barnum) they were right for their parts.

Not everyone can master a role like Zorba, Mame, or Barnum in the mere twenty-five hours of rehearsal allowed by Actors Equity, and what sets MTM members apart from the rest is their ability to do so virtually off-book, so much so that the script they’re required to hold becomes a mere prop and never even looked at when performing a song.

While guest artist Ward did indeed show off Barnum-style flair, a terrific singing voice, and considerable tap prowess, his reliance on script-in-hand proved a near constant reminder that what audiences were seeing was a concert staged reading and not the nearly fully-staged production MTG subscribers are accustomed to seeing.

Fortunately for audiences at Sunday’s performance, director Alan Bailey (who helmed last year’s Zorba) found one imaginative way after another to make theatrical magic even without the accoutrements a Broadway extravaganza budget can provide.

Want juggling and plate spinning when your cast may not possess those particular skills? Bailey found a way. Want a double-jointed body-bender when no one in the cast fills the bill? Bailey found a way. Want to build a museum “One Brick At A Time”? Bailey not only found a way, he did so in a manner that took advantage of and poked fun at Actors Equity stringent Concert Stage Reading rules and regulations.

And if Bailey found a way to have the world’s largest pachyderm (the appropriately named Jumbo) appear on stage without an actual elephant or life-sized puppetry, no stage wizardry was needed when the Verdugo Hills High School marching band made a surprise appearance not once but twice.

SoCal musical theater treasure Lore did her accustomed fine work as Chairy, but the evening’s true stars were its supremely multi-tasking featured players: Dorney showing off glorious coloratura pipes as a delightfully ditzy Jenny Lind, LeVert stopping the show twice with “Thank God I’m Old” and “Black And White,” Jasmine Ejan baton twirling and rollerskating her way into audience hearts, Glenn Shiroma in masterful Ringmaster mode, Matt Braver adding deliciously quirky shadings to three distinct roles, Jeffrey Scott Parsons showing off his trademark dance finesse, and 6’8” powerhouse Davis shrinking down to Tom Thumb size and then growing to twice his height for the pizzazzy “Join The Circus.”

Choreographer Cheryl Baxter scored high marks for inserting almost as many dance moves as you’d see in a fully-staged show (executed by MTG members and guest artists who can master complicated steps in a heartbeat).

Musical director Jan Roper and her onstage orchestra merited highest marks as well, as did costume coordinator Jeffrey Schoenberg and his AJS Costumes for starting off understated and gradually going all the way to Barnum & Bailey Circus flash.

On the minus side, it’s hard to fathom why LeVert’s malfunctioning mike was not fixed or replaced before Act Two.

Barbara Carlton Heart was production coordinator. Leesa Freed was production stage manager and production manager and Stacey Cortez and Debra Miller were assistant stage managers.

It takes a particular breed of musical theater performer to not only master the demands of a 25-hour-rehearsed concert staged reading but to make it look easy. If any Musical Theatre Guild reading has made this abundantly clear, Barmum was that show.

Musical Theatre Guild, The Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Ave., Glendale.
www.musicaltheatreguild.com

–Steven Stanley
September 22, 2019
Photos: Ed Krieger

Tags: Cy Coleman, Los Angeles Theater Review, Mark Bramble, Michael Stewart, Musical Theatre Guild