Theater Review - Nice Work If You Can Get It

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Music and Lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin

Book by Joe DiPietro

Directed by Kathleen Marshall

Where: Imperial Theatre, New York City, NY

When:  September 5, 2012, 8pm

Were I thirty years older, I may have been laughing as hard as the lady behind me, but seeing as how I am not yet sixty, Nice Work If You Can Get It is, to me, a tired Broadway trifle that shoehorns some lovely George and Ira Gershwin tunes into a story that is unworthy of their presence.  Songs in a musical exist as an extension of a character's personality or a way of furthering plot, but they absolutely must relate in some way to the overarching story.  Here, we get none of that with playwright Joe DiPietro simply tossing in classics like the title number, "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," or "S'Wonderful" seemingly at random, failing to have these oftentimes emotion-filled songs create any meaningful impact on the plot.  Ultimately, this dooms the musical and is where Nice Work falters the most.

The plot is a throwaway, but I appreciate the homage to 1930s movies/radio shows/Broadway that it strives to achieve.  Multi-millionaire playboy Jimmy Winter (Matthew Broderick...more on him later) is about to be married for the fourth time -- this time to impressionistic dancer Eileen Evergreen (Jennifer Laura Thompson).  After a drunken binge one evening in a speakeasy (for, you see, we are in the Prohibition Era), he runs into Billie Bendix (Kelli O'Hara...more on her later as well), a bootlegger who wears pants and a cap (which lets us know she's tough as nails with a likely heart of gold to match) to whom he reveals that he's really only marrying Eileen because it will make him look responsible to his mother who will then bequeath him the extensive family fortune.  While he tells his story, Jimmy reveals to Billie that he owns a huge mansion in Long Island that he rarely uses and Billie sees this as the perfect location to store her crew's supply of illegal booze from the police.  In the play's next two hours, we get multiple cases of mistaken identity, several instances of awkwardly newfound romance, and a few dance numbers thrown at us all of which are pleasant, but not quite enough to sustain the running time especially since the songs don't do a darn thing to forward the plot.

In fact, the songs that are the most successful end up being the throwaway numbers which utilize some of the lesser known songs in the Gershwins' catalog.  When the hoity-toity Eileen lounges in a bathtub and begins singing about how "Delishious" she is, a bevy of bathing beauties climb out of the same tub to dance with her and extol her great virtues -- a truly creative moment and one of the few successful times that a song tells us exactly what it needs to in regards to a character.  Or take Act II's "Looking for a Boy" sung by Duchess Estonia Dulworth (Judy Kaye) who, heretofore, has been the very definition of uppity, pompous, and prim.   When she unknowingly becomes intoxicated, the typically bluesy (and perhaps sultry) Gershwin number becomes a literal "swinging from the chandelier" moment that is a true showstopper and the obvious moment that single-handedly won Ms. Kaye this year's Best Supporting Actress Tony.

But the problem is that when the musical's main characters deign to burst into song, their numbers never hit home in the way they do for the secondary characters.  It's not Matthew Broderick or Kelli O'Hara's fault either, both of whom I couldn't help but think were truly enjoying their time spent onstage together.  Although neither were given the best plotlines, they both seemed to be be having a ball during their scenes together despite performing eight times a week.  Unfortunately, this evident genial rapport doesn't really translate to chemistry which I think is more a fault of their characters than the actors themselves.

I've seen Ms. O'Hara before in the wonderful South Pacific (which has greatly improved in my memory as time passes) and she has a lovely voice that simply isn't showcased to its best effect here.  She has a few nice numbers -- particularly when she's permitted to let her comedic side show like in the hilarious bedroom romp "Treat Me Rough" -- but her character of Billie simply doesn't have any substance for her to latch onto.  Similarly, Broderick's playboy character is one-note and the actor decides to play him with an oddly side-mouthed almost-lisp which faded in and out when he saw fit.  Despite that annoying tic, I had read several reviews that said the actor seemed to be phoning this role in, and while he certainly wasn't a revelation, he is serviceable in the part with an adequate voice (that worked well with the old standards that don't require a ton of belting to be successful) and a naturalness to his dancing that, while not well honed, was oddly pleasant to watch.  [Funnily enough, I was kind of reminded when watching Broderick of my long-ago high school production of Bye Bye Birdie...like me, Broderick was having fun, but likely realized he's not the best singer and dancer in the land.]

However, in the end, this musical is just an excuse to wrap some semblance of a story around a group of Gershwin songs.  There's no substance to the plot or heft to the characters.  Everyone simply trudges along to the show's inevitable ending which will undoubtedly lead to a standing ovation from the crowd.  [...Which is another irksome quality of theater nowadays -- I'm all for applauding at the end of a show even if you didn't care for it just to show respect to the actors, but not every single production deserves a standing ovation....You're diluting what a standing O really should stand for...End of Soapbox Rant...]  Nice Work If You Can Get It is pleasant, but it's simply not very good and "pleasant" just doesn't cut it when you're shelling out money to see a Broadway production.