| One of the great American musicals, Wonderful | | | | Street." One could see the show a dozen times |
| Town, is playing at the Shaw Festival | | | | without catching all the clever business concocted |
| (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario), and it is pure | | | | by director Roger Hodgman and choreographer |
| pleasure. With an intelligent, heartfelt script and | | | | Jane Johanson. |
| genuinely appealing characters, this musical is | | | | I had not seen Wonderful Town before, and I |
| perfectly suited for a repertory company whose | | | | wasn't aware of all the treasures in its score. |
| members act as well as they sing and dance. | | | | Leonard Bernstein's songs (with lyrics by Betty |
| The show takes us to Greenwich Village, 1935, | | | | Comden and Adolph Green) are superb, even if |
| where Ruth Sherwood and her younger sister | | | | they are not as well known as those in some of |
| Eileen have just arrived from small-town Ohio to | | | | the other great Broadway musicals. The songs of |
| seek their fortunes - Ruth as a writer, Eileen as a | | | | Wonderful Town are nicely integrated into the |
| singer and actress. Fresh off the train, they | | | | storyline, especially Ruth and Eileen's hilarious, |
| wander into lively, colorful Christopher Street, | | | | deadpan duet, "Ohio" (the voices of the homesick |
| take a noisy basement apartment (a new | | | | sisters blend beautifully), and the riotous "My |
| subway is being blasted down below), meet the | | | | Darling Eileen," set in the Village's police station and |
| neighbors, and start looking for work. | | | | sung by an barbershop quartet of Irish cops that |
| Will the clever Ruth (Lisa Horner) learn how to | | | | is led by the Shaw Festival's rubber-limbed William |
| write in her own voice? Will she ever sell her | | | | Vickers as Officer Lonigan. |
| stories? Will Ruth (dateless back in Ohio) find love | | | | As Eileen, Ms. Kennedy gives an expressive |
| in Manhattan? If I had any quarrel with the casting | | | | rendition of the show's graceful romantic |
| of Wonderful Town, it would be with the | | | | standard, "A Little Bit in Love." My own favorite is |
| director's futile attempt to pass off the appealing, | | | | the edgy and infectious "The Wrong Note Rag," a |
| long-legged Lisa Horner as an old maid. Her sassy | | | | piece whose music is even wittier than its lyrics. |
| number "One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man" | | | | Many will feel differently, but I prefer Wonderful |
| is one of the many highlights of this show. | | | | Town to the show that Bernstein composed |
| And will anyone ever give Ruth's pretty, talented | | | | about four years later with Stephen Sondheim as |
| sister Eileen (Chilina Kennedy) a job? Will the girls | | | | lyricist. Of course, the music of West Side Story |
| be able to pay the rent? What if they fall for the | | | | is peerless, with standards like "Tonight," "One |
| same young man? Will anything in this bohemia | | | | Hand, One Heart," "Maria" and "Somewhere." But |
| ever shock these small-town girls? We never | | | | the good humor and real-life dilemmas of |
| worry for long. | | | | Wonderful Town speak to me more than the |
| I was hooked from the opening scene, with its | | | | cartoonish characters and dramatic posturing of |
| athletic, big-production number "Christopher | | | | West Side Story. |