S/Wonderful


Westchester Broadway Theatre has a winner.

The production starts off with a whiz bang number featuring Blakely Slaybaugh as Harold singing and dancing to “Nice Work if You Can Get it.”  The singing is good, the dancing is great;  the choreography outstanding.  A couple of problems with two of the numbers from Porgy & Bess.  Summertime is a beautiful song as written.  If you can’t improve on it, don’t try, just sing it and it works.  Mary Millben overstyles it.  It is interesting to note how different singers perform the national anthem before sporting events.  Oh Say Can You See that Francis Scott Key’s simple song is best as written.  So it is with Summertime.  There are some who can interpret Summertime without compromising its haunting beauty.  Ms.  Millben is not one of them.  The other problem is with the wonderful “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”  In Porgy & Bess the song is introduced in the biblical context which is appropriate.  In this musical a character sends postcards saying how great her honeymoon and marriage are, and we discover that it wasn’t necessarily so.  From postcards to a biblical reference?!  Doesn’t work at all.  Some of us actually listen to segues so indulge us please. Then they amputate this very clever song which deserves to be performed in its entirety if at all.

Those criticisms aside, the five person cast, three women and two men, all move and sing well.  The less than stellar sound system at the WBT makes it difficult, regrettably, to truly evaluate the voices, but there is nothing to cloud the movement.  Five of the six move very well and Ms. Millben, whose voice is her strength, does what she has to do.

Best is Blakely Slaybaugh.  From scene one where he plays a nerdy copywriter, it is clear that he has no real bones, just some rubber where skeletons usually go. 

And Stacey Harris as Jane drives her body like a vintage Jaguar.  And it is just as finely shaped and tuned as that fine machine.  Lovely as the trunk is on the Jag, it cannot compare with that of the beauteous Ms. Harris.  When we chatted after the show I told her my review would compare her to a Jag and she didn’t mind at all.  So let us not hear from feminists.  I just could not take my eyes off her.