Take a Broadway musical that ran 37 performances in 1992, stir in a Peter O'Toole cult film from 1982, mix generously with a take-off of Sid Caesar's 1954 television variety series
Your Show of Shows, and you might get something of a mongrel. The fact that Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens (the creative team behind
Ragtime and
Once on this Island) wrote the music and lyrics of
My Favorite Year is a good omen. The fact that they're currently rewriting their show might not be.
ShowBiz Players' production of My Favorite Year opens with all engines pumping. The style of the performers, people who create the shows live for "Twenty Million People," reflects that of Sid Caesar's show: larger than life and full of wide-eyed hijinks. In one delightful number Benjy Stone (Kevin Stout), a kid from Brooklyn yearning to be a comedy writer, describes a Three Musketeers sketch while the writers improvise props and movement to Benjy's musical narration.
Of course, Benjy has a love interest (who's not too interested) and a Jewish mother (who meddles in a loveable way). But the really big deal is Alan Swann (Tom Highley), the washed-up, swashbuckling movie actor set to perform Benjy's sketch on the next show. Of course, Swann turns out to be a self-destructive alcoholic who must be constantly monitored -- by Benjy.
Watching the second half of this show is like watching a colorful helium balloon deflate. When Alan has dinner with Benjy's family in Brooklyn, Benjy gets all philosophical and sad about his long-lost father. We also learn that Alan has a teenage daughter in New York but doesn't plan to see her.
Highley exhibits some real gut-level feeling during Swann's final song, "The Lights Come Up." The trouble with the sudden realism of the second act, however, is that we've been set up for a light and breezy flight, only to find ourselves riding in a sudsy old tub. We feel let down, and all the last-minute plot solutions don't make this feeling go away. Grade: B
MY FAVORITE YEAR, presented by Showbiz Players at Xavier University's Gallagher Student Center Theatre, continues through June 10.
