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Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Disney’s On the Record
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The vintage wine that is the Walt Disney musical heritage has been poured into shiny new bottles, but only those whose tastes run toward the bland supermarket special will want to imbibe.
The good news about Disney’s “On the Record,” a cleverly arranged, 60-song revue that opened Theater of the Stars’ 53rd season Tuesday at the Fox Theatre, is that its musical values are strong, with tight vocal and instrumental arrangements of quality material, flawlessly delivered by eight singers who know how to harmonize.
The bad news is that’s about all it has to offer — unless, of course, you have a penchant for the “up with people” movement. And squeezing all these gems into one two-and-a-half hour evening is a stretch.
There’s no dialogue — just winks, smiles and a lot of star gazing — but there is a story line: The show opens as the young ingenue Kristen wanders into the recording studio set that the fills the stage (the eight-member band is installed in two tall column structures at the rear) and sings, a cappella, “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” from “Cinderella.” Apparently, Kristin is wishing for her big break in the record biz.
Hearing her, the rest of the cast slowly wanders onstage: A quartet of two men and two women that serve variously as choreographed backup vocalists, scenery movers and distributors of general, all-round perkiness.
There’s Diane, the older (30-ish) and wiser recording star who sings a lot of ballads while bathed in flattering soft light; her longtime admirer Julian, a world-weary but good natured song-and-dance man; and Kristen’s apparent love interest, Nick, a young punk wearing a lip-protruding pout, skin-tight leather pants and a form-fitting sleeveless white undershirt to show off his hard-won-at-the-gym upper body bulges. The rest of the cast is dressed in dark-hued tones, save for the tacky, red-sequined finale.
Over the course of 15 variously themed “sessions,” or scenes (delineated by dramatic lighting changes), the eight singers weave their way through David Chase’s imaginative vocal arrangements, covering 75 years of Disney history, from “Minnie’s Yoo-Hoo” (1930) to “Give a Little Whistle” (1940) to “Be Our Guest” (1991) to “Will the Sun Ever Shine Again” (2004).
Most effective are the novelty numbers — Brian Sutherland (Julian) and Andrew Samonsky (Nick) monkeying around in “I Wan’na Be Like You”; the voices of Sutherland, Samonsky, and Ashley Brown (Kristen) electronically manipulated to sound like Cinderella’s bird friends in “The Work Song”; the four men singing a Calypso “Kiss the Girl” from “The Little Mermaid.”
Brown, apparently fresh out of the conservatory, possesses a clear-toned soprano squarely in the Disney ingenue tradition and essays ballads like “Part of Your World” with clarity and sincerity. Conductor Marco Paguia keeps the cast and his band moving as of a piece.
Production values are first-class throughout. But to what end? Disney’s “On the Record” is a contrived effort, faultlessly delivered.
