CITY OF ANGELS

Directed by Pete Wilson '99, Masi Osseo-

Asare '00 and Ben Rous '00

At the A.R.T Mainstage

Through Nov. 21

Three million people in this theater. Or so it felt. Easily half of them full of hopes the other half couldn't meet. Enough real stones on the dames to dam a stream, enough fake smiles between them to damn a soul. I wanted to be there about as much as I wanted to be on a Boeing flying into the Eiffel Tower. But Big Ben had made it clear that it would be in the best interest of my natural teeth, and as I needed those pearlies to bite the bullet that I knew was heading for me, I put on a black tie like a noose, and went. When they snuffed the lights, I squinted at the stage and hoped like a bridegroom on the big night that it would be worth it.

Los Angeles of the 1940s made an appearance at the Loeb mainstage last Friday night, and I can get it out of my skin. I want to be a scowling man with chest hair in a battered with Venetian blinds. I am nostalgic for a time and place I have never been--is there a better sign that a show has hit home?

To begin, you can't lose with City of Angels: it is an ingenious capsule of the LA. myth as known through film noir, delivered with punch and spirit. It works with the typical film noir techniques of flashback, voiceover and femmes fatales, in a cruller of a plot that cult leaders, media moguls, starlets, prostitutes and stepmothers--a veritable buffet of the desperate, despicable and demented, In a musical that can finally be only derivative and parodic, the mainstage production of City of Angles surprises and moves with disarmingly evocative music and a clawingly ambient might only have ever existed in our collective cinematic memory.

Stine (Christian Roulleau '01) is a hack writer who churns out detective pulp to feed the studios, living vicariously through his fictional hero and alter ego, the hardboiled gumshoe Stone (Dan Berwick '01). As Stine and his artistic integrity wrestle ineffectually with Buddy Fidler (Kevin Meyers '02), the big cheese at the studio, to produce a ratings safe screenplay, the hapless writer fantasizes by typewriter Stone's life of adventure. The fiction parallels the reality, and the reality is finally defined by the fiction, all in a convoluted but highly enjoyable way. Throughout, a bristling stable of beautiful, gutsy women walk between both plots like a calendar come to life.

Already, the plot is beginning to sound confusing. However, it is competently brought together by a first class cast. The actors don't let themselves get in the way of the screen flatness of their characters, so that Stone is just like every though talking, rough playing sleuth you've ever seen, and Buddy every double dealing, triple timing studio exec to have graced the realm of film stereo type. It is a tribute to the cast's talent that their characters outlive their interpretations. In a sense the script is so solidly seductive that the lines each time they speak. Cy Coleman's music and David Zippel's lyrics are often guilty of stealing the show, ranging from jazz to filmscore to mood tunes, and always spiked with witty lyrics. The fourteen man orchestra does a laudable job of wrapping that music into a tight ball and tossing it out to an audience that lapped it up with fervor.

Still, there are especially memorable cast moments. corresponding to high points in song. A unanimous scene-stealer is Donna/Oolie's (Jessica Jackson '99) reluctantly downcast yet spitfire rendition of "You Can Always Count on Me," a powerful member that tops a overall winning performance as the ill-used secretary, Bobbie (Sarah Gurfield)could make cement dissolve with her smoky "WithEvery Breath I Take." And when the MalloryKingsley (Sara Yellen '00) which Stone has beentold to turn in, turns up in his bed with aturn-on song--oh my. So much for objectifiedfemales.

On the male front, crooner Jimmy Powers, playedby Jonathan Simpson '99, is cheesy to the point ofperfection. Along with the dynamic but sometimespatchy-sounding Angel City quartet, he insinuatesa sentimental path into our ready hearts.My ready heart. Lieutenant Munoz (RodrigoCharazo) was a favorite as the figure of dissent,with his deceptively sunny but really acid piece"All You Have to Do is Wait." It is with "Funny,"towards the end of the show, that Roulleau finallysinks his teeth into Stine and shows some fire inthe eye. However, this is not really a failingwhen playing a character which is generally staidand less than exciting. Berwick, for all hisskulking, doesn't damage his sullen machismo whensinging in the steady but aching tone of aninjured romantic. Bogart would never have gottenaway with a song. What did I tell you about afirst-class cast?

With two running narratives racing each other,there is sometimes too much happening on stage tokeep track of what is going on. Other times,though not often, directorial control lapses indramatic lulls.

However, flow is not so much forsaken, asexcusably sacrificed, for an admirable mastery ofthe vignette. City of Angles consists offragmented tableaux like those of a film, whereeach scene is stylistically and convincinglyexecuted. In fact, the achievement of directorPete Wilson '99 lies in his sensitive productionof the divisions in the script. What could wellhave been a technical nightmare-the disparaterealities of Stine and Stone-is slickly overcomewith juxtapositions, stop-action andinstant-reverse stage-play. At points, the setsand music are manipulated with skill to slip fromone world to another. It is the generalprofessionalism of the production that makes theever-present mic trouble annoying in contrast. Infull, this production demonstrates a very strongconceptual foundation, as evidenced by the sightand light designs of Robert Schlesinger's '00 andDaniel O. Scully's '99, respectively. The actiontakes place all over the stage, at multiplelevels, in numerous layers, against a symbolicallycharged map of L.A. as background. The world ofStine is one of smarmy flesh colours, while thatof Stone is all black, white and gritty grey, litin a mortifying coldness. Backing a dynamitescript with an intelligent production, City ofAngels makes big-time Harvard theatre excitingagain.

Wilson's direction, while playfully hopingthrough the film/novel/stage genres, never forgetsthe sinister under-broil which makes for thechairoscuro of L.A. The music may be catchy, thelines may flow without effort, but there are stillpockets of the perverse, such as Bobbi and Stone'slove scene over a corpse, Stone's campy odysseythrough the L.A. mean streets or the singingskulls. Style and control do not hide a darklyhuman city that has gone crazy under the plasticglosses painted by the studios.

If there is a fault to the production, it isthat it had to end--the way it did. Into thesecond act, the momentum so well built up in thefirst begins to wind down. The "Hollywood ending,"with its hurried hodge-podge, shallow staging andgarish coloring, undoes the sophisticatedsubtleties which made the rest of the show sorich. What had promised to be a scorching andsultry tale of thwarted amour and twisted ambitioncatches itself in a burlesque conclusion.

But that's ok, I suppose. Film noir faded,black and white went, even the 40's had to end, sowhy not a good show. Somewhere on the lit stage,there are still women with legs that will not end,and men who live everyday like it's Monday.CrimsonSamuel P. Tepperman-Gelfant