From reviewplays.com - 05/10/07

Reprise Swings With No Strings

by: Cynthia Citron

There’s something endearing about learning that an actor you’ve always admired as a television action hero can also mix it up with a great song and dance. Such an actor is Scott Bakula, best known for the series “Quantum Leap”, in which he traveled back in time to fix things so that the future would be better. (Oh, where is he now, when we need him to fix the 2000 elections!)

Bakula is appearing this week on the stage of the Freud Playhouse at UCLA in the Reprise! production of “No Strings”, with music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and book by Samuel Taylor. And while the choreography is rather mild (no major cartwheels required), the music isn’t. But Bakula’s voice is up to the task: he sings nearly all of the songs in the show with a strong, earnest sweetness.
He is paired with Sophina Brown, a gorgeous model who is, like him, an American ex-pat in Paris. She is also African-American, although “the race thing” is never alluded to. (When the play premiered on Broadway in 1962 it reflected the movement for civil rights that was going on at the time.

Diahann Carrol, who was in the audience for this Reprise! opening night, played the lead then, with Richard Kiley as her lover). Brown has a voice that sends chills down your back, and a presence that is both beguiling and inflexible. As Barbara Woodruff, she plays a nagging muse to Bakula’s David Jordan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer with a decade-long block.

The plot, of course, is predictable, but it has a surprising twist at the end. And while the songs never made it into the category of romantic classics (except for the oft-repeated “The Sweetest Sounds”), they are pleasant and enjoyable.

But the REAL reason to see this production is for the outrageously gorgeous over-the-top costumes designed by Bob Mackie and Joe McFate. (Cher would kill for any one of them!) Director Kay Cole has rounded up a bevy of 12-foot tall models who continually prance around the stage (sometimes in silhouette) wearing costumes that would wake the dead. Even the men of the ensemble wear what seems like hundreds of wildly colorful outfits.

And speaking of the ensemble, mention must be made of the second male lead, Brent Schindele, who was so spectacular in the Colony’s recent production of “The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!” Unfortunately, he has little to do in this current musical except talk in an often-slipping French accent.

Also worth mentioning is Bets Malone, one of the four Marvelous Wonderettes, who appears here as the brash and brassy Comfort O’Connell, an American heiress taking Europe by cash.

All of this activity plays on Bradley Kaye’s deceptively simple set, mostly a platform with lots of steps for the models to parade up and down and pose on artistically. The effect they make is greatly enhanced by Steven Young’s beautiful lighting design and Christine Kellogg’s elegant, understated choreography. And Gerald Sternbach, leading the orchestra that is positioned upstage left.

“No Strings” is not one of the all-time great musicals, but it does offer a delightful evening of theater and a rewarding afterglow of good will. It will be continuing at the Freud Playhouse on the UCLA campus through May 20, 2007.
 

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