There is no denying the excitement and anticipation in the air at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival for the opening of Enter The Guardsman. New York paparazzi and major Broadway producers could be readily spotted among the usual shower of stars and friends of stars. After all, the musical had won an international musical competition and been produced by Cameron Mackintosh and the Really Useful Group at London's Donmar Warehouse in 1997, the space that spawned the acclaimed production of Cabaret. This production marks the American premiere of the musical that collaborators Scott Wentworth (book), Craig Bohmler (music), and Marion Adler (lyrics), based on Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar's 1910, The Guardsman. That is the comedy that served, in a revised version in 1924, as a notably successful Broadway vehicle for the famed married acting duo Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
Moving on from its status as a vehicle to a Valentine to a by-gone era, Enter The Guardsman is neither meant to be groundbreaking nor provocative. It is meant to be amusing and entertaining, and it often is. Derived from a text that is pure romantic twaddle, the musical's titillating tone is cloaked in elegance and elan. If the score's melodic grace and lyrical charms sound like they've been strained from the operetta world's repertory, individual songs are flavored with ingratiating sentiments.
With these inherent weaknesses perceived as a given, the new musical -- far better, I think, than the play it is based on -- has its beguiling moments. The performers exhibit enough panache and skill to rise above a lot of the creaky-by-design material. Although the plot, about an actor and an actress who have been married for six months and feel passion gradually fading in their relationship, plays tricks with reality and fantasy, faithfulness and deception, it pleasures in the bittersweet ups and downs of married life.
When the beautiful Actress, known for her short-lived love affairs before her marriage, fails to share with her husband the note that comes with a single rose sent to her by an admirer after a performance, her husband begins to get jealous. Then, when the wife offers no explanation about the deluge of bouquets that are subsequently brought to her dressing room after each performance, the husband becomes obsessed with testing her faithfulness. Of course, he is the secret admirer. But to set the trap, he must play the part of the admirer in disguise. So, exit the husband to play Hamlet in the provinces ("It is a good part," she says) and enter the guardsman to play the ardent and amorous seducer.
Is the Actress really duped? Is the Actor a dope? And are we to believe that all it takes to deceive an intimate is a glued-on moustache and a costume off the rack. Well, if it worked for Shakespeare, Pirandello and countless other playwrights since the great flood, we must allow Molnar and his adapters the same latitude.
The six-piece orchestra is perched at the back of the stage, which has been artfully designed by Molly Reynolds to transform itself gracefully from onstage, to backstage, to the wings of a theater. The shifting of racks of costumes and a few pieces of dressing room furniture do all that is necessary to create a proper theatrical environment. Whether it is the insinuations made by a waltz theme, the way our heartbeat quickens in response to a rhapsodic love duet, or just our delight in another tango take-off, the Bohmler/Adler score ultimately suggests a fragile and sweet confection, tasty if not particularly nourishing. Wentworth's facile direction goes a long way to keep the tempo up when the torpor of repetition threatens to descend.
A far cry from the dour and dark postures he assumed in the roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the Broadway production of Jekyll & Hyde, Robert Cuccioli plays the Actor with hilariously egotistical suavity, and propels the often inert action with an unending flair for the unexpected flourish. Notwithstanding the distraction of his long, greasy-looking hair, when playing the distressed husband, Cuccioli can be side-splittingly funny. Before he eventually assumes his guardsman's guise, and a short curly hairpiece, he performs a tour-de-force called "The Actor's Fantasy," in which he fantasizes himself, with an appropriate display of melodramatics, first as a fearless jungle explorer, then as a smoldering desert sheik.
Dana Reeve is lovely to look at in designer Molly Reynolds' glamorous, fin-de-siecle costumes, and sings and acts the role of the restless Actress with a deftly assigned reality. But one too rarely sees any evidence of the tantalizing temperament or the varied emotional color that has made this woman of the world cum dramatic diva so exciting to so many men. Reeve is at her most endearing and sly in the duet with her Dresser and confidante, "You Have The Ring," as she attempts to justify a romantic rendezvous. And you would have to be heartless not to be warmed by the voices of Reeve and Cuccioli, as they cling together like Jeannette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy for the reprise of "My One Great Love."
More inventively assigned to propel the action is the character of the Playwright, who weaves in and through the twists and turns of the plot as a co-conspirator and provocateur. Mark Jacoby plays the Playwright in the manner of a worldly and roguish Noel Coward. He succeeds by completely seducing both the players and the audience with his stylish, sophisticated presence and with his innuendo-filled bon mots.
Enter the Guardsman works surprisingly well with only seven characters. Three minor characters -- a wardrobe mistress (Kate Dawson), a wig master (Russell Ferracane), and an assistant stage manager (Buddy Crutchfield) -- share one of the wittiest and silliest musical numbers in the show, "She's A Little Off," in which they take turns tearing apart the Actress' performance. And as the Playwright so wisely sums up close to the show's conclusion, "You have to hand it to romance. What it lacks in originality, it makes up in repetition." Maybe that's enough.
