Friday, June 20, 2025

 



Beck’s THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM encapsulates pseudo-violence, desire, innocence in blue-grass and farce 
 
Like the old tale, my lord: "it is not so, nor `t was not so; but, indeed, God forbid it should be so."
 
The intimate Beck’s Studio Theatre is a perfect venue for meeting and greeting THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM a blue-grass, farcical musical with a book and lyrics by Alfred Uhry and music by Robert Waldman. 
 
The story is based on the 1942 novella by Eudora Welty, which is based on a German fairy tale by the Brother Grimm.   
 
This is a tale of a wealthy businessman, his shrewish second-wife, his beautiful spoiled daughter, a handsome but dastardly polite bandit and a bunch of legendary figures, some real and some invented by Eudora Welty, that takes place in the Natchez Trace.  (Yippie, do-da day!)

The first Broadway production, which was directed by Lorain, Ohio native Gerald Freedman, who later headed the Great Lakes Theater, opened in a limited engagement on October 7, 1975.  

It ran for 14 performances and 1 preview before setting out on a one-year US national tour.

Its success on the road convinced the producers to mount a revamped Big Apple production with an extended book and expanded, heavily bluegrass-tinged score. The music, deemed "country and southern" was arranged for guitar, fiddle, mandolin, bass and banjo. (Yah, that there twangy sound!)


This second Broadway production opened on October 9, 1976 where it ran for 145 performances and 12 previews. 

The tale starts with Clemment Musgrove, the wealthiest planter on the Natchez Trace arriving in town only to have all of the townsfolk trying to steal his money. He finally makes it to a hotel. Little Harp, a largely unsuccessful robber, plots with his brother, Big Harp, who is only a head that he keeps in a briefcase, about how they can steal Musgrove's money.  (You think two heads are better than one?)

The duo eventually devisies a plan in which they will  kill him in his sleep. (Owww...scary!)


Jamie Lockhart, rescues Musgrove from the Harps by tricking Little Harp into thinking that he killed them and their ghosts attack him. Grateful, Musgrove invites Jamie to his home for dinner and for the chance to meet and woo his greatest treasure, his daughter, Rosamund. (Daddy...the matchmaker.)

Farce is difficult to do.  Many parts of the Beck production, directed by Scott Spence, which has great choreography and musical staging by Lauren Marousek, are nicely set up for the telling of the ridiculous, melodramatic tale of overwrought and unbelievable love and lust.  Others are missing. 

It features a fine, though, at times overly loud enthusiastic orchestra (Evan Kleve, David Nicholson, Jesse Hogson, Michael Simile and Jason Stebelton), which sometimes drowns out the words of the songs, under the direction of Larry Goodpaster.  

Standout cast members are Nic Rhew as Jamie Lockhart, the Gentleman Robber, who possesses a fine singing voice, and, as required, is tall, dark and handsome, Izzy Baker, as the blonde, beautiful, air-headed femme-fatale Rosamund, the daughter of the wealthy Clemment Musgrove, and Jordan Potter, as Musgrove, the wealthy planter. 

Seth Crawford, he of slight body and puppy-dog eyes, over-does, much to the audience’s delight, the roll of Goat, the “dumb boy” who is enlisted by her step-mother Salome (Ruby Moncrief-Karten) to carry out her ill-planned scheme to kill Rosamund.  Too bad others didn’t take Crawford’s lead, or weren’t directed to let totally loose.

Trad A Burns must have cleaned out all of the antique shops in Lakewood in order to build the marvelously ambitious rustic set!

Capsule judgement:  THE ROBBERBRIDGE GROOM is a farcical, nonsensical piece of blue-grass musical theatre fluff, which gets a” funish” production at Beck.

The show runs through June 29, 2025.  For tickets call 216-521-2540 or go to beckcenter.org

Next up at Beck:  7/11-8/10—CHORUS LINE—The dance centric musical that changed the American musical theatre.  Picture a bare stage, and all the dreams of Broadway performers lay before you. This time, you “gotta get it,” in honor of the 50th anniversary of this Broadway favorite.   (A classic that must be seen and reseen!)
 
A BELATED CONGRATULATIONS TO EDWARD GALLLAHER ON HIS APPOINTMENT AS PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE, LARRY GOODPASTER AS VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS, and JULIE GILLILAND, VICE PRESIDENT OF INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCMENT AT BECK CENTER FOR THE ARTS.