The expression “playing to the audience” took on a new meaning at Tuesday night’s premiere of “The Boy Friend.”
The broad, colorful musical, directed by stage legend and Oscar winner Julie Andrews, is a revival of the 1954 Jazz Age spoof in which Andrews got her start, and her loving touch was evident in the relentless attention to detail.
But the stage direction and overall tone had all the nuance of a comic book – even if “subtlety” isn’t a word often used when describing musical comedy.
Set in some nebulous time in the late 1920s or early ’30s, the first act opens with a quintet of giggling British girls discussing an upcoming costume ball. They’re attendees of Madame Dubonnet’s Finishing School on the French Riviera, and as you can imagine, they’re just dying to meet some clean- cut boys.
Leave it to the prissy Dubonnet (Nancy Hess) to scatter their fun, striding onstage with hilarious and overdone flourishes, sporting a comical, Americanized French accent. Her mouthy maid, Hortense (Bethe Austin), is another delight, deftly switching between brassy and coquettish without blinking.
Costume and set designer Tony Walton nails it right away: The girls’ flapper outfits immediately impress with their bold lines and Crayola harmony. Dubonnet and Hortense’s tall, feathery frocks effectively reinforce their characters’ overall absurdity.
The highly stylized sets look appropriately like New Yorker cartoons, elongated and curved with elegant black lines and splashes of color. Credit Walton again, who has worked with Andrews before on “Mary Poppins” and the 1971 film version of “The Boy Friend” (which starred, bizarrely, Twiggy).
Next we get to know our heroine, Polly Browne (a perky Jessica Grové). She’s one of those long-suffering types whose stringent millionaire father (Paul Carlin) won’t let her date for fear that men will steal her inheritance. To stave off loneliness and pacify her needling peers, Polly is reduced to inventing imaginary boyfriends via fake love letters.
Salvation arrives in the form of Tony Brockhurst (Sean Palmer), a pedigreed Oxford dropout masquerading as a messenger boy. He and Polly immediately click, spurring a spot-on rendition of “I Could Be Happy With You,” in which the orchestra gets its first chance to shine, and in which Grové and Palmer display palpable chemistry.
Still, in successive scenes the focus again widens to become as obvious and comedic as possible, squeezing in some creepy, philandering old men and “boys will be boys” antics. Impressive choreography distracts from the fact that it’s essentially a lot of attractive chest-thumping.
Despite a few lighting issues, the second act opens smoothly on the long-awaited ball, at which the entire cast is present in outlandish and monochromatic costumes, ready to dance the Charleston until their feet go numb.
When the inevitable misunderstanding is resolved (i.e. Polly and Tony finally realize they’re of the same social class), a clipped reprise ends the musical on a high note.
Ostensibly “The Boy Friend” is removed from issues of race or gender, and the happy, post-World War I vacuum in which it operates feels scrubbed-clean for contemporary audiences. But the unmistakable implication is that women are miserable without men.
“The Boy Friend” is certainly not the only piece of theater to present this view, but in 2006 it’s still pretty hard to swallow, even in a well-executed and beloved revival.
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-820-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
** 1/2 | “The Boy Friend”
MUSICAL COMEDY|Denver Center Attractions|Written by Sandy Wilson|Directed by Julie Andrews|Starring Bethe Austin and Paul Carlin|Buell Theatre at Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets|THROUGH MARCH 5|8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 30 minutes|$20-$62|303-893-4100, denvercenter.org, King Soopers stores or TicketsWest, 866-464-2626
