[ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
If ever there were characters that didn\u2019t need to break into song \u2014 and therefore, shouldn\u2019t sing \u2014 it\u2019s the uneasy foursome of \u201cBob & Carol & Ted & Alice,\u201d Paul Mazursky\u2019s 1969 satire on modern sexual mores. On some level, the songwriters Duncan Sheik (music and lyrics) and Amanda Green (lyrics) must know they\u2019re dealing with essentially non-singing characters, because most of the songs in their new musical, \u201cBob & Carol & Ted & Alice,\u201d take place between the scenes to comment on what just happened. When characters do interrupt the action to sing \u2014 \u201cinterrupt\u201d being the operative word \u2014 they tend to coo at each other. The New Group production opened Tuesday at Off Broadway\u2019s Pershing Square Signature Center.<\/p>\n
Sheik appears to be channeling in his inner Burt Bacharach here, giving us soft, lulling tunes that have all the dramatic urgency of a babbling brook on Big Sur and, in effect, work to soften the satiric edge of Mazursky and Larry Tucker\u2019s screenplay. Much of Jonathan Marc Sherman\u2019s book is verbatim from that script about a couple, Bob and Carol, who engage in extramarital sex after attending an est-style therapy group on the California coast. The couple, played by Robert Culp and Natalie Wood in the film, attempts to justify their joint infidelities with double speak borrowed from the \u201cI\u2019m OK \u2013 You\u2019re OK\u201d school of pop psychology.<\/p>\n
Shocked by such openly adulterous behavior are their good friends Ted and Alice, played to mismatched perfection by Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon in the film. While Culp and Wood had the more difficult task of playing na\u00efve BSers on a social mission, Gould and Cannon stole the film by puncturing Bob and Carol\u2019s hip ingenuousness with good old-fashioned middle-class cynicism.<\/p>\n
Also Read:<\/strong> ‘Medea’ Theater Review: Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale Explode in Updated Greek Tragedy<\/p>\n In arguably the film\u2019s sharpest scene, the uptight Alice visits a psychiatrist to confront her intimacy issues. She makes a couple of Freudian slips \u2014 confusing the names Bob and Ted, saying that she \u201clikes\u201d her husband and \u201cloves\u201d her children \u2014 all of which leads to a major breakthrough, which is interrupted by the shrink repeatedly telling her that the session is over. It\u2019s a brilliant scene that epitomized the patient\/shrink relationship for years to come and wound up being copied ad nauseam in other movies and TV shows. Mazursky cast a real psychiatrist in the role, and he left long pauses for Cannon to fidget under that shrink\u2019s intense stare. Simply hilarious.<\/p>\n On stage, things are anything but sharp. Ana Nogueira plays Alice with a pouty surliness and Suzanne Vega plays the shrink, chucking aside for a moment her role as the show\u2019s singing and guitar-strumming narrator. Despite repeating most of the movie dialogue, the scene lacks the awkward, nervous, quirky energy of the movie. And to louse things up even more, Nogueira ends the scene by singing a soul-searching tune about her breakthrough. It completely blunts whatever humor remains from Mazursky and Tucker\u2019s script.<\/p>\n An earlier scene where Ted (\u201cThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel\u201d star Michael Zegen, giving the only competent performance) wants to have sex and Alice doesn\u2019t is even more seriously mishandled under Scott Elliott\u2019s lackluster direction. Again, a song ends the scene, explaining what just happened without a tinge of irony. And, after parroting much of Mazursky and Tucker\u2019s dialogue, Sherman changes one vital detail.<\/p>\n Against her desire, Alice agrees to have sex but doesn\u2019t at the last minute: She just got her period. In the movie, she doesn\u2019t have sex because she forgot to refill her Pill prescription and Ted accuses her of doing it on purpose, albeit subconsciously. In the movie, that Freudian interpretation of Alice\u2019s Pill blunder effectively sets up the shrink scene. On stage in the musical, the scene dribbles into yet another angst-infused ballad.<\/p>\n Also Read:<\/strong> ‘The Confession of Lily Dare’ Theater Review: Charles Busch Goes Back to Camp<\/p>\n In the movie, the scenes with Culp and Wood engage but don\u2019t ever become flat-out funny. The characters are too unconsciously duplicitous as they attempt to arbitrate the new rules of their marriage. In the musical, the scenes between Bob (Joel Perez) and Carol (Jennifer Damiano) engage only because they are flat-out embarrassing. Every tossed shirt, skirt or sock is a cue to look away. And the therapy group that breaks down their defenses so Bob and Carol can emerge as better (and more deluded) spouses is populated with\u2026people from the audience! They all looked trapped as Perez and Damiano emote their heads off over what\u2019s supposed to be a 24-hour therapy marathon. Simply ludicrous.<\/p>\n