Sometimes gimmicks are overrated. Sometimes all you need are solid music, a semi-lucid story and the people to carry it off. That's what the Muny is giving us this week in "Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn". It's a new musical – this is only its second staging, the first being at the lovely little Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut – that evolved out of a 1942 film of the same name with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. The score was by Irving Berlin.
The contemporary practice of making a musical out of a movie is hard at work here, and fortunately, it's turned out very well. Some of the songs from the film have been dropped, although not, of course, "White Christmas", which made its debut here, a nostalgic song in the midst of a world war. But others from Berlin have been put in – a habit, as the program points out, that is vintage Berlin. ("Easter Parade"? It began as "Smile and Show Your Dimple" and the melody got reused 15 years later. See?)
The plot is fairly simple – a nightclub act, two guys, one a singer and the other a dancer, and the girl who works with both of them, put a new twist on the eternal triangle: Professional ambition rather than love. The singer, here Colin Donnell, wants to leave show biz and become a farmer in Connecticut. (This was when Connecticut was New York's mid-20th century idea of bucolic countryside, rather than a bedroom state.) The other two, dancer Noah Racey and Holly Ann Butler, the girl, take up an offer to play the Pump Room in Chicago. Farming, of course, doesn't go so well, and the singer rather inadvertently discovers he can turn his conveniently large farmhouse into an inn with a nightclub – that's only open on holidays. He's abettted in this by a local girl who, ahem, just happens to have left show biz to take care of an ailing parent and teach school. She's played by Patti Murin.
Just to make things perfect, Donnell and Murin are newlyweds in real life and the chemistry between them is obvious. Murin is a perfect 1946 school teacher, slightly prim and very in control of herself. Colin Donnell is far more believable in the role than Bing Crosby, who seemed in the film to be a depressed middle-aged man, ever was. It's Noah Racey, the dancer who has some very particular shoes to fill. It's really not fair to compare actors to famous folks who've done the same part – but Racey not only is a better wolf than Astaire ever was, he's a dancer in the same style, and fulfills that part of expectations quite fully.
In fact, this is far more of a dance musical than expected. Denis Jones' choreography is utterly delicious, of the period and yet imaginative, utilizing that huge stage as much as possible with its dramatics. The choreography is aided and abetted by the haberdashery and gowns of costume designer Alejo Vietti and associate costume designer Heather M. Lockard. For once the menswear gets as much attention as the women's – here we have gray flannel suits in the opening number, great fun, and then move on to, among other things both cutaways and tail coats. Gowns move beautifully and there are hats that probably were seen at Ascot in the Easter Parade number.
By the way, the film was indeed what the hotel/motel chain was named after.
A delicious piece montee, to use a culinary term, for a summer evening. Fingers crossed that the expected rains don't ruin this confection.
Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn
through July 12
The Muny
Forest Park
314-361-1900