Forget Lee Marvin. And forget Clint Eastwood – in fact, please forget Clint Eastwood. Paint Your Wagon, currently at the Muny, is nowhere near what the 1969 movie version forced upon us. It’s far more dazzling and sounds far more professional.
The show began as a 1951 Lerner and Loewe Broadway musical, before they had done Brigadoon and My Fair Lady. It was, it appears from looking in the rear view mirror, pretty radical for its time, with polyamory a part of the plot. It had a lovely score, the sort of music that was covered by other artists and made Top 40 lists. “They Call the Wind Maria”, for instance, was a big hit for crooner Vaughan Monroe, and appeared on the Kingston Trio’s first album.
But the original script was, in the words of Mike Isaacson, Muny artistic director and executive producer, “an amiable mess”. So around five years ago, The Frederick Loewe Foundation and playwright Jon Marans decided it was time for a rewrite of the book. Some familiar character names are there, and it’s still the Gold Rush in California, but mostly it’s a whole new world with a great (g)old score.
People are heading west to the gold fields, a motley variety, both from various parts of the United States yet to be rent asunder by the Civil War and across various oceans, and of various ethnicities. St. Louis was a major starting point – you can learn more at the Missouri Historical Society, including what they took along to eat – so it figures in the opening scene, as we learn the back stories on several of the characters. (There’s another, silent, tribute to our town in the first scene of Act II.) One of the strong points of the script is that it’s not just a boy, a girl, a song, a tiff, another song, and a happy ending. Slave and owner/brother, widower, a couple of European emigres, and more bring their lives to us. It’s primarily the story of men, logical given the time and reason for their going to California, but it doesn’t absolutely reek of testosterone. Women are fulcrums of many of the stories, even though they’re outnumbered in speaking lines and time onstage.
Matt Bogart plays Ben Rumson, the aforementioned widower around whom the story increasingly revolves. His chemistry with Mamie Parris, who’s married to another man, is palpable, even as he mourns his late wife.
Another good pairing, albeit not a romance is Allan K. Washington as Wesley, the slave, and Rodney Hicks playing H. Ford, a free black man.
Bogart, as Ben, has three of the big songs, the aforementioned “They Call The Wind Maria”, as well as “Wand’rin Star” and “I Still See Elisa”. It’s a perfect role for his big, agile voice. The fourth well-known song, “I Talk To The Trees”, belongs to Maya Keleher as Ben’s daughter and Omar Lopez-Cepero, his business partner, as part of their seemingly star-crossed romance.
Jon Marans, who gave us Old Wicked Songs, is credited with the new book, and he’s generally done a good job with it – while some outcomes seem foreshadowed, there’s still a tension. Josh Rhodes not only directed this production, he did the choreography, which certainly shows some homage to Agnes de Mille’s work on the original show. Michael Schweikardt’s scenic design worked well, especially when it, presumably by accident, blended in with the fading sun in the west. Costumes? At first one is thinking, “Oh, another dusty-colored group.” but Amy Clark’s work erupts in Technicolor when the dancing girls arrive, so brilliant one almost expects a black light scene.
There’s no question that the polyamory has been removed but there’s a great deal of modernity added in this take on the story. Politically correct? Yes, just like equality is.
Fabulous, occasionally flashy and extremely satisfying work from all concerned at the Muny.
Paint Your Wagon
through August 2
The Muny
Forest Park