So much time, money and love have been lavished upon freeFall Theatre’s Mame, you can’t help but regret noticing that this 1966 musical is only mildly satisfying. Even with Matt McGee’s fine portrayal in the title role, and director Eric Davis’ pull-out-all-the-stops staging, this is a show that lacks substance and suspense in Act One, and then rushes through Act Two just when we’re finally getting interested.
As for comedy, there are a few wonderfully funny moments here and there surrounded by cheap gags, tepid gags, and gags we saw coming from a hundred miles away. Still, Davis and company treat this relatively unimportant artifact of musical history as if it were Oklahoma, West Side Story and Sweeney Todd combined, and the large cast features several actors who turn in splendid professional work. There are three or four memorable songs (out of more than a dozen by Jerry Herman), a roomful of sumptuous costumes by David M. Covach, and crackerjack musical accompaniment by a three-man onstage band led by pianist and musical director Michael Raabe. This production shimmers, gleams and glitters, even at its most lackluster. If good intentions were enough, we’d be vastly entertained.
As it is, we’re sort of pleased, and even grateful for the effort that’s clearly gone into a patently Major Production. The story (by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee) of little Patrick Dennis, who’s taken in by his Auntie Mame and taught that life should be a constant party, is likable enough to keep us interested through at least a fraction of the longish Act One. And then the puzzle Mame faces in the more suspenseful Act Two — how to dissuade grown-up Patrick from marrying a blueblood bigot — is genuinely problematic enough to earn our concern.
As Mame, McGee in drag is consistently amiable, though he’s limited by the insipidness of the dialogue he’s asked to speak, and seldom able to display the real wit of which he’s capable. As cute as he is in the role, 10-year-old Patrick, little William Garrabrant is a little hard to hear, but as Older Patrick, Nick Lerew is superb, persuasive, affecting. Other top performances are turned in by Lourelene Snedeker as Mame’s good friend, the lush Vera Charles, and Lulu Picart as Mame’s maid Agnes, who accepts a moral makeover in Act Two and then faces the consequences. Patrick Ryan Sullivan does a solid job as Mame’s comical Southern suitor Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, and Maya Naff, in the small role of Pegeen Ryan, is so charming, you can’t help but wish her a small musical of her own.
Among the songs, the rightly long-lived “Mame” is the most outstanding, though “We Need a Little Christmas” and “If He Walked Into My Life” are also, in different ways, stirring. Greg Bierce’s set is mostly bare, but the segmented screen behind center stage comments on the action with a delightful variety of movies and stills, from a cityscape of Manhattan to a horse-rider’s view of a wild foxhunt. Shain Stroff’s choreography is ingratiating if not very revelatory.
Since its inception, freeFall Theatre has stood for quality and more quality. But in the present case the relationship between play and production is just lopsided: Mame doesn’t deserve this much affection. It’s a minor creation with some serious flaws, and all the tinsel in the world can’t turn it into a luminary. See it and be dazzled, for the first minutes at least. Then wait patiently for more light.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2015.