©The Bergen Record
Nov. 2, 2001


How They Did Romp Porter's Sophisticated Silliness
By Jim Beckerman

It's a paradox that America's most sophisticated pop songs - the classics that make up the Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald songbooks - mostly come from 1930s shows so harebrained that they make the average episode of Gilligan's Island seem like Moliere.

Red, Hot and Blue features some of Cole Porter's most celebrated tunes, including "Down in the Depths on the Ninetieth Floor," "It's De-Lovely," and "Ridin' High." And the plot? It's about the search for a woman with a waffle-iron burn on her behind. No, I'm not making this up.

It's a pity that Michael Leeds, the director of the Paper Mill Playhouse revival of Red Hot and Blue, has elected to dumb the songs down to the level of the show rather than raise the show to the level of the songs.

Most of the numbers here are so busy with choreography, set changes, and "business" that they're virtually thrown away. Songs such as "Down in the Depths" and "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love," which should be delivered as simply as possible - and directly to the audience - are given so much forced sizzle that the steak disappears (not to mention the lyrics, which are sometimes inaudible).

In the best of circumstances, today's audiences would have to bring a bit of historical imagination to this show.

Broadway was a very different place back in 1936, when Red, Hot and Blue first saw the light of day. Shows were about great songs, big stars, lavish production numbers, and lots of women's legs. The plot, what there was of it, served roughly the function of the string in a rope of pearls. It got you from one jewel to the next.

Of these ingredients, Paper Mill Playhouse still has the songs (along with such additional Porter hits as "Just One of Those Things" and "You Do Something to Me" thrown in for good measure). Also, the ridiculous plot with its debutantes, convicts, conniving politicians, and wheezy jokes. What it doesn't have are stars. Talent, yes, but stars, no.

You have to credit Bruce Adler, Debbie Gravitte, and Jim Walton. These able folks, through no fault of their own, are fighting an uphill battle simply because they happen not to be Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman, and Bob Hope, the show's original big names. Not only were these performers famous, but as "personalities," their characters were familiar to audiences before the curtain went up. It takes a third of the show for Adler to make the kind of sensation Durante would have made with his first haa-cha-cha.

It's a tribute to Adler that he's able to do so at all, but he does. His classic Act 1 routine, where he cross-examines himself on the witness stand, flying in and out of the chair as he demolishes his own defense, itis great hokum, delivered with real vaudeville flair.

Gravitte has her rousing Bette Midler moments, particularly a lively "Ridin' High" that is her first-act closer. And Walton, in the Hope part - the least written of three underwritten roles - manages to sneak some expert schtick in between the lines. During the song "De-Lovely," a paean to married bliss, he pantomimes scraping his wife's cooking into the garbage.

The three other big roles are capably filled: Michael Gruber turns on the lounge-lizard charm as an ex-con named Fingers, Stephanie Kurtzuba is the shrillest floozy since "Singin' in the Rain's" Jean Hagen, and Felicia Finley is in good voice as the well-bred society lady.

Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography comes to brief, sultry life in the second act opener, "I'm Throwing a Ball Tonight," but much of the dancing here is peppy, cornball stuff.

That rather tacky quality extends to the production design. Sets that might have been the opportunity for a little art deco elegance become instead, as conceived by Kenneth Foy, something like "Madeline" illustrations cut out with blunt scissors. The costumes by Ann Hould-Ward are a hit-and-miss affair. The prison-stripe ensembles for the guys are clever, but leading lady Gravitte is forced to take center stage in a series of gowns that look like bad Christmas wrapping.

Red, Hot and Blue is, in essence, a very strange mixture of sophistication and crudity. Here, unfortunately, crudity has won out.


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