She Loves Me at Long Wharf Theatre
If you ask me…
By Tom Holehan
Connecticut Critics Circle
The Long Wharf Theatre, continuing their journey in creating site-specific productions, is currently celebrating the holidays with a somewhat slow and somber revival of She Loves Me. The musical is playing at a beautifully renovated space at the Lab at ConnCORP in Hamden as the theatre celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.
With music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and book by Joe Masteroff, She Loves Me is a nearly perfect little musical. A disappointment when it made its Broadway debut in 1963, it has since become a cult favorite with several successful revivals, the most recent produced by the Roundabout Theatre in 2016. The musical is an adaptation of a 1937 play Parfumerie and then the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner, starring Jimmy Stewart. More recently, the story became the basis for the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan hit comedy You’ve Got Mail in 1998.
Set in 1937 Budapest, the plot revolves around the employees of Maraczek’s Parfumerie. Clerks Georg (Julius Thomas III) and Amalia (Alicia Kaori), who pretty much loathe each other, are unaware that each is the other’s secret pen pal who met through lonely-hearts ads. Other employees in the shop include owner Zolton Maraczek (Raphael Nash Thompson), clerks Steven Kodaly (Graham Stevens) and Ilona Ritter (Mariand Torres), who are carrying on a not-so-secret affair, and delivery boy Arpad (Felix Torrez-Ponze), angling for a more significant position at the store.
On the plus side director, Jacob G. Padron has assembled a company of actors who excel at singing the glorious score. Indeed, the musical aspects of this production are its strongest element (the jewel box onstage orchestra adds immeasurably here, too). Unfortunately, during the book scenes, there is little if any connection between the actors who have all been directed so ponderously that the joy is drained from scene after scene.
The lack of chemistry between the pair of would-be lovers doesn’t help, but no one in the company seems to know that the musical is about the joy and the magic of being, finding and falling in love. So much of the acting here is often flat and unpersuasive. Only the boyish Torrez-Ponze’s ambitious Arpad seems to really engage with his lively character.
Still, those voices! Those songs! Kaori’s singing of the act one finale, “Dear Friend”, is mournfully beautiful and her performance of the second act’s “Ice Cream” is simply sublime. Thomas brings exuberance to the title number with all the joy missing from the rest of the show. ery late in the musical, “Twelve Days to Christmas” injects a healthy dose of exhilaration to the proceedings with the entire cast in top vocal form. Even Thompson, whose Maraczek is rather lifeless throughout, does well by his solo, “Days Gone By.” A directing note to just pick up the pace would have help turn this production into a fairly terrific revival.
Emmie Finckel provides a functional setting designing the new space with imagination and efficiency. Sarita P. Fellows’ costuming is on the money for all the characters and Jiyoun Chang’s fine lighting design concludes the show on an enchanting scene with the main lovers in a spot under falling slow. This one moment suddenly reminds us that, yes, this is a musical about true romance after all.
She Loves Me continues at Long Wharf Theatre at the Lab at ConnCORP, 496 Newhall Street, Hamden, Connecticut through December 30th. For further information and ticket reservations call the theatre box office 203.693.1486 or visit www.longwharf.org.
Tom Holehan is one of the founders of the Connecticut Critics Circle, a frequent contributor to WPKN Radio’s “State of the Arts” program and the Stratford Crier and Artistic Director of Stratford’s Square One Theatre Company. He welcomes comments at tholehan@yahoo.com. His reviews and other theatre information can be found on the Connecticut Critics Circle website: www.ctcritics.org.
