A Class Act at Porchlight Music Theatre
★★☆☆☆
Porchlight Music Theatre. Music
and lyrics by Edward Kleban.
Book by Linda Kline and Lonny
Price. Dir. Stacey Flaster. With
ensemble cast. 2hrs 35mins;
one intermission.
Musical theater composer Edward Kleban had one great success before dying in 1987 at age 48: He wrote the lyrics to Marvin Hamlisch’s music for 1975’s A Chorus Line, winning the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize. But I don’t need to tell you that if you plan on seeing A Class Act, the well-meaning but clunky musical biography constructed mostly from the many, many songs Kleban composed for musicals never produced. The first characters onstage, ostensibly close friends of Kleban’s who are setting up his memorial service, mention A Chorus Line three times in the show’s first 60 seconds.
It’s not long before Kleban himself (a wildly mugging Bill Larkin) pipes up from the audience, here to listen in on his own funeral. And that’s where Linda Kline and Lonny Price’s meandering narrative begins to collapse in on itself. It’s never clear where the world of the play takes place—at the memorial or in ghost Ed’s head? Are the flashbacks to past relationships and beloved classes at the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop Ed’s memories or his friends’ recollections?
Kline, Kleban’s longtime companion, doesn’t shy away from his spikier elements in this 2001 piece; Ed’s presented as neurotic, quirky, needy, frustrating and grudge-bearing. Yet this life story leaves out too much. It begins with Ed’s commitment to a mental hospital in college, but we never learn what might have led him to become such a mess. More important, we don’t see the charisma that keeps his friends loyal through decades of assholish behavior. And the music on display here, though well performed by Stacey Flaster’s strong cast, isn’t terribly impressive. When Ed’s lifelong friend Sophie (Tina Gluschenko) “betrays” the frustrated composer by suggesting his lyrics just might not be as good as his music, you might be inclined to agree.—Kris Vire
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