Jukebox musicals, shows that employ a pop composer or group’s backstory to get to his, her, or their songs, ride primarily on those songs, even the best of them, like “Jersey Boys” (The Four Seasons) and “Beautiful” (Carole King).
“Leader of the Pack,” now at New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse, is one of the earliest of the jukebox genre (1984), a pioneer of sorts. Built around songs written by Ellie Greenwich, who is a Pantheon creator of rock’n’roll tunes but isn’t as well known as King or Frankie Valli because she didn’t perform her work, the show has familiar hits galore, but in comparison with “Jersey Boys” and Beautiful,” its book by Anne Beatts, with help from Jack Heifner, seems perfunctory and primitive.
Potentially dramatic sequences from Greenwich’s life and career are mentioned then sluffed off as if economy can replace depth. Sure, the songs are the selling point, but without a compelling story, or even as Beatts tells it, an interesting one, the songs become the entire ball, or should I say “plate?,” of wax.
In Shea Sullivan’s production for Bucks County, there’s trouble there too. Lots of it.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t assets. Kyra Kennedy is terrific as Ellie. She creates empathy even when Beatts doesn’t give her much to work with, and Sullivan rushes that away or undercuts it by having too much activity in the background or, worse, surrounding the serious moment with a song.
In those instances, neither the song nor the story work because you don’t know where to look, and too often the song intrudes on the book scene without enhancing it. Both Ellie’s story and the production number are wasted. Neither has a chance to register and grab focus.
Let the show breathe, Shea. The material may be thin, but trust it more. Nobody needs to get out of the theater in 80 minutes. Give some thought to what’s going on stage so Ellie’s story can take hold and the musical numbers can have impact beyond being among the best any jukebox can offer.
Kennedy, pardon the borrowed expression, leads the pack. She is a solid actress, a clear and expressive singer, and a lead who can take and hold the stage. She commands you to watch her. And she’s capable of doing more if permitted to develop her scenes with Michael Evan Williams as writer partner and husband Jeff Barry or an important moment with Galyana Castillo as perennial pop favorite Darlene Love.
All I am saying is give Kyra a chance. Winning as she is, neither she nor Williams nor Castillo nor Jenny Lee Stern as her mother have space to build anything of substance. Sullivan regards the Bucks stage as Grand Central Station at rush hour — when she isn’t using it like a three-ring circus, which is more of a detriment. Even as a child, I preferred circuses that let you concentrate on and appreciate one act at a time.
Every performer I’ve mentioned so far — Kennedy, Williams, Castillo, Stern — proves capable of getting more into his or her part or moment. Stern is lucky. For two numbers in the last third of the show — “Why Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts,” begun as a torch song before launching into its usual rock’n’roll beat, and “Look of Love” (not the one you’re thinking of), Stern, this time playing a lounge singer at the Village Gate, is allowed to take and keep center stage without much interrupting her or preventing her from giving the songs the fullest heft they can get.
Stern’s spotlight is a telling moment in Sullivan’s production. It shows either that she can pause and give “Leader” the chance to breathe I suggest, or that Stern, a pro with oodles of presentational experience, took a “let her try and stop me” attitude and provided one of the few occasions where songs could be heard and much needed simplicity reigned.
Theater at last! Wit in the handling of “Why Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts” and genuine focus on Stern! Wonders do not cease.
But only briefly.
Jenny Lee Stern is not the only one in this “Leader of the Pack” cast who can blessedly rivet you to a spot and let you savor a moment or six.
Giuliana Augello is a constant knockout as a chain-smoking, city-tough Annie Golden.
With fleeting chances to make her mark before being whisked away or forced to go from one song to another without finishing the first, Augello, with her constant expression of “Don’t mess with me,” her clean, pure, textured vocals, and her ability to add some dance rhythm to her songs, brings consistent personality to a production that so desperately needs it.
The real Annie Golden, the one who continues to grace Broadway productions and TV series to this day, was not a lead singer in Ellie Greenwich’s time. She couldn’t have been. She would have been maybe 13 when Greenwich and Barry started charting.
When she was cast as herself in the original production of “Leader of the Pack,” she took the role of lead singer that belongs to Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes, Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las, and Dolores “La La” Brooks of The Crystals, the groups under producer Phil Spector’s aegis who sang most of Greenwich’s hits.
Augello now steps into that role with a delicious vengeance. Forget history. “Leader of the Pack” isn’t interested in telling it accurately anyhow. Greenwich’s songs, and the girl groups of the 1960s, needed someone dynamic in the front. Augello more than supplies that dynamism. The one regret is — one that doesn’t affect or comment on Augello, Kennedy, or Castillo —Sullivan has staged the hit tunes, possibly according to Beatts’ book, as a hit parade. Rarely, if ever, does Augello or Kennedy get the chance to show off their presentational savvy the way Stern does. Or Castillo, in “River Deep, Mountain High.”
No matter what the book says, or how much a perception Sullivan might have that speed is of the essence, a show that depends on hit songs many in its audience will know needs to have those songs performed fully and as their own entity, not as part of a montage or as commentary to a dramatic sequence that, in “Leader’s” case, also gets cheated.
The operative word, one that appeared earlier, is “undercut.” Sullivan cuts off numbers at their knees. Just as you’re dancing in your seat to one hit, its allotted eight bars are gone, and you’re grooving to a different one.
It doesn’t make sense. The music is the paydirt. A quasi-concert is fine in this setting, and Kyra Kennedy, Giuliana Augello, Galyana Castillo, Jenny Lee Stern, LaRaisha DiEvelyn Dionne, Sy Chounchaisit, and Elizabeth Yanick have the chops to give it to you with glory.
So many times in Sullivan’s production, their talent and Greenwich’s songs, which are also credited to Jeff Barry and Phil Spector, are wasted.
If short shrift isn’t the issue, a mid-show medley, overloading the stage, that three-ring circus I mentioned, is.
Take the mess surrounding a number that demands spotlighting, “Chapel of Love,” is reduced to. Having it be part of an actual wedding — Greenwich’s and Barry’s — is fine, but Sullivan doesn’t choreograph it to be watched. Ellie is busy getting prepared stage right while something else is happening stage left. No neatly measured time or focusing frame is given to the wedding, and one of Ellie’s biggest hits becomes background music instead of a potential show-stopper.
This kind of undercutting is the way to Sullivan’s world. You want to jump on the stage and institute some kind of traffic management. “You, stage left, get off!” “Reverse the procession, so everyone comes in facing and staying faced to the audience.”
Most of all, kill or diminish the byplay that plagues Sullivan’s production from minute one. Throughout “Leader,” characters are asked to make oversized gestures or odd facial expressions or go into to something akin to slapstick. My guess is all this business is meant to be comedy. Amateur night in Dixie is more like it.
The actor constantly hurt by this non-stop exaggeration of gesture is the generally reliable Danny Rutigliano. Yes, Sullivan aces his entrance, having him lying down and hidden by a piano while Ellie is looking for him, but for the most part, Rutigliano’s Gus Sharkey, a stand-in for Phil Spector, is made into a buffoon. More natural behavior on all fronts is advisable, especially when Beatts is as stingy as Sullivan in giving time to important scenes that involve Ellie and Jeff’s marriage or Darlene Love learning a song promised to her is going to Tina Turner.
It may be late to say it, but “Leader of the Pack,” on the strength of its music, however presented, and its talented cast, is entertaining, even if in spurts. Not because the talent fails — Even John Michael Peterson’s dancing earns appreciative notice — but because this “Leader of the Pack” seems more mired in concept than in creating a cohesive show.
A case in point, and the worst mistake of the production, are garish costumes by Chadd McMillan. Talk about exaggeration. From the crinoline slips dangling from the jumpers worn by Greenwich’s Vibrettes to the overdone colorfully patterned knit shirts and dance gear to which the male ensemble is doomed, the costumes are a horror. Only the final scene seems to get things right. Sullivan’s choreography is lively but shopworn.
Charlie Corcoran’s set allows Sullivan room to roam. Jeff Sherwood’s sound design favors the performers, a high compliment these days. Kirk Bookman’s lighting is excellent.
Leader of the Pack, Bucks County Playhouse, 70 South Main Street, New Hope, Pennsylvania. Through Sunday, July 20, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. $32 to $90. www.bcptheater.org or 215-862-2121.
