“Each elegant touch in the finest of taste.”
This is one of dozens of smart, sophisticated lyrics from the 1963 musical, “She Loves Me,” which in full disclosure I have to say is my favorite of any musical produced for the theater.
“She Loves Me’s” score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick exemplifies the three essential elements of songwriting — wit, literacy, and storytelling — both in Harnick’s words and Bock’s music. Its book by Joe Masteroff is smart and adult, unafraid to enter into tangents and depict an entire milieu while revealing a charming love story.
“She Loves Me” is the perfect musical, a model for structure and overall intelligence, and Denis Jones’ opulent, perceptive, flowing, funny, and romantic production for New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse capitalizes on every gem Bock, Harnick, and Masteroff provide a director and choreographer.
A perfect musical enjoys a perfect production. What can be better than that?
Bucks County Playhouse has a history of doing generally fine productions — it’s when it overdoes that it gets in trouble — and “She Loves Me” surpasses 2017’s “Guys and Dolls” as the best ever in a glorious era of high-level work I hope will continue when the current Playhouse leaders depart, as announced, after next year’s season.
“She Loves Me” and “Guys and Dolls” have more than their memorable productions in common.
They share a leading lady, the versatile Elena Shaddow, who as the complex Amalia Balash in “She Loves Me,” makes a stunning entrance, cementing her character’s presence of mind and resourcefulness, finds every touching, comic, tart, and warm note that humanizes Amalia, and sings Bock’s demanding range with vocal pyrotechnics while exuding all of Harnick’s sentiments, self-doubting or abrasive.
Shaddow is a delight who fully dramatizes Amalia’s demeanor as a shy woman who found romance via letters from a man she’s never met and wonders if he’ll like her when they meet and as a strong woman who can meet any verbal exchange, confessional or sardonic, with the required humility or fire. (Listen as she tells a colleague, Ilona, about her hopes for the love she has never encountered except by mail, or warns Georg, another colleague, how he will soon, at her hands, know all of Dante’s depths of hell.
Elena Shaddow does not work her miracles alone. Denis Jones has populated “She Loves Me” with a top-flight cast, each one of whom makes the most of the numbers Bock and Harnick generously provide for them. Even the chorus is flawless.
The minute Kate Rockwell, as the romantically experienced and worldly wise Ilona, makes her first comment to Kennedy Kanagawa’s marvelously puerile Arpad in “She Loves Me’s” first scene, you know she will do honor to the impressive array of Ilonas who came before her — Barbara Baxley, Rita Moreno, Sally Mayes, and Jane Krakowski.
Rockwell not only finds Ilona’s pert stylishness, she expertly nails the smart comebacks and innuendoes Masteroff’s script gives her. Rockwell is an Ilona who knows her way around the block and even figures out a way to not be burned by men who are less sincere than they are ardent. Her two big numbers, “I Resolve,” which includes Harnick’s great line, “I want to know why I never meet their mothers,” and tongue-twisting “A Trip to the Library” (my favorite in the show), are fantastic show stoppers in which Rockwell exudes bravura while staying in character.
Then comes Andrew Leeds’ feat at successfully making the male lead, Georg Nowack, live up to his modest admission of being “ordinary” while showing the myriad ways Georg is from ordinary — his general cheerfulness, his tact with people, his openness, and his sensitivity towards art and talent for expressing, especially in the love letters he unwittingly sends to Amalia.
A spoiler alert is not needed here. It’s quickly clear that Georg and Amalia are the people who have fallen in love with each other via letters they’ve exchanged since Amalia answered Georg’s ad in a newspaper’s lonely hearts section.
A lot of “She Loves Me,” like its movie predecessor, “The Shop Around the Corner,” 1940 with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan,” and “You’ve Got Mail,” 1998 with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, revolves around Georg and Amalia bickering cattily at the Budapest parfumerie where they work even as they relish each letter the other sends them.
Leeds is an affable, likable Georg who can be cross at times but generally conveys the friendly, open spirit that makes him such a success with the customers at the parfumerie.
Like Shaddow and Rockwell, Leeds, who hasn’t been in a musical since he was a child, is marvelous in his production numbers, wringing both Georg’s concern and excitement from “Tonight at Eight” and displaying all the exuberance in the one song that has traveled from “She Loves Me” to popular culture, the title song, “She Loves Me.”
Leeds has his audience rooting for Georg and understanding both his angst and ire from the beginning. Shaddow wins the audience over more gradually once they see Amalia has feelings and standards beyond the edge she initially displays.
Together, Leeds and Shaddow mesh. You see the love they have for their pen pals even as Georg and Amalia spar at work. You see the people underneath their individual personas, the people who can appreciate Shaw, Flaubert, Chopin, and Renoir and share that appreciation.
Being lively and smart, affectionate and vicious, sweet and edgy simultaneously on stage is more difficult than it sounds. Leeds, Shaddow, and Rockwell manage it seamlessly.
And still they’re the tip of an iceberg.
Clyde Voce falls right in line being so unapologetic and playful as the cad who stymies Ilona and drives his employer to desperation, you see how his character, Stephen Kodaly, gets away with his willful perfidy.
Voce is another charmer. His numbers, “Ilona” and “Grand Knowing You,” both comebacks after Kodaly is caught being naughty, are two more highlights of Jones’ wonderful production.
I like it best that Voce never cracks or hints towards contrite remorse. He’s a successful man about town, proud of his irresistibility, and he lets the world know it.
Kennedy Kanagawa could not be more adorable or beguiling as Arpad, the teenage delivery boy as much in love with his bicycle as any human, who sees an opportunity to advance as both a professional and adult.
Kanagawa’s timing and physical ability adds to an astute performance that makes Arpad (a character I played in 1970), as integral to Jones’ production as any character. His poise and vocal tricks as he wends toward manhood and his quick rejoinders entertain and give you a glimpse that Arpad has quite a future ahead of him
I have haunted productions of “She Loves Me” across the U.S. and U.K. since I started going to the theater in 1967, and I have never seen a better more complete, more integral Sipos than the one Brian Ray Norris presents in this production.
Sipos, like Arpad, can become a peripheral character.
Not in Norris’ hands. Sipos calls himself a toady and a coward, but Norris portrays him as the reliable soul his colleagues can depend upon for stability and good advice. He is not someone who kowtows for the sake of peace and job preservation. Norris makes him a confidante and raisonneur. It’s impressive to see the depth he brings to the part and fun to watch him in his big number, one filled with existential perspective and, fittingly, called ‘Perspective.”
Masteroff, Bock, and Harnick make room for a grand slapstick number between the headwaiter in a romantic Budapest cafe and a bumbling busboy. Jones, with the help of Patrick Richmond as the headwaiter and Nik Hagen as the hapless yet randy busboy, turn the bit into a work of comic art, Richmond finding the archness in Harnick’s lyric while bordering between dignity and buffoonery, Hagen being a gymnastic and situational wonder.
As with his direction, Jones’ choreography is elegant, tasteful, and when warranted, funny.
Philip Hoffman has been giving astute performances throughout a long career in the theater. His portrayal of Mr. Maraczek, the parfumerie owner whose boulevardier spirit is threatened by a nagging worry, is another in the collection, suggesting youth and spryness while conveying age and care.
In everything they do, including the blissfully chaotic “12 Days to Christmas” number, Lizz Picini, Candice Hatakeyama, Sissy Bell, Nigel Jamal Hall, and Nik Hagen enhance Jones’s show by dancing up a storm, displaying shoppers’ attitudes, and being wittily coy.
“She Loves Me” is the perfect musical, because unlike the shorthand stuff we get in the 21st century, it takes the time and has the knowhow to be complete. The central love story has tangents that touch every character to create an ensemble and not just a background. Everyone on stage gets to be noticed and shine, and every ancillary story and song is as important and interesting as the relationship between Amalia and Georg.
Oh, if only all musical can have the qualities of this one, and all productions be as precise, astute, and amusing.
Adding to the pleasure is Anna Louizos’ fabulous set in which large pieces are moved to form whatever location is needed. The lavender façade of the parfumerie, the wooden deco window design, the display cases, everything is as I said at the beginning, elegant and in the finest of taste.
Gregory Gale’s costumes match Louizos’ set in perfection. Ien DeNio’s sound design brings Shaddow’s and other vibrant voices to life. Kirk Bookman’s lighting creates the right mood for every scene.
Just thinking of Jones’ production and Shaddow’s glissandos and runs makes me want to attend every performance.
She Loves Me, Bucks County Playhouse, 70 South Main Street, New Hope, Pennsylvania. Through Sunday, September 14. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. $32 to $74. www.bcptheater.org or 215-862-2121.
