The seasoned, the new, and the up-and-coming save the Bucks County Playhouse production of “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” from being blander than its underdone sets.
Bucks producers like to boast of how grand a show their directors, choreographers, and actors can slap together in two weeks. In “White Christmas,” the need for further rehearsal shows. Jeremiah James, playing one of the lead characters, is a wonderful crooner, but his songs on opening night had no traction. Richard Riaz Yoder’s choreography is lively enough, but some of his dancers can’t manage it, and others look self-conscious as they go through their paces. The show’s opening number seemed gimmicky and lacked focus. David Ives’s book falls flat, corniness overwhelming what could be sparkle.
In two more weeks, Hunter Foster’s production may take on some gloss, but for now, it depends on the trio I mention at the beginning to pass for even a semblance of a merry, bright Irving Berlin tunefest derived from two excellent movies, “Holiday Inn” with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby (1942) and “White Christmas” with Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye, and Vera-Ellen (1954).
Ruth Gottschall is the primary trooper at the rescue. The instant she comes on stage, Foster’s “White Christmas” takes on new light and new life.
Energy and assuredness are her secrets. Gottschall has her part as a harried innkeeper’s assistant with a show business background down pat. She’s so good, she enlivens everyone around her. Scenes and numbers including Gottschall have a perky wit and surefire tone that disappears when she’s in the wings.
Just standing behind a hotel registry desk, she establishes presence. Her first number, “What Can You Do with a General?,” the eighth in the show, is the least known and most dismissible of any in the Berlin score. Yet with Gottschall as its helm, it brushes away the cobwebs from the Playhouse stage and lets you know you’re at a real live musical.
Gottschall moves the production away from ordinary and shows that veteran know-how can prevail when all seems as if it might be irretrievably lost.
Best of all, her pizzazz is contagious. Doing “General,” James shows he’s more than a good-looking guy with a voice, and Jarran Muse as his sidekick takes on both verve and discipline that makes the ensemble work all the way around.
Gottschall works her magic again in “White Christmas’s” second act when she has a number with the female leads. Once more, it’s a minor piece from the Berlin songbook, “Falling Out of Love Can Be Fun,” but Gottschall has a way of forming a team with Ashley Blanchet and Kaitlyn Frank that rocks the house and gives Frank, in particular, her best moments in the production.
I always say there’s no pro like an old pro. Gottschall proves me right, as do Richard E. Waits as the general everyone wants to figure what to do with and Jay Aubrey Jones as a laconic Maine handyman who makes the most of his monosyllabic scenes and soars when he has lines or gets to sing.
Gottschall is the seasoned sparkplug. The “new” performer is equally exciting. Mackenzie Reff is as savvy as Gottschall about capturing and holding the spotlight. Her acting is sharp, and when she gets to sing, it’s more than her youth or precociousness that charm us. Reff has genuine talent.
The up-and-comer is Ashley Blanchet. She enters before Gottschall and begins the galvanization process so needed in the first 20 minutes of Foster’s staging.
Blanchet lifts the tone of the show with her first line from one of “White Christmas’s” best known and oft performed numbers, “Sisters.”
Suddenly, there’s a finished character on stage, one in control of her vocals, her posture, and how to make both count. Blanchet has command. There’s purpose in her approach and texture in her lines. Throughout the production, she grabs the attention when the four leads are on stage. Not by upstaging or doing anything excessive, but just by exuding a confident dignity and knowing exactly what to do with each lyric.
Blanchet’s performance makes you believe it when a telegram comes asking her to do a solo act in a New York nightclub. She and her character are more than one cut above the rest.
That doesn’t mean anyone is doing a bad job. I re-emphasize the haste with which the production was mounted and have confidence that six weeks of playing the piece will improve it immeasurably.
It’s obvious Jeremiah James will gain the stature Blanchet has. His first solo, “White Christmas” comes at an awkward moment early in the show, as if David Ives wanted to get past it and stuck it in a place that allows no build-up. In numbers that arise more organically, “Count Your Blessings,” the contrapuntal “How Deep is the Ocean?,” and the reprise of “White Christmas,” James is a more solid leading man. He is also convincing in book scenes that attest to his character’s sincerity.
Jarran Muse has to calm down a little — acting, singing, and dancing. His is the opposite problem from most of the cast. In a lot of sequences, Muse is just too much. Too much the flirt, too free a dancer, too careless and uninvolved to seem real as a friend or on stage partner to James, let alone someone who can commit to an exclusive relationship.
Kaitlyn Frank is another that time and repetition will benefit. She’s a welcome presence on stage, but she has to attain the dimension Blanchet exhibits to make the sisters a true team and give heft to comic moments spent taming her love interest, Muse.
Jesse Swimm is over the top but truly funny in his primary role. Nathan Lucrezio provides exactly what’s needed in each of his scenes. Kat Katona and Stephanie Eve Parker exaggerate their characters but ably provide comic relief.
David L. Arsenault’s set, the polar opposite from most Bucks Playhouse productions, markedly stymies the zest and cheeriness of “White Christmas.”
Ninety percent of “White Christmas” takes place at a winter resort in Vermont, yet I kept asking, “Where is Vermont represented on stage?” Not one tree, not one mountain appears anywhere in Arsenault’s design. And, except for one paltry instance, forget snow. It’s as if Vermont went barren for this production.
Sparse simplicity seems to be Arsenault’s rule. Yes, many Vermont scenes are set in a barn, yet it’s deflatingly grim to find the same ugly block of paneling, whitewashed sloppily, as the background for every scene, barn or not, at the general’s inn. Wasn’t there one bit of foliage, even on video, left over from “The Bridges of Madison County?”
OK, leave the barn pristine. It’s clear Richard Riaz Yoder needs room for his dances. Why, though, do neither the inn’s lobby nor a bedroom have a view? Or even a window? Playhouse sets are usually opulent and interesting. The only set Arsenault made pretty was the posh nightclub in which Blanchet sings solo.
Riaz Yoder has a flair for choreography, but he has to learn when enough is enough. His dances are dynamic. They have genuine vitality that gets you moving to beats and rhythms. They also have too much hand and leg motion. Like Hunter Foster often does as a director, Riaz Yoder has to watch excess so his work plays more cleanly and tastefully.
On this show, Foster’s work is fine. He just ran out of time before his production could gel. “Blue Skies” and Ruth Gottschall’s numbers show the intention. Again, a week from now, all should be settled and better.
Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, Bucks County Playhouse, 70 South Main Street, New Hope. Through Sunday, December 31, Tuesday through Thursday, 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m. and Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, 2 p.m. Tickets range $32 to $97. 215-862-2121 or www.bcptheater.org.
