As pleasant as Sheryl Kaller’s production of “A Walk on the Moon” is, and as vibrant as Jackie Burns’s performance is in the lead role, the musical currently playing at New Brunswick’s George Street Playhouse can’t escape being old-fashioned in ways that make it seem dated rather than nostalgic.
Although I am one who often longs for a new musical in an old-fashioned style that uses classics from the 1950s and ’60s as paradigms, “A Walk on the Moon” struck me as shopworn. It offers a lot of dramatic situations — adultery, a teen who wants to be independent from her parents, the change in attitudes and mores associated with the 1960s, when the show is set — but they muster no depth or intensity. Everything that has the potential to boil into something interesting comes off as tepid and comme il faut.
That’s because “A Walk on the Moon” is not only old-fashioned in its structure and approach to the material book writer and co-lyricist Pamela Gray first presented in a 1992 movie with the same title, but because the sensibilities of the characters and the convenience with which they find solutions for their moral, parenting, and social dilemmas are so neatly middle-of-the road and expected.
Not once during the show do you fear for anything but a happy ending and return to life as usual. Threats to the peace and stability of the primary family depicted, the Kantrowitzes of Brooklyn, are genuine and common to many families and the time “A Walk on the Moon” covers, but the show provides no bite, no depth, no cause for concern or angst for the Kantrowitzes or their relationships to one another. Even a romance generates ample warmth but little heat.
“A Walk on the Moon” is set at a Catskills resort where New York city dwellers rent bungalows for the summer, the children and wives staying at the camp full-time while the men arrive for weekends after spending their week at work. Kaller, set designer Tal Yarden, and costumer Linda Cho get all of the details of Dr. Fogler’s Bungalow Colony perfect from the cabins that need a coat of paint to the mah jongg games, messages from the loudspeaker, berry picking, and various social activities in which the denizens partake.
The summer Gray and composer-lyricists Paul Scott Goodman and AnnMarie Milazzo show us is 1969, the year of the moon landing, Chappaquiddick, and Woodstock, which convenes a few miles from Fogler’s.
Change is the theme of the time, and the three incidents are landmarks of a time that includes continuation of the Vietnam War and protests against it.
Gray, Goodman, and Milazzo make use of these events, but while the moon walk becomes the catalyst for a major plot development, and footage from Vietnam, in projections designed by Yarden, provides some texture, only the nearby Woodstock festival has important consequence to the musical.
The other historical moments are just background, Chappaquiddick only a mention as the three women Pearl Kantrowitz (Jackie Burns) communes with the most discuss it briefly during a walk.
It’s OK that history doesn’t overly impinge, but the fleeting attention given to it parallels the simplicity of emotion and generally shallow handling of matters that truly affect Pearl, such as her attraction to a hippyish vendor who peddles blouses at Fogler’s, the rebellious nature of her daughter, Alison (Carly Gendell), an example of 1969 woke, and the sharp eye of her mother-in-law, Lillian (Jill Abramovitz), who is aware of Pearl’s dalliance.
For all that goes on, “A Walk on the Moon” stays surprisingly inert.
As noted in the beginning, Kaller’s production is easy to watch. Following Pearl’s story, witnessing her problems, and taking in the Catskills atmosphere, occupies without boring, but it never brings you to the edge of your seat or moves you in any particular way, even when Pearl and her paramour, Walker Jerome (John Arthur Greene) — a few jokes about that name being backwards — have a steamy scene or Pearl and her daughter catch each other in a place neither is supposed to, or likely, to be.
Benign contentment is the best George Street’s “A Walk on the Moon” can offer, but that doesn’t mean Kaller’s production does not have some outstanding attributes.
One is the performance of Jackie Burns as Pearl. The best moments of Kaller’s staging are when Burns gets to let loose and express whatever emotion this production allows.
From lights up, Burns establishes Pearl and an intelligent woman, more attractive than most of her peers at Fogler’s, who is happy with her middle-class Brooklyn life and for a summer away in the mountains.
Burns musters the intensity that is missing from the rest of the show. She compels you to listen to her solo numbers, makes you like Pearl, whatever she does and whatever upheaval she might be causing, and arouses curiosity to see how she will handle what comes next.
Burns is canny in being able to convey subtle doubt and shame even as she pursues an affair that can spoil an existence she didn’t realize was lacking until an opportunity for something different emerged. She commands center stage, which helps other strong cast members, Abramovitz and Gendell in particular, create occasional dramatic headway.
Abramovitz shows wisdom as a mother-in-law who wants to fix her son’s troubled marriage rather than sabotaging it. In her performance, you see the Jewish grandmother who wants to spoil everyone while savoring a woman of experience who engineers a tense situation into one that promises hope.
Gendell channels every difficult teenager who is caught up in current trends and attitudes but distinguishes herself by being smart enough to get past her causes and conformity to see reality when it dawns.
Megan Kane, Blair Goldberg, and Stephanie Lynn Mason are reminiscent of neighbors who can be friends but have opinions, some disapproving and scolding, of what they see about them. Kane is particularly lively, while Goldberg is shrewd, and Mason has a welcoming spirit.
Jonah Platt is amiable in the average Joe way in the thankless role of the cuckolded husband who has to balance his hurt and anger with prevailing love and a sense of what he wants for his family.
Excellent performances are turned in by Wesley Zurick as the teenage suitor for Alison’s affections, and Maya Jacobson as a religious teen who longs to break out a little.
And the above mentioned Greene is fine as “the blouse man” who interrupts Pearl’s easy life, but his lines, costume, and carriage reinforce the idea the “A Walk on the Moon” is more cliché than refreshing.
Goodman and Milazzo’s music is derivative of the ’90s more than the ‘60s, complete with lyrical phrases ending in jarring minor notes, a trend I was glad to see disappear. Most of the songs are about situations, and the lyrics tend to be more declarative than poetic, but two songs for Pearl, one at the end of each act, “Ground Beneath My Feet” and “Not Willing to Lose” go beyond standard as Broadway tunes. Gendell also has a special moment with “Yesterday Today.”
Josh Prince’s choreography often picks up the pace, especially in the excellent “Woodstock” number. Robert Wierzel’s lighting adds texture and mood to the show. Leon Rosenberg’s sound design resists the overmiking that plagues so many productions.
A Walk on the Moon, George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, 11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick. Through Saturday, May 21, Wednesday through Saturday, 8 p.m., and Thursday and Saturday, 2 p.m. $25 to $95. 732-246-7717 or www.georgestreetplayhouse.org.
