`The Baker`s Wife” may not have been seen on Broadway yet, but this is one show that continues to rise as no piece of bread ever could.
In 1976, the musical ended a six-month, pre-Broadway tour at Washington D.C.`s Kennedy Center, where its creators, Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein, decided to close it rather than risk New York. It subsequently played regional theaters around the country, including the Woodstock (Ill.) Opera House, where it was directed by Michael Maggio.
Now, it has arrived on London`s West End in a smart new staging by the modern musical`s own Midas, Trevor Nunn. Will Broadway next beckon? It`s difficult to tell. For despite the best efforts of a talented team over more than a decade to lick this musical`s faults, the truth may be that ”The Baker`s Wife” is that good, solid show that resists all efforts to make it great.
The London premiere at the Phoenix Theatre provides the best opportunity thus far to assess the work, since it arrives with the full blessing of composer-lyricist Schwartz and book writer Stein. The pre-Broadway tour, by contrast, was marked by acrimonious changes of personnel, both in cast and directors, as producer David Merrick struggled to whip into shape what would have been his 90th Broadway production.
Nunn has proven himself a past master at salvaging troubled shows. After all, he rescued ”Chess” in London after Michael Bennett`s withdrawal and nursed it toward a three-year West End run. But his heart clearly was not in that show, or in the previous ”Starlight Express,” where Nunn functioned more as a militiaman supervising the troops than as a director devoted to his material.
”The Baker`s Wife” is something else again. From it`s opening Jacques Brel-like ”Chanson,” beautifully sung by Jill Martin as the wife of a cafe owner in 1930s France, Nunn`s affection for the work is everywhere apparent.
(It`s also the first show of his in which he has invested directly, via his company Homevale Ltd.) ”The Baker`s Wife” still may not fully succeed-Stein`s overlong book needs a further 20-minute trim and drastic
clarification of characters-but if it doesn`t find a public this time, it won`t be for lack of a director`s care.
The musical, inspired by Marcel Pagnol`s 1938 film ”La Femme du Boulanger,” takes place in a rural village in Provence marked by enmity and idleness and-of more immediate importance- without the baker it sorely needs. Suddenly, a new baker, Aimable Castagnet (Alun Armstrong), arrives, alongside his young, demure bride, Genevieve (Sharon Lee Hill). The villagers are ecstatic, and the local handyman Dominic (Drue Williams) intrigued. Smitten with a woman he imagines her older husband will never be able to satisfy, he whisks Genevieve away from the community, promising carnal pleasure as opposed to simple camaraderie, sexuality as against sincerity.
For Genevieve, however, the sexual sparks don`t suffice and, before long, she is pining for the decency of her husband over the braggadocio of her lover. In a song entitled ”Where Is the Warmth?”, she makes clear her decision and returns to the village to find the community newly at peace. As she and the baker arrive at the fulfillment that has eluded them, so, too, do the villagers, who have good reason to be happy: Having stopped baking in grief at his wife`s betrayal, Aimable is stoking the furnaces of his oven once more.
In these days of epic musicals about revolutionary events in France
(”Les Miserables”) and Vietnam (”Miss Saigon”), ”The Baker`s Wife”
must attract audiences conditioned to the musical spectacle in which Nunn has, to this point, specialized. And yet the virtues of this musical are similar to those of the baker himself. As Aimable sings about ”tak(ing) such pleasures in simple things,” it`s hard not to feel for the kind of old-fashioned book musical that weds melodic savvy to intelligent casting and direction.
The problem is that the book, good though it often is, ultimately weighs the musical down; missing are both the pungency and levity of Stein`s most celebrated credits, ”Fiddler On the Roof” and ”Zorba.” (His most recent Broadway show was the short-lived ”Rags.”) The first act runs 90 minutes, and Act 2 focuses on the community at the expense of the three principals.
Diehard feminists, too, may not be the only observers to chafe at the reconciliation, where Aimable`s greeting to his wife elicits from her a dotingly submissive reply. In these circumstances, it`s small wonder that Schwartz`s score has to work overtime to make sense of the wayward emotions.
Indeed, the show`s greatest strength is its music, which some may know from an album, recorded privately, released after the original production`s demise. (Paul Sorvino and Patti LuPone sing the main roles.) In this dreary year for London musicals, in which only Andrew Lloyd Webber`s ”Aspects of Love” boasts a score one wants to hear again, it`s a pleasure to hear music rife with ballads (the soaring ”Meadowlark,” the show`s signature song), ensemble numbers (the witty ”If It Wasn`t For You”), and the sort of zestful character-defining number (”Plain and Simple”) that more recent musicals, in their alleged sophistication, have all but abandoned. Schwartz`s work here surpasses his best known scores: ”Godspell,” ”The Magic Show” and
”Pippin.”
In Alun Armstrong, the creators have an ideal baker-a ruddy, classically trained performer at home both with Strindberg and Shakespeare (he was a memorable Thersites in the Royal Shakespeare Company`s 1985 ”Troilus and Cressida”) and in musicals (he was the original Thenardier in ”Les Miserables”). Like Jonathan Pryce and Rober Lindsay, two other performers to move recently from straight theater to musical bravura, Armstrong further proves that versatility in the best British actors knows no bounds.
Sharon Lee Hill`s Genevieve makes an appealingly limpid adulteress, her eyes forever cast downward, and she need feel in no way embarrassed that the baker`s wife also happens to be director Nunn`s wife. (They met on the London production of ”Cats.”)
