One of the best Broadway scores of the 1950s was the music of “Kismet,” and no wonder. The songs, rich in gorgeous melody, were adapted from the works of Alexander Borodin.
Robert Wright and George Forrest, who took the music from such sources as the “Polovtsian Dances” and the D-Major String Quartet, were old hands at this kind of thing, having adapted the music of Edvard Grieg for their earlier hit, “Song of Norway.” And in “Kismet,” based by book writers Charles Lederer and Luther Davis on the 1911 play about the wily beggar-poet Hajj of old Baghdad, they found a perfect setting.
Revived in high style and with high energy for its arena-style stage by Marriott’s Lincolnshire Theatre, the musical, despite a second-act lull, is a pleasure from beginning to end. It’s wonderfully cast, sumptuously designed and, as usual at Marriott, beautifully sung.
And what songs there are to sing: the lilting “Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” the rousing “Not Since Nineveh” and the ravishing quartet, “And This Is My Beloved.”
Susan Moniz and Tony Capone, as the tale’s young lovers, sing the dickens out of their “Beloved” parts, and they soar again in the show’s signature tune, “Stranger In Paradise.”
Timothy Nolen, gesticulating with the skill of a con man-magician and sending his big voice booming out with splendid handling of the lyrics, is a marvelous Hajj (despite his 20th Century haircut); and Alene Robertson, playing the Arabian Nights role of the buxom Lalume with a touch of a been-around-the-block burlesque queen, is his lusty love interest.
James FitzGerald, doing his camping out routine, flounces around as the comically corrupt Wazir; and Tom Roland, using skilled timing, dispenses the wit and wisdom of the old poet Omar Khayam.
Dominic Missimi’s direction, aided by the choreography of Harrison McEldowney, gives the production both lustrous pageantry and charming intimacy.
Encouraged by the opportunities for exotica that the story offers them, designers Thomas M. Ryan (scenery) and Nancy Missimi (costumes) have heightened the atmosphere with lavish use of silken canopies, pink-feathered palm trees and plenty of baubles and bangles for the harem ladies.
Neatly bookended by a silken dance duet performed by Scott Alan and Tait Runnfeld, this is a tale worth attending.
Allah be praised.
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“Kismet”
When: Through June 8
Where: Marriott’s Lincolnshire Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire
Phone: 847-634-0200
