Starting in the 1960s, the American musical began to take on a daring new subject: real life.
From the carnivorous corporate climbers in Frank Loesser’s “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (1961) to the romantically disillusioned swingers in Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” (1970), the new musicals eloquently addressed the travails of everyday urban living.
One show, however, summed up modern-day alienation better than most, and it’s receiving an exceptional concert revival at the Auditorium Theatre, as part of the ongoing Ovations! series. Even with minimal staging and a tightly pruned script, the concert version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Promises, Promises” (1968) disarmingly explores such contemporary themes as office romance, serial infidelity and life in the rat race.
Based on Billy Wilder’s classic film “The Apartment,” the Bacharach-David musical achieved its greatest acclaim for two hit songs: the title tune and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” both famously recorded by Dionne Warwick. But the best musicals amount to much more than the sum of their hits, and “Promises, Promises” proves the point.
Like the film, the stage musical mercilessly portrays a dog-eat-dog world in which the executives of a insurance company apply enormous pressure on a junior executive–so that they can use his bachelor pad for quick encounters with office secretaries. The more frequently the rising exec provides the keys to his apartment, the faster his career ascends. But when the young fellow realizes that he and his boss are on a romantic collision course, both pursuing the same woman, a personal crisis looms.
Inspired by Neil Simon’s witty, bittersweet script, Bacharach and David penned a score that sounded characteristically light and airy but packed an unmistakable dramatic punch. Whimsical little tunes such as “She Likes Basketball,” a song of romantic discovery, are counterbalanced by devastating numbers such as “Wanting Things,” a paean to greed.
Ultimately, the musical is more difficult to sing than it might seem, largely because its dramatic arias cannot be too overwrought for the contemporary setting. Everything about the show, in fact, must feel coolly understated and modern to the core.
And that’s the marvel of this version, sleekly directed by Marc Robin to convey the melancholy beneath the surface. None of the performances is more compelling than Susan Moniz’s portrayal of Fran Kubelik, a decent woman badly treated by a man unworthy of her. Beyond the sheer beauty of her sound, Moniz makes the confused Miss Kubelik seem as vulnerable and decent a heroine as the show’s writers must have intended. Jason Graae proves comedically nimble as the hapless junior executive, and the great George Hearn conjures up just enough bluster to render the boss, an obnoxious lady-killer, insufferable.
With the top-notch instrument and vocal forces sensitively conducted by Kevin Stites, Bacharach and David’s musical doesn’t simply sound good–it feels almost as fresh as if it were written yesterday.
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“Promises, Promises” plays through Sunday at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy; phone 312-902-1500.
