Two years ago MetroStage inaugurated its new theater on North Royal Street with a three-singer musical revue based on songs by Maltby and Shire, a team who consistently turn out some of the most intriguing concept songs in the business.
Now Carolyn Griffin, MetroStage’s producing artistic director, closes out the second season in the new theater with “Closer Than Ever,” another revue of Maltby and Shire songs, this time sung by a cast of four with loads of help from pianist/musical director Howard Breitbart and singing bassist Dan Felton. It is an evening filled with highlights.
Richard Maltby, the first half of Maltby and Shire, is the lyricist, playwright and producer whose credits include "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Miss Saigon," "Song and Dance" and "Fosse." Shire is composer David Shire. Together they have had the Broadway hit "Baby" and the musical version of the movie "Big," which didn't do as well on Broadway but turned into a moneymaker in a national touring version directed by Arlington's Eric Schaeffer.
Their love songs never simply say, "I love you," or "I can't live without you." They are always more complex, more intriguing and more detailed. After an enigmatic opening number, this complexity is plain in “Closer’s” second song. It is a simple song, sung first to a woman by a man, who can't believe that if he loves her "She Loves Me Not."
Soon that woman is singing the same song to another man, in a duet not terribly different than other duets of unrequited love. This one becomes different, however, when the second man turns and sings "He Loves Me Not," creating a complicated triangle of mismatched sexual identities and preferences.
Director Brad Van Grack concentrates on the strengths of the individual songs, but in the process obscures whatever themes drove the creators of the original show to pick these particular songs.
In its original off-Broadway incarnation, the opening number "Doors" provided that theme with a set constructed of doors, although it was muddied by the title and final song. In Van Grack's vision, the set is now curtains and the songs stand on their own without much connection.
Four very talented singers and actors make up the principal cast. Tracy Lynn Olivera has been impressive recently in work at Signature Theatre ("Follies," "Mack and Mabel in Concert.") Russell Sunday is better known for his work at Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia, Md., earning a Helen Hayes Award nomination for outstanding lead actor in a musical.
Eileen Ward is another Toby’s regular and a Helen Hayes Award nominee, for work in Interact Theatre's production of "The Mikado." Jamie Zemarel has spent the last decade as a member of The Capitol Steps musical satire troupe.
Since the program doesn't identify which performer is which, here’s a guide:
*Sunday jumps up on a table top to demonstrate the plight of a lovesick boy who climbs onto the roof of his girlfriend’s house in a rainstorm just be to close to her, while his father and hers both wonder "What Am I Doin'?"
*Ward is the expert on the sexual practices of animals including "The Bear, The Tiger, The Hamster and The Mole."
*Zemarel is the "Good Guy" who sings about the temptations of cheating but the value of fidelity.
*Olivera tempts both pianist Breitbart in "Where" and bassist Felton in "Back on Base," tears up the place with anger over a breakup in "You Want to Be My Friend," and sings of the pleasure of secret assignations on the job as "Miss Byrd."
The two accompanists complete the cast. Felton steps out from behind his bass to participate in a paean to the virtues and pleasures of fatherhood with "Fathers of Fathers" and it’s a good thing he does. He is a successful singing actor as well as a bassist, having appeared in many local musicals.
In an evening of highlights, it is Zemarel's rendition of "If I Sing"
that tugs hardest at the heartstrings. Written by two sons of musicians who make their living in music, the song is about the debt sons owe to fathers who pass on a love of music. It is doubly affecting to realize that Zemarel is also the son of a musician. It is the most moving segment of an evening filled with great moments.