'Swonderful, marvelous - Wonderful Town @ Harvard

As visitors to this blog may know we've taken many pilgrimages up to Harvard over the past three years to see a variety of student productions, and this weekend saw the Bernstein/Comden & Green show Wonderful Town, a fairly obscure musical from the '50s in which LB was clearly figuring out some things that would later come into full fruition in West Side Story - but it's a still a piece with plenty of merit and interest in its own right. The story (based on the source material, more familiar as a straight drama, My Sister Eileen) about two sisters who leave Ohio for NYC where one, Eileen, hope to make it as an actor-dancer-singer and the other, Ruth, as a writer. A great theme treated in so many literary, dramatic, musical venues - La Boheme, aka Rent, being the ur-version I think - and that still strikes home, especially for a college crowd. I have to say this production, directed by family friend Susanna Wolk, was probably the best amateur theatrical musical we've ever seen - in fact, better in many ways that many professional shows I've seen. Anything it may have lacked in production values was more than made up for by the liveliness and excitement of the performances and the performers, the exuberance, the crisp timing, and the sheer fun of this show - I wish they could keep it live and take it on tour or something, such a shame that it had only a six-show run at the Loeb (back to school for all, I guess). Among the many great moments in the show: Ruth Sherwood, played by the extraordinary Elizabeth Leimkuhler, riding the subway in pantomime, the NYC cops singing an Irish love ballad to the beautiful Eileen (who confesses she's not Irish), the most uncomfortable dinner conversation in the world with the sisters and multiple suitors in the Village ground-floor apartment, Justin Pereira in drag as a hilarious and busty Mrs. Wade. Great #s were many, even though the only song well-known on its own is Ohio: others were What a Waste of Time and Money, a fine ensemble of ambitious NYC arrivals consigned to menial jobs, and most of all, in my opinion, two #s in which Leimkuhler really killed: Conga (at times she's singing while being held upside-down) and Swing (she transforms through the course of the song from a bored and affectless kid into a soulful jazz belter) - you really can't take your eyes off her. Her counterpart, Tess Davison as Eileen, also great in Ohio and other #s, and the two play off each other crisply all the time, thanks to S. Wolk's sharp and astute ear for both comedy and pathos. Special kudos also to music director Madeline Smith and choreographer Hazel Lever - the music and the many dance #s are far beyond anything I've ever seen in a student show. Overall, a totally fun theater evening - really everything you'd ever hope to see in a musical revival, and way more than you'd ever expect.