Leslie Uggams Rolls Into Cape Playhouse in The Rink

 

The Rink

Book by Terrence McNally  Music by John Kander, Lyrics by Fred Ebb

Directed by Michael Unger, Choreographed by Jennifer Paulson Lee, Music Direction by Andrew Gerle, Set Design by Dan Meeker,   Costume Design by Janine McCabe,  Lighting Design by Christopher S. Chambers

CAST 

Leslie Uggams, Janet Metz, Stephen Berger, Bill Kocis, Michael Minarik, Eric Morris, Maurice Parent, Jesse Swimm, Miriah Burns

Performances through July 15, 2006    Box Office 508-385-3911  www.capeplayhouse.com

The Cape Playhouse, America's oldest professional theatre, opens its 80^th season in Dennis, Massachusetts, with Kander and Ebb's The Rink, a nostalgia piece in a most nostalgic setting.  Formerly a summer church, the structure lends itself beautifully to represent the soon-to-be-razed roller rink of the title.  Perhaps because this is the premiere of a new version of the show, McNally and Kander have set it in a coastal town in Massachusetts and we can just believe that they mean somewhere on Cape Cod.

The venerable Leslie Uggams is the star of this production and she wastes no time before showing us how deserving she is of having her name above the title.  From the moment she makes her entrance, to her first song "Chief Cook and Bottle Washer," and whenever she is onstage, she commands our attention.  She is, quite simply, a pro.  Just as I was catching my breath from Ms. Uggams' opening number, along came Janet Metz for a duet with her which exhibited her own very powerful pipes.

Uggams plays Anna Antonelli, a middle-aged widow who has sold the failing skate palace for a very large sum of money, enabling her to move to Florida for a new life.  She has hired a demolition company to clean out the place and tear it down to make way for condo development along the boardwalk.  Six men called The Wreckers swarm around the rink, alternately moving things out and lamenting the passing of an era.  The prodigal daughter Angel arrives to discover the dismantling of her beloved "home" and butts heads with her mother as she tries to prevent it. 

 

The story unfolds through flashbacks to illustrate the courtship of Anna and Angel's father Dino (Michael Minarik), a romantic ne'er-do-well who struggles to find himself.  He loves Anna, but feels trapped in his marriage, as well as in the family business started by his stereotypical Italian father.  Dino also adores his little girl, but she represents another tether which keeps him from soaring.  The more Anna works at keeping their young family intact, the more Dino resents her strength and her righteousness, finally resulting in his leaving them and the rink. 

When Angel reenters her mother's life, it has been many years since they last saw each other.  Like her father, the young woman went on a search for herself, but grew tired of the wandering and came home to find what she was looking for, just like Dorothy Gale ("Colored Lights"). (Ironically, Liza Minnelli played the part of Angel in the original.)  The two women are totally at odds with each other over the disposition of the rink.  To Anna it is an albatross, while it is the Holy Grail to Angel.  Their relationship with each other is equally challenging and they must hammer that out before they can come to terms with what to do about the property.  Metz and Uggams convey a multitude of emotions as they spar with each other.  Mother and daughter have both been abandoned and betrayed, feel hurt and anger, and have done the best they can to survive.  Each feels terribly misunderstood by the other and is struggling to control the situation.

As is the case in most musicals, the songs help to communicate the story.  Anna and two older "women" – a couple of the Wreckers in drag – sit on the boardwalk and chronicle the demise of the neighborhood in "What Happened to the Old Days?"  Three young toughs saunter by, blasting music from a boom box to illustrate how things have changed.  All of the men in the cast perform the roles of four to six characters, and Stephen Berger and Bill Kocis as the "women" were a big hit with the audience in this number.

 

In the second act, Anna and Angel start to move toward détente.  They bond over smoking a joint and take note of their similarities in "The Apple Doesn't Fall."  While a version of this scene was in the original show, it felt like an attempt to update the story and it didn't ring true to me.  After casting aspersions at her daughter's hippie lifestyle, it seems unlikely that Anna would so willingly take a toke and as quickly become happily stoned.  But it's still a good song.

 

Kocis is especially sweet singing "Marry Me" to Anna, hoping that she'll recognize him as a diamond in the rough who has always stood by her and loved her steadfastly since childhood.  The bald, bespectacled Lenny is the antithesis of the fiery, dreamer Dino, and appeals to Anna because of his steadiness.  More flashbacks offer explanation for Anna's character and her detachment from her daughter.  The emotion builds as Anna makes an irreversible choice to tell Angel that Daddy died, not feeling able to share the truth of his departure.  When she reprises "We Can Make It," sung earlier to a downtrodden Dino, Anna seems to be trying to convince herself as much as, if not more than, the little girl. 

 

Other suitors pursue Anna and she numbs herself with their attentions and much hard work to keep the rink afloat.  What falls by the wayside is her relationship with the child, so it is no surprise when Angel leaves home, following in her father's footsteps.  Life in the real world doesn't treat her so well either and she finds major disappointment when she finds her father.  Her return to the familiarity of the rink is driven by her feeling that she has nowhere else to go.  Home is the place where when you go there they have to let you in, apparently.

 

In the end, mother and daughter have to learn to forgive not only each other, but also themselves.  After all the vitriol, it happens a little too simplistically once the fresh-scrubbed, roller skating granddaughter (Miriah Burns) appears.  I'm not sure that decades-long grudges get dropped quite so easily and it seemed facile.  Everyone apologize, everyone hug, a-a-a-and curtain!

 

While I found a few problems with the book, the entire production is enhanced by its artistic and technical qualities.  Dan Meeker's set turns the Playhouse stage into a funky old roller rink, replete with advertising signs, a soda fountain and stools, a pipe organ, and a glitter ball suspended above it all.  The costumes and lighting add dramatic effect and bring the characters believably to life, spanning the years from the 1940's to the early '80's.  Several styles of dance are incorporated to reflect the different eras, including a cleverly choreographed piece with the Wreckers on roller skates.  To a man, this is a talented ensemble of actors who can sing and dance (and skate) more than a little bit and hold their own in the company of Leslie Uggams and Janet Metz.

 

To be sitting in an old summer church refurbished as a playhouse, watching a freshly rewritten show with a mature and experienced star, one can have some hope for the possibility of resurrecting the skate palace, repairing a rent relationship, and learning how to move forward.