Review: Promising 5 & DIME: A NEW MUSICAL Plays Joe's Pub

What’s the book, movie or play that you’ve always thought should be made into a musical?  Everyone has one, at least, that is, everyone who loves musical theater and dreams of the world of possibilities within the pre-existing works of the world.  What about Dolores Claiborne?  It could be a six-hander in which Dolores, Vera, Selena, Joe, Frank and Mackey play out an opera, very dirge-ical and dramatic.  Or maybe it could be a stylish musical of Kaufman and Hart’s The Royal Family, full of pastiche and personality.  How about Garbo Talks?  Wouldn’t that make a marvelous musical?  There is a wealth of material out there, just crying out to be re-made into a musical outing for the stage.  That is how new musicals have, and always will be made.

Come Back To The 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a Broadway play written by Ed Graczyk that played The Great White Way in the spring of 1982.  It played for a scant 52 performances (including 12 previews) before being relegated to regional theaters and college production, especially throughout the Eighties - one set and a small-ish cast made the play very appealing to community theaters and universities.  A mere five months after the play closed, a film was released starring almost the entire Broadway cast and helmed by the director of the play, Robert Altman, and although the movie did not do so very well, it did have an audience, one that grew over the years, becoming a cult classic, mostly due to the queer iconography of themes within the story, and the actresses playing the lead roles.  With Oscar winner Sandy Dennis (for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?) at the center of the piece, pop star Cher proving she was a bona fide actress, and cinematic artiste supreme Karen Black playing the shocking character of Joanne, one of the first trans characters in a Broadway play, there was no other choice but for Come Back To The 5 & Dime to go into the queer history books.

Now the property is evolving into a musical.  And you know what?  It works.

Last night at Joe’s Pub, theater craftswoman Shakina (also known by her full name Shakina Nayfack) presented a set of songs from the new musical 5 & DIME.  5 & Dime boasts a book by Ashley Robinson, music by Dan G. Sells, and lyrics by  Shakina (all creatives have impressive credits that can be read about in a Google search) but in her opening remarks Shakina made it clear to the audience that this was not a workshop, that it was not a presentation of any form of the play: this is a concert of songs from the score.  Since the plotline of 5 & Dime is a bit involved, Shakina took time out to orchestrate a storytelling framework that would guide the audience through their experience of listening to the songs, and it was probably of assistance to those unfamiliar with the territory, but this presentation is about the music, which is why evening director Brisa Areli Muñoz and Shakina chose, carefully, the women (and one man) who would bring these characters and songs to life, and they chose from among the very best.

For the role of Mona (purported mother to the son of James Dean, the titular Jimmy Dean), the powers that be chose the genius Lauren Marcus, an actress who makes better every project that bears her name on the personnel list.  As Sissy, the sassy server and 5 & Dime employee who dreams big but goes nowhere, they have cast power-voiced Stephanie Gibson.  And in the role of Joanne, there is (quite naturally) Shakina - and who better to bring this character to life than (finally!) a trans woman?  This is not a slight of all of the wonderful actresses who have played Joanne in the past, but the time has come for Joanne to be played by a trans woman, and it has fallen upon Shakina’s shoulders to make that happen… thank goodness.  

Although the play version of this story features vibrant, memorable characters, they are, really, rather secondary characters.  The authors of this new project have followed the rules of musical theater and fleshed out these characters by giving them songs and stories that help the audience to understand more about who they are and what their role in the story is.  Through these wonderful musical offerings, we meet Stella Mae (Katie Thompson), Edna Louise (Marisa Echeverria), Joe (Akiko Akita ), and Juanita, a role played by our great Broadway treasure, the one and only Carolee Carmello, who tied it up and brought it home with the show’s finale.  The entire cast of 5 & Dime: A New Musical is truly gifted and, alone, worth a night out, if for no other reason than hearing these fine singing actors live.  

But the fact of the material for this new musical, the songs around which this concert is built, must also be addressed.

It is not possible to take a pre-existing work and just transfer it into a New Medium.  It has been tried and it almost never works.  Simply attempting to recreate something by adding songs doesn’t make it a viable piece: the structure of the new genre must be considered and appropriate changes must be implemented to create a new work of art out of what once was.  In their quest to turn Come Back To The 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean into a musical play, certain modifications have had to be made to the storyline, to the characters’ personal histories, and to their life experiences.  Some of these changes are apparent in the songs themselves, but also in Shakina’s narration.  Die-hard fans of the play and the film would be gently advised to loosen their tight grasp on that devotion, as well as their preconceived notions, to keep an open mind, and go on the journey that these authors have fashioned for them.  The songs open up the characters like blooms with more petals than they, previously, had.  Furthermore, each of the characters has a sound.  Like the famed Peter And The Wolf symphony, the music has been crafted around the woman (or the lone man) that is telling their story.  There are lilting country sounds for Mona, brassy belty sounds for Stella Mae, twangy folk sounds for Juanita, rockabilly sounds for Sissy, Latin sounds for (the previously Caucasian) Edna Louise, a pure country ballad for Joe, and straight-up rock and roll for Joanne.  It’s an extremely effective way of helping to communicate to the audience who these people are, what they feel, and that for which they either wish or have wished, the sounds compounding that understanding in conjunction with Shakina’s thoughtful, expository, and poetic lyrics.  As individual and palatable as these new songs are (as befitting a right and proper musical play), some of the melodic lines occasionally savored of repetitiveness, during last night’s concert, but that may be the arrangements, as much as the compositions, themselves.  The hard-driving presence of serious electric guitar on material for both Sissy and Joanne may influence the overall sound of the songs designed to evoke each woman and the sorrow, anger, and regrets that they feel.  To avoid similarities in the sounds, the creative team might take a collective look at the arrangements and a possible focus on making them more germane to each character.  That being said, one of the things that this writer (and native Texan) really appreciated was the authentic vibe of each and every melody, giving rise to visions of Texas terra, vast night skies, and dust in the air.  The composer and lyricist have done their work to really capture the eighth character in the story: Texas.

It is not possible to judge 5 & Dime The Musical through a viewing of 5 & Dime The Concert.  To consider the artistic merits of the musical, a full staging will need to occur, and that is something for which everyone should hope, and something that everyone should support, because what Shakina and co. presented last night is a fine example of a potentially producible new work of musical theater art.  The melodies and lyrics are good, the actors performing them are of the highest caliber of talent, and there is a fire within Shakina that always proves productive.  Much of the time, that of which she dreams lives into fruition, an optimistic fact because this new vision of this beloved four-decades-old theater piece would be a most welcome, a highly exciting, new venture.  Fans of the play, the film, or the actors appearing at Joe’s Pub would be greatly encouraged to attend the second performance of the concert, tonight at 9:30.  It may be one of those New York moments when people can say they were there at the beginning, like A Chorus Line, Rent, or Hamilton, all of which started downtown and moved uptown.  Ya never know.

5 & Dime: A New Musical will play tonight, June 13th, at 9:30 pm at Joe’s Pub.  Ticket reservations may be made HERE.

Visit the Shakina website HERE.

The 5 & Dime band is Musical Director Jacob Yates on Piano, Mike Rosengarten on Guitar, Dan G. Sells on Bass, Morgan Parker on Drums.

The 5 & Dime creative team is Ashley Robinson (Book), Dan G. Sells (Music), Shakina (Lyrics), Brisa Areli Muñoz (Director).

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