“A Man of No Importance,” an off-Broadway musical based mostly on the 1994 movie that starred Albert Finney as a Dublin bus conductor with an obsession for Oscar Wilde and a yen for newbie theatricals, was a pure match for playwright Terrence McNally, the bard of lonely metropolis dwellers with conflicted longings.
Collaborating once more with Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), the staff behind the musical “Ragtime,” McNally wrote the e book for a musical which may simply as simply have been the premise for an additional of his compulsively humorous, emotionally searing character research.
The size right here is much extra compact than “Ragtime.” However “A Man of No Importance,” which is receiving a stunning revival at A Noise Inside in Pasadena below the sleek course of the corporate’s producing creative director, Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, finds freedom in Wilde’s iconoclastic instance.
Alfie Byrne (Kasey Mahaffy), a disciple of Wilde’s (in additional methods than one), has determined to stage the heretical “Salome” together with his ragtag troupe at his neighborhood church, St. Imelda. Alfie, who’s both being willfully obtuse or radically uncompromising, sees nothing sacrilegious in Wilde’s one-act tragedy.
On the defiant Wildean middle is notorious Salome, Herod’s manipulative stepdaughter. Annoyed by her failed try and seduce Jokanaan (higher often called John the Baptist), she calls for the prophet’s head be dropped at her on a silver platter. Her outrageous request is granted after she dances the dance of the seven veils for her besotted stepfather, in a play that careens into a number of taboos below biblical cowl.
Alfie is satisfied that he’s discovered his Salome after a mysterious younger girl named Adele (Analisa Idalia) nervously boards his bus. He should get permission to stage the play at St. Imelda’s social corridor from Father Kenny (Neill Fleming), who inquires whether or not there’s any conceited dancing within the leisure.
“Not immodest, Father Kenny,” Alfie replies. “It’s art.”
Kasey Mahaffy and CJ Eldred in “A Man of No Importance.”
(Craig Schwartz)
For Alfie, artwork excuses what society finds objectionable. It’s the explanation he takes refuge in poetry and drama. He recites verse on the bus as a lot to enrapture his passengers as captivate his good-looking younger colleague, Robbie (CJ Eldred), the bus driver whom he calls Bosie after Wilde’s deadly inamorato, Lord Alfred Douglas.
Homosexuality isn’t fairly as harmful in 1964 Dublin, when the musical is ready. However the threats are actual all the identical.
Sharing an house together with his single sister, Lily (Juliana Sloan), Alfie prepares unique meals at residence earlier than retreating into his non-public sanctuary, his bed room. His sister can’t even think about what he will get as much as with all these suspect books he retains piled up below lock and key.
Carney (David Nevell), who owns the butcher store downstairs from Alfie and Lily, can also be mad concerning the theater. Alfie has solid him in “Salome,” however Carney can’t imagine the filth as soon as he reads the script. He voices his issues to Lily, with whom he enjoys mass within the day and alcoholic refreshments within the night.
Clearly, Alfie’s soul is at risk, and Carney has appointed himself the person to put it aside. He formally complains to the parish authorities to place an finish to “Salome,” however the true disaster comes from the disgrace and sorrow of Alfie’s repressed life.
When Alfie flamboyantly staggers out of the closet, he does so within the guise of Wilde, who makes dreamlike appearances within the musical (courtesy of Nevell, in a cleverly constructed twin position). Alfie’s liberation doesn’t go nicely for him, however his public shame can’t undo the goodwill he’s established by way of his championing of artwork. (The film’s sentimental contours are nonetheless obvious, however the musical earns its affectionate ending by conserving the main target communal.)
“A Man of No Importance” is a love letter to the stage, but one more reason McNally was the best man for the job. This modest musical, which might little doubt wilt below the glare of Broadway, is at its most touching when chronicling the methods artwork lifts the spirits of on a regular basis people who find themselves blessed with no spectacular presents but nonetheless possess the internal lives of theatrical giants.
Mahaffy offers us a a lot youthful model of Alfie than Finney’s late-middle-age model within the movie. Time just isn’t bearing down on Alfie in fairly the identical means, however Mahaffy makes us imagine that the character is operating out of hope.
The camaraderie between Mahaffy’s Alfie and Eldred’s Robbie, each of whom sing fantastically, is sweetly convincing. Robbie is a girls’ lad, however he appreciates the poetic vistas that Alfie opens as much as him. (Poetry hath charms to assuage the straight Dubliner’s breast.) Alfie could by no means understand his romantic fantasies, however his Romanticism transcends his straitened horizons.
David Nevell and Kasey Mahaffy in “A Man of No Importance.”
(Craig Schwartz)
Flaherty and Ahrens’ rating is tailor-made to the characters with bespoke exactness. “A Man of No Importance” appears like a play that’s been set to music. If the musical has any ambition to be an extravaganza, it retains the will safely in test. Discretion is probably the work’s most charming asset. However an early quantity, “Going Up,” a gaggle quantity led by Carney concerning the compensatory joys of placing on a present, injects some Kander and Ebb-style adrenaline into the proceedings.
The supporting solid is powerful in voice and small-scale portraiture. Nevell, Sloan and Ed F. Martin as Baldy, the troupe’s loyal stage supervisor, all impress in an organization that makes a advantage of inconspicuous excellence.
Most spectacular of all is the way in which Rodriguez-Elliott conducts her massive ensemble by way of speedy scene modifications with gliding finesse. (Kudos to Francois-Pierre Couture’s logistically savvy scenic design.) “A Man of No Importance” not solely celebrates simplicity but in addition relies upon upon it. What a deal with to return throughout a musical that acknowledges simply how extraordinary the extraordinary could be.
‘A Man of No Significance’
The place: A Noise Inside, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and seven:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays; ends June 1
Tickets: Begin at $51.50
Data: (626) 356-3100 or www.anoisewithin.org
Operating time: 2 hours, half-hour (one intermission)
