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It Don't Mean a Thing, but
It's Got That Swing / Las Vegas cabaret comes to
Broadway
New York Newsday
By Linda Winer, STAFF WRITER
12-10-1999
SWING! Directed and choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett, production supervised by Jerry
Zaks, on a concept by Paul Kelly. With Ann Hampton Callaway, Everett Bradley, Laura
Benanti, Casey MacGill and the Gotham City Gates. Set by Thomas Lynch, costumes by
William Ivey Long, lights by Kenneth Posner, music direction by Jonathan Smith. St.
James Theatre, 44th Street west of Broadway. Seen at Monday's preview.
NOT FOR NOTHING is that exclamation point on the end of "Swing!" In fact,
the insistently good-natured, high-gloss, breathlessly gotta-dance revue, which bounded
into the St. James Theatre last night, exclaims its hard-driven exuberance and no-nonsense
expertise from the very first hipster swivel of the very first flying step.
Lynne Taylor-Corbett, the dance-world veteran in her first project as Broadway
director-choreographer, seems determined to show us every single virtuosic variation of
the suddenly trendy style of old-time swing dance. Exhausting? You bet, at least from our
side of the footlights.
Basically, this is a first-class nightclub
floor show. Although the production has been "supervised" by Broadway director
Jerry Zaks and makes the occasional half-hearted attempt at a vignette, the theatrics are
little more than excuses for another show-stopper, and another show-stopper, and another
show-stopper.
There is no appreciation for the concept of less-is-more, or the need to take an emotional
breath every so often with a slow dance or some other contrasting number that might help
keep this from seeming like the U.S. Open Swing Dance Championship Competition. Yes, there
really is one. This crack company even boasts a few champs.
Be not confused by any superficial similarity between this and "Contact," Susan
Stroman's smash swing play at the Lincoln Center Theatre. That one is a dance drama. This
one is a dance concert with good singers. Remember when theater people were worrying about
Broadway turning into a theme park? With our playhouses dominated this season by
glorified stand-up comics (Dame Edna, Jackie Mason), plotless musical revues with TV stars
("Putting It Together") and dance-driven showcases ("Tango Argentino,"
the upcoming "Riverdance," last season's "Fosse"), it seems holiday
Broadway is suddenly in bigger danger of turning into the Vegas strip.
It is unfair to blame "Swing!" for the excesses that proceeded it, but, as
dancers surely know, timing is everything. And, moment by moment, this show seems to have
been timed with a stopwatch. The men toss the women around with consummate confidence, and
they stick to one another-upside down, sideways, whatever-as if William Ivey Long's
unceasingly flattering costumes were made of Velcro. One lyric says "Throw That Girl
Around," and these people take it literally.
There are endless variations of the classic Lindy (can anyone explain to me our sudden
end-of-the-century obsession with World War II?), as well as the Latin swing, the country
swing, something called West Coast neo-swing and tapping swing-once even in bunny
slippers.
A couple of women actually do their swing while suspended from bungee cords. Tired yet? To
paraphrase the Ellington song that opens the show, this don't mean a thing, but it
certainly does have that swing.
It also is admirably musical. With Casey MacGill and the terrific Gotham City Gates
onstage, the arrangements of the elegant and playful songs have a lot of style. Ann
Hampton Callaway, the cabaret singer-songwriter with the tenor saxophone in her throat,
has supplied some unobtrusive lyrical additions and a few new-old songs.
Everett Bradley, who often plays a black yuppy with conflicted yearnings, joins her for
Ellington's uncannily expressive all-scat "date," "Bli-Blip." Laura
Benanti, justly acclaimed as a late-run replacement in "The Sound of Music," has
an irresistible "conversation" with Steve Armour's trombone in "Cry Me a
River." Caitlin Carter, long a best among equals in the murdering floozy chorus
of "Chicago," turns her formidable self into a match for Conrad Korsch's string
bass in "Harlem Nocturne." There are endless chances for top swing dancers to
swivel their upper torsos and knees in one direction, their hips in another, while somehow
flinging their legs from their thigh bones and blithely tossing their feet. They also
offer this season's third dance scene (remember "Contact" and "The
Dead?") based on noisy feet annoying the downstairs neighbors. If there is some deep
message about urban angst and rebellion in the trend, don't look for it here.
