'Swing!' never quits High-energy recycling of pop dance
era rates its exclamation point
By Allan Ulrich
EXAMINER DANCE CRITIC
NEW YORK -
Dance has never seemed more essential to the Broadway experience than it does right now.
Across 44th Street, where the new revue "Swing!" opened last week at the St.
James Theatre, you will find, next door to each other, both the "Fosse" revue
and the vintage Bob Fosse musical "Chicago," which hardly ever stops dancing.
Meanwhile, despite lukewarm
reception from the dance press (and good notices from theater critics), Susan Stroman's
"Contact" at Lincoln Center is preparing to move to a larger theater in March.
And 1985's "Tango Argentino," the tango entertainment that made all subsequent
tango revues unnecessary, has returned for a limited run.
Of course,
"Swing!" isn't nearly as refined as that classic, and it is surely not aiming in
that direction. It merely wishes to purvey two hours of kinetic delights, as it recycles
the popular dance (and its music) of the late 1930s and 1940s in one extremely palatable
package. Despite a few episodes that stretch themselves to the point of cuteness, it all
succeeds magnificently. The thrills during the 23 numbers are often unrelenting, and the
energy on stage is often fearsome.
In some ways,
"Swing!" is an anomaly. Dance revues these days tend toward garish excess;
remember the smoky, faux-Celtic trappings of those Irish "Lord of the Bogs"
diversions? "Swing!" boasts a single basic set (by Thomas Lynch) on which the
band, four lead vocalists and 22 dancers cavort. Then, while dance revues these days are
inclined to arrive with socially relevant messages, "Swing!" would rather prance
than preach.
There's enormous
satisfaction in just sitting back and allowing these superb Lindy Hoppers to take over
without guilt or shame, in savoring the movement in the abstract. Perhaps, a message does
come through. The popular music of the period seems to have been devised for dancing; and
when the band goes it cold during Duke Ellington's "Caravan," mainly to give the
dancers a bit of a respite, you miss them.
"Swing!" is very
much a collaborative effort. Paul Kelly originally conceived the show. Lynne
Taylor-Corbett received credit for direction and choreography. Jerry Zaks supervised the
production, and their shaping hands are much in evidence.
Yet, the cast features a
couple of specialists in the field, like Ryan Francois, a loose-limbed, British-born swing
dance champion who presses his wife, Jenny Thomas, into service for Count Basie's
"Jumpin' at the Woodside." And, at Friday's performance, the teaching-performing
team of Erik Robison and Sylvia Skylar made a meal of "Shout and Feel It."
Taylor-Corbett has been extremely gracious in crediting the various numbers to their
choreographers, but the show benefits from a unified look.
What swing dance does share
with tango is teamwork; and it's little wonder audiences who have survived the soulless
self-imposed isolation of disco dancing are working themselves into ovations at the St.
James. The audience may contain its share of nostalgia seekers, but it's interesting to
observe so many younger people in the crowd.
To be sure, there's a
bravura element at work. Swing depends on careful partnering at high speeds. Dancers twist
this way and that, women shimmy, men hoist and toss their women and twirl them like
propellers; and one misstep, if not fatal, could be extremely messy. Swing dancing, then,
depends on extraordinarily careful timing, and it depends, most of all, on trust. It all
looks wonderfully loose and liberated, but control is paramount.
And swing needs the kind of
superior musical backup that the Gotham City Gates (an eight-man band with a superb
pianist, Jonathan Smith) bring to the affair. It all just bubbles along, in great measure
because of the four vocalists, Ann Hampton Callaway, Laura Benanti, Casey MacGill and
Everett Bradley.
Callaway, one of the
classiest saloon singers around, looks a mite too refined as she warbles in an elegant
pants suit. But when she applies her smoky timbre and potent way with a lyric to
"Stompin' at the Savoy," the place jumps. MacGill launches the evening with
"It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and then weans Benanti from
her high-falutin' ways by teaching her to snap her fingers on the second and fourth
(rather than the first and third) beats.
Benanti gets the most
memorable musical number, "Cry Me A River," in which Steve Armour's muted
trombone makes such expressive sounds (first, defiant; then rueful) you would swear the
instrument is actually singing. Bradley bounces through the evening like a bespectacled
accountant who has just discovered his beat and joins Callaway for a delightfully up-tempo
scat rendering of Jerome Kern's "I Won't Dance."
But, of course, he does.
Everyone is, at some point, drawn into it. William Ivey Long's costumes complement the art
deco setting terrifically, and the wardrobe is inexhaustible. The hats come out for a
Western swing number to Bob Wills' "Take Me Back to Tulsa" and Jack Murphy's
"Boogie Woogie Country," in which pudgy Robert Royston finds true love with
Laureen Baldovi.
A USO tribute brings out
zoot suits, the Waves in very short skirts and a jiving company outing to "Don't Sit
Under the Apple Tree." Benanti favors the crowd with "G.I. Jive." Callaway
responds with the quintessential World War II ballad, "I'll Be Seeing You."
"Swing!" is not a
perfect entertainment. A sequence involving dancers dangling from bungee cords seems to
mark time without filling it. But, then, there's the pajama party during which all the
guests break out in a slick tap routine. Like the show's best moments, it comes out of
nowhere, fizzes in your head and leaves you with the most agreeable aftertaste.
"Swing!" is at
the St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St. For tickets, call 1-800-432-7250.
