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‘Swing!’: Hit the
Hot Notes and Watch 'Em Bounce
By BEN BRANTLEY - December 10, 1999
NEW YORK -- And how would you like your swing dancing this evening, folks? Just straight up, in the manner of the big-band era? Or would you prefer something a tad more exotic -- say, in the style of a square dance or a pajama party? Or how about something really wild, with dancers who punningly swing from a contraption made of bungee cords?
Yes, it's all on the menu in "Swing!," the new musical revue that takes its exclamation point seriously. And rest assured that each number will be cheerfully packaged in upbeat colors and served with a very big smile.
Oh, dear. In the new, improved and unapologetically square Times Square area, it is getting ever harder to distinguish between the tourist-luring themed restaurants and the tourist-luring themed shows that are slowly taking over the neighborhood like battalions of chipper Mouseketeers.
Blues, midcentury rebel rock 'n' roll, the incendiary choreography of Bob Fosse, the subversive songs of Stephen Sondheim: all are being offered on Broadway at the moment in smooth, synthetic puddings of shows that carefully remove the sting and sharpness from their original material.
Now there is "Swing!," which opened last night at the St. James Theater, with direction and choreography by Lynne Taylor-Corbett. With its eager, limber cast moving to the gleaming sounds of a fine band called the Gotham City Gates, it is by no means the worst of the lot. But when you start remembering the cats of "Cats" as a group of revolutionary hipsters, it may be time to retreat from the revue circuit for a while and let your taste buds grow back.
In the days of supper clubs and rooftop night spots, the kind so glamorously represented in early talking pictures set in Manhattan, "Swing!" might have been a floor show, an entertainment to serve as a background for cocktails and small talk. Dragged into the foreground and made the single focus of attention for two hours, "Swing!," which features the cabaret singer Ann Hampton Callaway, passes as a slick, bland blur.
Think of the production -- which pays homage to the big-band music that reached its popular zenith during World War II -- as "Smokey Joe's Canteen," the latest variation on the format of "Smokey Joe's Cafe," the long-running revue that set the tone for the new breed of sanitized song-and-dance shows. (It isn't coincidental that Jerry Zaks, who directed "Cafe," is credited as the production supervisor of "Swing!")
"Smokey Joe's Cafe" took the rock and pop hits of Leiber and Stoller from the 1950's and 60's and bleached them of their danger quotient, of their raunch and sass. People who grew up listening to that music could leave the show thinking that their youth had been rather wholesome, really, while younger audience members hadn't been given a hint of the convention-baiting sexuality that had so outraged their parents' parents.
The music resurrected in "Swing!," a style associated with big-band leaders like Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Harry James, was less divisive; it appealed to a wider range of age groups. But it, too, was the music of youth, and it shaped the way a whole generation not only danced but also talked and dressed. Although Benny Goodman may have looked like a C.P.A., he was once as cool as Puff Daddy is today.
The cool factor, however, is as conspicuously absent from "Swing!" as it was from "Smokey Joe's." Mixing classic works by musicians like Duke Ellington and Johnny Mercer with new pastiche pieces, the show (even the World War II canteen sequences) seems to take place in some squeaky-clean, confectionary limbo, reflected in the candy-colored sets and lighting of Thomas Lynch and Kenneth Posner, respectively. Even when the energy is at full throttle, there's a distancing quality of preciousness.
Those hoping to catch a glimmer of the original visceral impact of swing dancing would do better to check out Susan Stroman's "Contact," which translates the style into contemporary terms in its second act. Ms. Stroman's choreography can be as sleekly synchronized as anything in "Swing!," but it also emphasizes the distinct personalities of its dancers.
"Swing!," on the other hand, is strongest in its big ensemble pieces, especially its opening and closing numbers, that dazzle by turning a multitude of performers into one well-oiled dance machine. While Ms. Taylor-Corbett generously credits the dancers who created their own routines in the show, there is surprisingly little flavor of individual styles. It's the conceptual gimmicks that matter in each of the show's segments, the bungee cords and the bedroom slippers that turn out to be tap shoes. And for the most part, they're too darn cute.
Earnest attempts have been made to present swing as a sensual liberator, a force that brings out the looseness in the uptight. The metamorphosis is repeated ad infinitum. The singer Laura Benanti melts from a stiff, operatic soprano into a jivin' chick, while her dress is similarly transformed before our eyes. (The bright, athletic costumes are by William Ivey Long.)
A nerdlike Everett Bradley drops his briefcase to learn to "throw that girl around," while a plump country-western type (Robert Royston) finds romance when he starts to swing. In each case, the progression is less from square to hip than from perky to perkier.
Occasionally, a more authentically erotic element sneaks in, or a whiff of maverick character. Carlos Sierra-López and Maria Torres deliver a torrid lesson in swing, Latin style. Scott Fowler's angular dancing conveys an appealing emotional jaggedness, although I certainly could have lived without the prissy swing ballet he has been given.
The long-stemmed Caitlin Carter, who was a vividly wry presence in the current revival of "Chicago," brings cool heat to her impersonation of a bass fiddle (in Earl H. Hagen's "Harlem Nocturne" with Conrad Korsch playing the bass) and to a steamy duet with the strapping Edgar Godineaux to the great Arlen-Mercer standard "Blues in the Night."
Ms. Callaway provides the aural backdrop for this pas de deux, as pianist and vocalist, and her full-throated interpretation here is her finest contribution to the show. Otherwise, with her 70's-style layered haircut and tailored pantsuits, she is a most unswinging presence, suggesting a no-nonsense career mom who happens to have this amazing talent for sounding like musical instruments. And her scat duets with Mr. Bradley, in which they play a pair of squabbling lovers, are surreal in ways that were surely never intended.
Of the show's soloists, who also include Michael Gruber, only Casey MacGill, the ukulele-strumming band leader, has the kind of shrugged-off charm one associates with being cool in the swing era. And the musicians, conducted by the pianist Jonathan Smith, sound swell, although the ways they're used to create dialogue between instruments and performers can cloy.
It is telling that the evening's high point is performed without dancers or singers. That's the band's version of Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol's "Caravan," which blissfully embodies the idea of swing as a collective effort in which each individual voice (i.e., each instrument) has its say. In this sense, it's the American Dream incarnate, and the show's one persuasive reminder of a time when patriotism, far from being corny, was positively hip.
