“Pool Boy”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - July 2010

It is no secret that I LOVE musical theatre, and I see and review a LOT of it. Right now there is a positive frenzy to create new musical theatre – incubator programs abound in major cities, and right here in the Berkshires we have Barrington Stage Company’s Musical Theatre Lab. Obviously, I am all in favor of encouraging and fostering the creation of new and fabulous shows, but in order to find the next 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee or Urinetown you are going to have to kiss a lot of frogs along the way.

Someone at BSC should have noticed that frogs love swimming pools.

Pool Boy” which has been much hyped, is a real croaker.

Nikos Tsakalakos, who has been a popular and valuable member of the BSC team for several years now, based this show, for which he wrote the music and some of the lyrics, on his own personal experience working as a pool boy at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, the show is about a young musician named Nick working as a pool boy at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. From what I have read about Tsakalakos, he is a much more interesting and entertaining person than his stage persona has turned out to be.

Despite many years of work, and an official press opening – after which a production is generally considered “set” – got the strong feeling that I was seeing a work-in-progress; a feeling that was bolstered when I went to find a line in the script I had been provided and it wasn’t there. The script was dated July 20. I saw the show on July 21. Actors cannot fully inhabit their roles if they are struggling to incorporate new material or remember cuts and changes. This cast is very talented and professional, and there were no obvious slip-ups, but that sense of performing on the edge was in the air.

And there is always the danger, when a show is being re-written and re-written and re-written, that the artists’ original intentions get lost along the way, which is, I think, exactly what has happened here. In a desperate attempt to create a “hit,” all the individuality gets sucked out of the material. Which phenomenon, ironically, is exactly what Tsakalakos and his collaborator Janet Allard, who wrote the book and the remainder of the lyrics, have written a show about.

Young Nick (Jay Armstrong Johnson) hopes to make it big as a musician by cozying up to a big record producer, Rodney Duval (John Hickok), who checks into the Hotel. Of course, he has to “make nice” with the producer’s sexy wife, Donna (Sarah Gettelfinger), in order to get to her husband. He also has turn cartwheels to please his boss, Mr. Lopes (Cliff Bemis) and the Hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Nubai (Sorab Wadia). The same day he meets the Duvals, he meets, and immediately falls in love with, an aspiring young actress named April (Courtney Wolfson), who is working as Donna’s personal assistant – a fact Nick doesn’t discover until too late! Aiding Nick in some of his escapades is his pal, Jack (Jon Norman Schneider), who pretends to be the stereotypical groveling Asian whenever it is to his benefit.

It should come as no surprise that these characters are remarkably shallow (because they live and work in L.A.) and two-dimensional (because this is a musical comedy). The day after I saw Pool Boy, I saw Damn Yankees, which is a quintessential mid-20th century American musical comedy with a thoroughly implausible plot full of holes big enough to drive a semi through and cardboard characters, and I had a chance to contemplate what made the latter so much fun and the former such a snooze. I observed how the authors George Abbott – the man who knew EVERYTHING about musical comedy – and Douglass Wallop wrapped the tiny little bits of dialogue around Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’ score to rapidly establish sympathetic characters, so that you are barely distracted by the ludicrous plot. These characters may be two-dimensional, but you care about them. This is where Tsakalakos and Allard have completely failed. With the surprising exception of Mr. Lopes, you don’t give a damn about anyone on the stage.

I said that Mr. Lopes was a surprising exception because he is a very minor character, but the techniques used to make him sympathetic and interesting are exactly the same time-honored ones that Abbott and Wallop used – establish a recognizable stereotype through physical type-casting, costume, and a few deftly penned lines, and then give him one simple human problem to overcome. In this case Mr. Lopes is secretly Mr. Lopez, and he has been hiding his ethnicity for fear that it will hold him back in his career. When he comes out of his paranoid shell and joyfully embraces his Hispanic heritage, it makes you happy.

Of course, the other thing a great musical needs is great music. Alas, Tsakalakos’ tunes have a grating sameness with endlessly repetitive and uninspired lyrics to match. They are nicely played by an onstage band under the baton of Matt Castle, and the entire cast sings divinely, (which makes me seriously question why they need to be miked in BSC’s intimate Stage II space), but it is a lot of sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing.

A few weeks back by a friend who had seen Sweeney Todd complained to me that she couldn’t follow the story when everyone was singing their own separate songs simultaneously – a trick called for which Sondheim is famous. When I said that I had no problem with it, she remarked, “That’s because you knew the story and all the lyrics before you walked in.” Well, she had me there! And so it took a visit to a brand new musical that I knew nothing about and had never heard before to prove to me just how annoying that oh-so-clever musical device is. You can’t follow the story when everyone sings their inner monologue at the same time. It sounds great, but it does nothing to move the plot or define the characters. Tsakalakos uses way too much counterpoint in this show.

It is really a shame to waste this attractive and talented cast, and an obviously gifted director (Daniella Topol) and choreographer (Shonn Wiley) on this twaddle. If you read their program bios they are a most impressive lot. Johnson and Wolfson are a beautiful couple who manage to make a few sparks fly where Tsakalakos and Allard have barely contrived to rub two sticks together. Gettelfinger also manages to create chemistry with the authors inert matter. Bemis, Hickok, and Wadia are all experienced showmen. Poor Schneider is set adrift in a role that may have had some importance in an earlier iteration of the show but is now completely vestigial.

Brian Prather has designed a nifty set that actually makes you feel kinda like you are poolside in sunny CA instead upstairs at the Pittsfield VFW Hall. The combination of his aqua ambiance and pair of cool, semi-opaque sliding panels coupled with Nicole Pearce’s refreshing lighting magic stage magic.

This cast consists of some VERY beautiful people, and Holly Cain has designed costumes that emphasize their sleek physiques in that LA way. Gettelfinger is topless for an extended period early on, and she and Wolfson are frequently very scantily clad, as people who want to be noticed poolside (or in the bedroom) often. For those of you who prefer masculine pulchritude, Johnson appears shirtless as often as possible.

This show treats its ethnic minorities – Hispanics, Asians, and Arabs – in remarkably racist and stereotypical terms that are neither hip nor amusing. And Allard and Tsakalakos would have us believe that Los Angeles, or at least the Hotel Bel-Air, is devoid of gays and Jews. Yes, this is a musical called Pool Boy with NO GAY MALE CHARACTERS. That set-up alone is too implausible even for Hollywood.

Click HERE for the full photo gallery for this production.

The Barrington Stage Company Musical Theatre Lab production of Pool Boy plays Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at BSC Stage 2, 36 Linden St., Pittsfield, MA. The show runs two hours and ten minutes with one intermission. Partial nudity, sexual situations, and some racy lyrics make it unsuitable for children.

Tickets: $15-$45. Seniors: $20 all matinees. Pay What You Can Night for 35 year olds and younger: Fri., July 16 at 7:30 p.m. Post-show discussions with the cast will be held following the Thursday, July 15 and Thursday, August 5 performances. For ticket information call 413-236-8888, or stop by the BSC Box Office at 30 Union Street or visit www.barringtonstageco.org.

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