She Loves Me Is More Stodgy Than Sweet
There's something strangely Disney-like about Arena Stage's production of She Loves Me. Is it the candy-colored sets? The cartoonish dancing? The opening song, "Good Morning, Good Day," which calls to mind Beauty and the Beast's "Bonjour" number? Or maybe it's just that leading lady Brynn O'Malley seems to have taken her recent performance as Belle in Broadway's Beauty and the Beast and transplanted it in D.C.?
She Loves Me, a classic, romantic musical adored by some and ignored by others, shouldn't really take the fall for some of these comparisons — after all, it premiered in 1963, decades before Angela Lansbury sung about a tale as old as time. What does pre-date the work is The Shop Around The Corner, a Jimmy Stewart movie on which the musical is based. And while the story of pen-pal lovers who don't realize that they're exchanging letters with their real-life rivals is charming enough (it worked reasonably well for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail," after all), this She Loves Me stumbles too frequently to pull off the same kind of magic that a film classic can do with ease.
Part of the problem is the book — She Loves Me is part of that Broadway tradition where every character, no matter how secondary, is given a musical number, no matter how unnecessary. This practice produces some of the production's quirkier delights, including J. Fred Shiffman as a snobby waiter obsessed with maintaining a "romantic atmosphere" in his restaurant, and Jim Corti as a humble, coward of a man whose only concern in life is holding onto his job. But there are some real clunkers in there, too (the nauseating "Will He Like Me?" and the unnecessary "Mr. Nowack, Will You Please" come to mind), and with no less than 32 musical interludes throughout, this is no real surprise. And some songs with promise get dropped as well; as a sleazy shopclerk toying with the heart of a coworker (the fine Nancy Lemenager), Sebastian La Cause doesn't have the presence or the vocal chops to sell the lounge-inspired "Ilona."
She Loves Me is a show that can thrive with the right chemistry — the bickering tendencies of its romantic leads is supposed to evoke Hepburn/Tracy, Beatrice/Benedick-style banter and heat. Arena Stage brought this tradition to life last year with its screwball take on Born Yesterday, but this time around, the tension between O'Malley and Kevin Kraft isn't really there. Kraft is a bland but servicable Georg Nowack; O'Malley has a lovely, clear soprano voice and deserves credit for shining in some of her sillier solo numbers, like "Vanilla Ice Cream" and "Where's My Shoe?", but you never really root for them as a couple.
The show runs through Dec. 31; tickets are available online.