Revue tries, but fails to connect the dots

Some musical revues are better than the musical comedies they are drawn from. Separated from the need to advance plot and explain motivation, each song is freed to reveal itself as a self-contained work of art.

This is not one of those musical revues.

“Closer Than Ever,” the Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire musical revue at the CenterStage dinner theater, simply doesn’t have enough songs that can stand on their own. Don’t get me wrong – Maltby and Shire are good songwriters and this is not a bad show. But their songs don’t rise to the Stephen Sondheim level, and the result is a show with only scattered high points and a distinct lack of spark.

Part of the problem is that the songs from “Closer Than Ever” are not even drawn from their hit musicals, “Baby” and “Big.” These songs were cut from those and other musicals, or were otherwise languishing in drawers. Director Reed McColm and this four-person cast try manfully to tie these songs into a loose theme of life-choices, but essentially these songs are what they are – unconnected to each other.

Some probably made more sense in their original context, but too often, the meaning is obscure. For instance, in one number Michael Hynes appears high above the stage singing a tune about why he’s up on a roof. We get the idea that he’s pining for love, but shorn of its context, it just doesn’t click.

A lot of songs have a distinct ‘70s and ‘80s feel to them, including a song making fun of the exercise fad, which, 20 years later, doesn’t seem like a fad at all. “The Sound of Muzak,” about the proliferation of music in elevators and dentist’s offices, is funny and well-observed. But in this age of iPods and Walkmans, it seemed dated. Turns out, it was written in 1965.

I can’t blame McColm or the cast for the lackluster response among the small (around 30 people) crowd. The cast did what they could to pump life into these songs, sometimes with great success. My favorite numbers were among the quieter ones. Hynes poured great emotion into a gem of a song called “One of the Good Guys,” about a decent and thoughtful man who acknowledges how hard being good can be.

Tamara Schupman also made a powerful mini-drama from a song about a feminist who looks back, with some regret, at the sacrifices she made. In these songs and several others, the show works exactly as intended. Janean Jorgensen and Tony Caprile also contributed effective songs.

Still, the essential problem with this show can be seen even in its title. What, exactly, does “Closer Than Ever” mean?

It’s a bit vague, and so, as a whole, is this revue.