‘Pete ‘n’ Keely’ finger-snappin’, campy time
The year is 1968.
The music is Vegas lounge, in the style of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
The vibe is … finger-snappin’.
The Actor’s Repertory Theatre’s first-ever musical is not a musical at all in the “South Pacific” sense – it’s a campy musical revue about a divorced lounge duo attempting a comeback. The comedy arises from two circumstances: (1) We’re watching them in a “live” NBC broadcast and (2) Pete and Keely, quite clearly, hate each other’s guts.
Not much imagination is required to guess what’s in store. Curt Olds as Pete and Abbey Crawford as Keely quite serviceably deliver the barbed between-songs banter.
“No napping!” Keely playfully admonishes the TV audience at one point. “You can do that during Pete’s solos.”
Or this, from Pete, while reminiscing about their marriage: “Those 12 years together were three of the happiest days of my life.”
Or this, when displaying a cute baby photo of Keely: “Even then, clutching a bottle.”
This show, directed briskly by Michael Weaver, also includes some priceless moments of sheer camp. For instance, there’s their over-the-top rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in which the overwrought Keely sounds like she’s yodeling, “Oya oya hoya.”
At the end of the song, Crawford delivers, with a perfectly straight face, the single funniest line of the show: “Did that Julia Ward Howe know how to write a tune or what? I really miss her.”
Olds gets plenty of his own finger-poppin’ high-camp moments, such as when he, instead of Keely, delivers the seductive Peggy Lee number, “Fever.” Olds, a Broadway veteran, earned plenty of laughs as he posed coquettishly and flirted shamelessly with a young woman in the front row. Olds was clearly inspired by Robert Goulet, with whom his character shares a moustache. Olds also showed flashes of Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
Olds and Crawford are not comedians foremost – they are singers. Olds is an operatic baritone whose talents are well-suited to delivering both the old standards and the new songs composed by Patrick Brady and Mark Waldrop. Carolyn Jess, the musical director and pianist, ably fronts a three-piece on-stage combo.
Crawford is an impeccable vocal talent, who can swing as well as anyone on “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” and can smolder her way through a torch-song crescendo on “Black Coffee.” Musically, she and Olds are an absolute pleasure to listen to throughout. Clearly, Weaver cast this show with vocal skills in mind.
However, that choice also gives the show a flavor that I suspect is quite different from the original off-Broadway version. The sense of camp snarkiness is often subdued. For many stretches, the comedy comes off more as amusing than hysterical.
I found myself enjoying the show more as a musical revue than as an uproarious comedy. Oddly enough, if Olds and Crawford were worse singers, the show might have been a little funnier. But it sure wouldn’t have been as finger-snappin’.