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…And Then You Die
September 19, 2016
Despite its possibly off-putting title, this 70-minute revue by David B. Goldberg, which had a recent four-night run at Don’t Tell Mama, was a mostly benign, even breezy, look at what we do, or should do, to deal with the inevitability of death. In twelve scenes introducing fourteen songs (all by Goldberg), three eager and gifted performers in non-stop whirling dervish mode, nicely directed by John Margulis and accompanied by musical director and pianist Gary Adler, offered up what might be considered an update of the biblically based admonition to “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” On second thought, “…And Then You Die” was perhaps more of an alternate take on the 1950 pop hit “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)” (Carl Sigman, Herb Magidson), a song popularized—in separate recordings—by such notables as Guy Lombardo, Doris Day, and Louis Prima.
Without the need of scenery and with only a few props, the cast of three—Renae Morway-Baker, Craig Fols, and Dylan Stasack—played a progression of mostly funny and touching takes on a wide swath of humanity and their lives and hopes for an afterlife—or not. Morway-Baker was especially adept at conveying a variety of attitudes and accents. The piece began, logically enough, with a scene of “Giving Birth,” and ended, also logically enough, with a scene about facing the end, or “The 18th Hole.” In between was an inevitable look at the bucket list concept, with all three performers parachuting and singing “Experience This.” In contrast, Fols and Morway-Baker convincingly played book editors who experience life only in their “Reading,” as the sketch was called. Their ironic duet that followed, “Let’s Have Some Fun,” was almost scary in the pair’s inability to do just that. Morway-Baker and Fols also neatly portrayed a couple in a doctor’s office awaiting a cancer diagnosis, and scored with their duet rendition of “What Would I Do?”
Stasack nailed the number “I’ll Love You Forever,” paired with a scene called “A Wedding,” in which the not-so-subtle subtext was that maybe he wouldn’t. Morway-Baker’s most heartfelt moments came with her scene at an estate sale, in which she speculated about the family life suggested by an old bicycle that she had to buy even though it hadn’t belonged to her family. This set-up ended with an emotional kick in the heart. The song, with its borrowed title, “Once Upon a Time,” underscored a sense of history, connection, and loss.
There were a couple of misfires among the scenes, but only a couple. The anthropomorphic “In a Hive” saw all three singers as bees and featured two songs, both sung by Stasack: “Sick of Being Sticky” (from all that honey necessary to satisfy the queen’s demands), and “Bee Free” (get it?). This too-lengthy effort didn’t really work as a metaphor for the human condition, and was lessened further by some really bad British accents that it made no sense to employ. Another too-long skit was “Exercise Hour at the Retirement Home,” neither funny nor relatable unless your raunch of choice is sex among the nonagenarians. Goldberg’s introductory narratives almost always ran longer than the musical numbers that followed, all of which seemed truncated, more songlets than songs. Whatever you call them, they were also pretty much genre-free, the lone exception being the country gospel number “Oh My Lord,” a welcome penultimate trio that complemented “The 18th Hole.” None of the other songs would stand alone outside the context of the revue.
Don’t Tell Mama – September 7 – 10
Robert Windeler is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Mary Pickford, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple, and Burt Lancaster. As a West Coast correspondent for The New York Times and Time magazine, he covered movies, television and music, and he was an arts and entertainment critic for National Public Radio. He has contributed to a variety of other publications, including TV Guide, Architectural Digest, The Sondheim Review, and People, for which he wrote 35 cover stories. He is a graduate of Duke University in English literature and holds a masters in journalism from Columbia, where he studied critical writing with Judith Crist. He has been a theatre critic for Back Stage since 1999, writes reviews for BistroAwards.com, and is a member of The Players and the American Theatre Critics Association.
Despite its possibly off-putting title, this 70-minute revue by David B. Goldberg, which had a recent four-night run at Don’t Tell Mama, was a mostly benign, even breezy, look at what we do, or should do, to deal with the inevitability of death. In twelve scenes introducing fourteen songs (all by Goldberg), three eager and gifted performers in non-stop whirling dervish mode, nicely directed by John Margulis and accompanied by musical director and pianist Gary Adler, offered up what might be considered an update of the biblically based admonition to “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” On second thought, “…And Then You Die” was perhaps more of an alternate take on the 1950 pop hit “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)” (Carl Sigman, Herb Magidson), a song popularized—in separate recordings—by such notables as Guy Lombardo, Doris Day, and Louis Prima.