A Recycled Cartoon

THE REP'S PRODUCTION, and the first stage performance ever, of The Point suffers from the misbegotten mission of its creator. Esquire Jauchem's idea of adapting Harry Nilsson's musical fantasy to live theater is frustrated by the simple problem that the original fantasy has little to gain from being fixed within the bounds of flesh and blood. Neither the story as a whole nor individual ideas have any desire to be enslaved by dramatization. The show unconsciously slips back towards its previous incarnation as a cartoon--a tendency that is illuminated by various visual aspects of the production such as costumes, make up, props and lighting.

Originally a record released by Nilsson in 1971. The Point was televised twice as an animated cartoon based on the book of drawings that accompanied the album. The same year, director Jauchem got the idea of adapting it for the stage. That the basic plot structure--the adventures of a boy and his dog--isn't exactly new, might not matter if the details of this particular--version weren't equally old hat. Ostracized by a "lot of little pointy-headed people," for non-conformity (having a round, rather than a pointed, head), the boy Oblio (David Morse) is unjustly banished from his homeland. The Land of Point. He and his canine companion Arrow have a series of adventures--all too reminiscent of those of Alice in Wonderland--through which Oblio arrives at several earth-shattering conclusions: that the allegedly "Pointless" Forest to which he has been banished is not pointless after all, that "you don't have to have a point to have a point," and that "a point in every direction is the same as no point at all." Gee. So after this dazzling flood of psychological enlightenment. Oblio retrurns home for the inevitable final revelation--that he is the only person there with a real point. To emphasize the fact, he even sprouts one on the top of his head.

Jauchem's idea for adapting The Point for the stage was conceived at a time when rock musicals were enjoying a heyday. But it has taken almost four years to materialize, and during that time characters like the saccharine, boyish Oblio have left the stage and gone the way of Godspell. And even if rock operas were not bygones. The Point offers little that's original in the way of either choreography or music--two areas where the story might have been able to benefit from live production. The mime is for the most part strictly traditional and basic; there are a few abortive tap and soft-shoe sequences; mysterious acrobatic tumbles are used to convey Oblio's long fall down through the Point of No Return. Like this last one, there are a number of excellent ideas that are either lost in overly cautious execution, or cut off when they've hardly begun. The opportunity to alter the emphasis of the show and adapt it more to a stage performance possibly making it really unique, has been passed up.

Nilsson's music is too innocuous to be noteworthy, except to say that it drowns the singing voices from time to time. Too mediocre to be offensive, it too has the ring of a past genre that is just as well of dead.

Where the show succeeds, it seems almost accidental. In yearning to return to the freedom of the cartoon form, the costumes come into their element. Animating the entire production with her lively imagination and sense of the ridiculous, costume director Martha Burtt uses everything from Oblio's pajamas and orange velvet tails to an ingenious suit of foam boulders for Rock Man and a new-born bird outfit for Baby Pterodactyl.

AGAIN, ALMOST accidentally, the sheer triteness of Nilsson's script is often the richest source of humor. Oblio meets a heap of rocks, Rock Man (Gerald Bernstein), a "stone person" with a deep, throbbing double-bass of a voice and an endless stream of outdsted jargon, "Being a rock," he intones, "is a very...heavy...life. We rocks are impervious to heat. We...stay...cool," And his coolness increases, strangely enough in direct proportion to the number of his cliches, which come fast and furious. His advice to Oblio is to keep cool--like "Mother Nature sittin' at the console, lookin' at the whole scene and puttin' it on eight-track."

It would be wrong to say that The Point is, or even should be, directed to pre-pubescent audiences only. Nilsson and Jauchem have obviously made a conscious effort to speak to a wider group, supplementing the simplistic, philosophical messages with a little soft-sell social and political commentary. The reasons for Oblio's banishment (caused ultimately by the whim of an affronted evil Count and the quirks of an unjust legal system) seem intended to bring up the issue of judicial injustice. Either the injustic should be made more real, or the issue should be left out altogether. Later on, however, the tone becomes more lighthearted and even witty.

The Evil Count (Gregroy Meeh) asks the benevolent, absent-minded King (Robin Brecker) what to do about the angry mob at the palace gates.

"What do you suggest?" snaris the Count. "Send out a pastry tray and let them eat cake?"

"No," the King muses vaguely. "That's never worked before."

The real problem is that the show isn't quite right for either old or young audiences, although Jauchem's invention of two sappy narrators (David Zuker and Susan Palmer-Persen) peeping around the props, winking earnestly at the audience and splitting up the dialogue between each other certainly lowers the level of entertainment.

The Rep's The Point is simply off the mark. The attempt to dramatize a fantasy that should have remained a cartoon inevitably fails. Enchanting costumes cover up recycled thoughts and crusty choreography, and the show misses its audience by a lot more than four year.