'S Not So Wonderful

THE TITLE My One and Only seems an ironic comment on the show's recent mishaps. Its playbill currently credits no director. The last few weeks before opening night saw staff chaos: first Peter Sellars '80 was fired from the directorship, then Mike Nichols was brought in to offer advice. For now, the production remains "staged and choreographed" by Thommie Walsh and its star, Tommy Tune. In the program notes, Tune acknowledges Sellars' "highly imaginative directorial concept," but the musical itself appears to be still in the conceptual stage. Although it showcases Tune and co-star Twiggy's charm and ease on stage and a George and Ira Gershwin score worthy of a revival, My One and Only remains a show in search of one and only one focus.

The contrived plot centers on Captain Billy Buck Candler (Tune), an ace flyer who plans to become the first man to fly across the Atlantic to Paris, but whose passion for Edythe Herbert (Twiggy), an aquatic star, overwhelms his passion for the air. Edythe, however, is under the watchful and lustful eye of Prince Nicolai (Bruce McGill), the "Aquacade's" manager, who threatens to show Billy embarrassing photographs of Edythe and prevent their union. This "conflict" functions merely as a device to leave Billy and Edythe separated, but still in love, at the end of the first act. (Sometime during Act II, the Prince finally produces the photographs, which elicit only a throwaway line and an obvious joke from Billy.) Similarly, there exists little reason why, in the second act, Edythe flees to Morocco, taking the entire cast with her. Without an involving and sustained conflict, and with an equally unengaging resolution, the musical seems unanchored from the outset.

The repartee, from Timothy Mayer's script, too often seems equally adrift. While former "Saturday Night Live" regular Denny Dillon performs confidently as Billy's mechanic, Lotus, her character soon becomes tiring. She refers to Edythe as "sea slime," but elsewhere her lines lose their freshness, especially in one explicitly excremental description of the Prince's brain. The book also forces Tune to reflect upon the time before everyone's birth, when we were "up swimming around in the sky waiting for the Lord to imagine us."

Tune and Walsh's choreography remains an uneven mixture as well. The show includes a few inspired numbers, as when the chorus teaches Billy how to walk and dance in top hat and tails, but many flat and dull sequences. Tune overuses the technique he employed in Broadway's A Day in Hollywood A Night in the Ukraine. A flat hides the dancers' bodies and only reveals their lower legs. After a while, the sensation makes one wish the theater included a T.V. style vertical hold control.

The "Aquacade's" five-member chorus performs several gently satirical numbers that, unfortunately, are not nearly as witty and creative as the accompanying costumes of giant bananas, pineapples and starfish. As tongue-in-cheek sequences, they're too tame and subdued to make their point, if intended seriously, they're too silly.

THERE ARE SOME bright spots. Twiggy and Tune work well together, as they did in Ken Russell's film of a decade ago. The Boy Friend Twiggy sings in a surprisingly pleasant voice and looks stylish and alluring throughout the show; her costumes and her manner subtly spoof her past as a model, as does an enormous billboard of Edythe's face that fills the stage for much of the show. Star appeal remains the show's great attraction.

Tune stands as tall as Twiggy is lithe and fragile. Well over six feet. Tune performs his numbers with Twiggy with grace and confidence, his legs and arms encircling and leading his partner. When with Charles "Honi" Coles. Tune dances with an appealing selflessness, as he and Coles perform the show's title song. After numbers like these, one envisions a more revue-like production that devotes less time to plot contrivances.

My One and Only simply needs a redirection of its energies. Shows like 42nd Street and Sophisticated Ladies prove that musicals can succeed with only a slight plot or none at all. In fact, Tune's own Tony award winning Nine succeeds not because of an extemely engrossing story (its ending appears too manufactured), but because it seldom bores its audience. Tune's choreography in that show is consistently exciting, as are the costumes and set. My One and Only possesses a stylish set as well. At times, it also reveals Tune's (or Sellars's, or Walsh's) flair. Tune and Twiggy dance on water, and a group of four elderly gentlemen occasionally appear singing an ironic refrain from an already performed song. The show must quicken and tighten its pace, though it should retain the gentle tone befitting Gershwin's consistently lovely music--the score includes "He Loves and She Loves," "How Long Has This Been Going On?" and "Kickin' the Clouds Away."

After one curtain call, Tune addressed the audience in an engagingly familiar manner. "When the curtain went up, you clapped," he said. "What was it? Tell us so we'll be able to do it tomorrow night." Then in a tacit recognition of the show's greatest strength, he led the audience in a refrain from "'S Wonderful." Tune told the audience that the show is still being revised, and one senses that he meant it: when Billy tells Edythe, "Sometimes I still feel unborn." Tune seem to express his recognition that My One and Only is far from full grown.