Paint Your Wagon at the Ordway

Hardy HWTSers Janet Preus and John Olive attended the performance last night of the hoary musical (original production was in 1953) Paint Your Wagon, at the Ordway. Paint Your Wagon is a “collaboration” between the Ordway and Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre. After the show, J&J walked through the raindrops across the square to Kincaids for beverages, sweet potato fries and conversation, excerpted herewith:

Janet Preus: The best thing about this production was – and still is – the songs, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Masterpieces all: “I’m On My Way,” “Whoop-Ti-Ay!,” the hit song “They Call The Wind Mariah,” “Wanderin’ Star,” boffo.

John Olive: Agree about the boffo-ness of the L&L songs. They’re performed brilliantly: Justin Gregory Lopez as Armando (wow-dow), Robert Cuccioli as Ben, Ann Michels as Cayla, Kirsten de Lohr Helland as Jennifer. The songs coupled with the performances provide the best reason to see Paint Your Wagon.

JP: Paint Your Wagon is in many ways a lovely return to more traditional music theatre.

JO: To wax critical for a moment (I’m a critic after all), I felt that the story doesn’t live up to the promise of the first song, “I’m On My Way.” The song gives a series of characters, all exuberantly headed West. They don’t know, nor care, where they’re going. The song is all about spirit, passion. Then the play focuses on the mickey-mouse of their presence in the town: they gamble, grub for gold, dilly-dally with the whor— er, the dancing girls. I don’t know what the solution to this problem might be, but I found it disappointing.

JP: The new book (note: Paint Your Wagon features an updated, more politically correct, book by Jon Marans) didn’t always provide a setup – a dramatic context – for the songs. But I think that’s because Paint Your Wagon isn’t really clear about what The Story is.

JO: I disagreed with the moving of the songs (originally, “Wandrin’ Star” was in Act Two and the brilliant “They Call The Wind Mariah” was in Act One). Making “Mariah” arise from racism and murder diminishes, in my humble opinion, the song.

JP: You haven’t had a humble opinion since 1984.

JO: I liked Cuccioli (as Ben Rumson) much better before he cut his beard. He looked real, like a mountain man. After the beard goes away he becomes a standard-issue leading man, given to posing, swaggering, leaden silences. He sings brilliantly (does he ever) but he’s… diminished.

JP: The treatment of Rumson goes to a serious problem with Paint Your Wagon: the undervalued love stories (and whose story is it?)

JO: Why does Rumson cut his beard, buy and marry Cayla, all in one scene? A more interesting story would have been Cayla wooing him, influencing him, making him fall in love, clean up his act, etc.

JP: The hinging of the love story of Jennifer and Armondo to that of Ben and Cayla is, I think, a directorial issue. Kirsten deLohr Helland’s Jennifer fluttered about, shouting lines in a little-girl voice. Their initial scene should be turning point and it wasn’t. (Helland sings like a dream, however, and wins us over in the end.)

Paint Your Wagon is beautiful to listen to and to look at: the projected moon, the mountain silhouettes, the hanging ropes, the brilliant revolve, wonderful. Kudos to (especially) scene designer Jason Sherwood.

JO: So what’s our final assessment?
JP: Recommended – with reservations.

JO: Agree.