By J. Scott Hill

Theatre begins and ends with writing.  Someone writes a play.  The play goes into production, and is likely retooled during the rehearsal process.  Actors make the script as if it were their own words first uttered in-the-moment onstage.  Finally, some critic who sees a single performance lauds or eviscerates the entire enterprise.  Thought, action, reaction.

The production of I Do! I Do! at Theatre at the Center could not be finer, but it is a production of I Do! I Do!, and I Do! I Do! is a terrible musical – a mud pie with a latticework crust.  Robert Preston won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for his work in the original Broadway production of I Do! I Do!, but Robert Preston also breathed life into the dead-on-arrival 1984 movie The Last Starfighter.

The premise of I Do! I Do! holds such promise: scenes from a marriage played out through the bedroom conversations of one couple, from their wedding night, through their child-rearing years and midlife crises, to their empty nest denouement.  Adapted from Jan de Hartog’s 1952 Tony Award-winning play The Fourposter, I Do! I Do! reduces its source material’s universal truths about commitment and love to a pabulum of clichés.  I Do! I Do! is chockablock with songs, dopey songs with simplistic of/love rhyme schemes, songs inferior to those regularly created in improv games at iO and every other comedy sports venue in Chicagoland.  The book and lyrics are by Tom Jones and the music is by Harvey Schmidt, the duo responsible for The Fantasticks.  Schmidt rendered all of de Hartog’s touching and bittersweet insight out of the script, leaving nothing but schmaltz.

I wish that this mansion were not built upon such sand. Heidi Kettenring and Bernie Yvon are astonishing performers who work diligently to build Agnes and Michael’s marriage into a third character onstage with them, despite the ashes in their mouths.  Director Chuck Gessert skillfully guides Kettenring and Yvon through the emotion of the story, keeps the pacing as rightly uneven as the crests and hollows of a couple’s lives together, and provides purposeful blocking for a show that could have been two people sitting on a bed for two hours.  Ann N. Davis’s Scenic Design captures the essence of the well-appointed Victorian home.  Wig Designer Kevin Barthel masterfully creates a timeline for the show through the changes in Agnes’s hair.

In spite of Jones’s underwhelming script and lyrics, at least Harvey Schmidt’s music is pleasant.  The highlight of this unfortunate production is the piano accompaniment, provided from two baby grands at opposite sides of the stage, by Randy Glancy and Musical Director William A. Underwood.

In my head, I have construed a fantasy production of Jan de Hartog’s The Fourposter at Theatre at the Center with the same cast and set, and even with the twin pianos playing Harvey Schmidt’s music adapted into a score.  That could have been a four-star, must-see show; this is not.  Through no fault of anyone involved in this production, except perhaps Artistic Director William Pullinsi for allowing Theatre at the Center to mount this catastrophe of writing, I Do! I Do! is a failure.

1 STAR

(“I Do! I Do!” runs through May 23, 2010, at Theatre at the Center, 1040 Ridge Rd. Munster, IN.  219-836-3255.)

Theatre at the Center (Munster,IN)

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.