'Plaid' musical funny, yet sad
By Devorah L. Knaff - The Press-Enterprise
Riverside- IN case you haven't been paying strict attention to the world of American musical theatre lately you might not have noticed the rise of something that is pretty close to a phenomenon.
Like so many popular culture phenomena, this one contains a broad element of the downright silly -- but the kind of silly that exists to teach us serious lessons about life.
"Forever Plaid" is Performance Riverside's current offering at Landis Auditorium. This is a jewel of a production for this funny little musical, which has been around for a dozen years.
The show tells the story -- although "story" might be too strong a word for this loosely arranged plot -- of a band whose members were killed before they got to put on their first big show. Because of this, they have been stuck in a sort of limbo since 1964, not quite ready to pass over into the next world because of their unfinished business.
Which brings them -- through means as mysterious to the singers themselves as they are to us -- back to life for one more day so that they can perform the concert they never got to give and finally be set free of all earthly ties.
The musical is thus a recreation of a show given by the typical harmonizing boy-bands of the 1950s, with a great deal thrown in about the lives and dreams of the singers and a reminder here and there about what it means to have a good life.
But mostly there's just a lot of lovely crooning, provided by Roger Befeler, Stan Chandler, David Engel and Larry Raben.
One of the problems with staging "Forever Plaid" is that the conceit of the show is that this a band that never had a chance of being a success. This is hard to so while still having talented singers in the roles.
Director Chandler, who also plays the character Jinx, has chosen to address this paradox by having the group be hapless in its choreography and its movements as well as totally clueless about what was happening to popular music in the early 1960's--one of the funniest moments in the show is the group's croonerized rendition of The Beatles. This cast makes it entirely believable that they could sing so well and still ultimately fail.
Three of the four members of the Performance Riverside cast were actually in the original cast, which was put together in 1989 in New York under the direction of Stuart Ross with the musical guidance of James Raitt.
Only Guy Strohman was prevented by a previous engagement from appearing in the Performance Riverside production, but his part is ably played by Befeler, to whom he taught the role.
If there is a fault to this production, it is in the patter between the songs. The timing seemed off during some of these sections Friday night, as if the men were afraid of stepping on each other's lines. The result was that the play seemed a little slower in its overall pacing than have been ideal.
But it's hard to let such minor points spoil one's enjoyment of the show, especially with the quality of the singing, which is backed up with bass and piano. Not only does each man--especially Engel -- havea superb voice, but the four harmonize beautifully. It almost makes you want to travel back in time when all the music sounded like this.
One of the riffs of the shows that the Plaids are killed the same day that The Beatles first appear on the Ed Sullivan show--the day that everything changed about popular music in America.
This play isn't really a debate about what's good or bad about different kinds of music. It's about the goodness of all music, especially to the young.
The show is also about how time washes over all of us. The musical is funny and witty and inventive and silly. But it's also sad with its message that dreams do run their course.
