Sunday, May 24, 2009 | A+E, Theater, Reviews
And the winners aren't...

High-school musical, Hollywood satire leave viewers empty-handed

Eric Hermann
Ricardo Aponte

“ZANNA, DON’T!”
Actor’s Express
404-607-7469
www.actors-express.com
Through June 20

“AND THE WINNER IS”
Stage Door Players
770-396-1726
www.stagedoorplayers.net
Through June 7

BY BERT OSBORNE
 
Xanadu, "Zanna, Don’t!"—get it? Treading a fine line between the clever and the obvious, "Zanna, Don’t!" (with book, music and lyrics by Tim Acito and Alexander Dinerlaris) is a fantastical high-school musical that takes place in an alternate universe, where being gay is the norm and "heterophobia" runs rampant.

At Heartsville High, the most popular kids aren’t the jocks and cheerleaders, but members of the chess club or an all-gal mechanical bull-riding team. "What kind of school would this be," someone asks, "if the quarterback wasn’t in the spring musical?" In that show-within-a-show, the students stir up a controversy by tackling the don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy regarding straights in the military—"hetero-gate," as it’s soon labeled—and so-called life imitates would-be art when the boy and girl co-stars fall in love.
 
Content to be a nonsensical trifle, when it has the potential to cast a unique light on matters of sexual identity and social convention, "Zanna" doesn’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. (For starters, shouldn’t it be the gays who are called "straight," when it’s the "heteros" who are the queer ones?) The score is mainly forgettable: A sappy love song is a sappy love song, gay or straight. The only truly inspired number is "Be a Man," which pays tribute to gays in the military by singing the praises of everyone from Alexander the Great and Lawrence of Arabia to Yukio Mishima and the Spartans. The most superfluous is “Ride ’Em,” featuring those lesbian bull-riders (played by three women—plus four men in tacky drag).
 
Under the musical direction of Linda Uzelac, artistic director Freddie Ashley’s Actor’s Express production is lively enough, although it never feels sufficiently magical. Zanna (Ricardo Aponte), the school’s well-meaning matchmaker, is, after all, a bona fide pixie with his own magic wand—and he’s not kidding when he periodically says a little birdie told him something.
 
But the show totally unravels during its senior-prom finale. With Zanna’s "spell" (and his wand) broken, suddenly "reality" sets in and everybody’s straight? Was this all in his head? A dream? And it’s only then that Zanna can accept his true feelings for the winsome Tank (an excellent Chase Todd)? What’s that all about? As scripted, the shift in tone is vague at best—lest we forget, Acito also wrote the peppy ghetto musical "The Women of Brewster Place," which the Alliance premiered a few years ago—and Ashley makes little stylistic distinction or effort to illuminate.
 
 And the (pick any award) doesn’t go to ... Stage Door Players’ “And the Winner Is.” The show’s premise is promising: A vacuous heartthrob dies the night before the Oscars (and his chance for newfound respect), but he makes a deal with his guardian angel to attend the ceremony anyway. Alas, equal parts Hollywood satire and afterlife meditation, it’s neither very freshly written (by Mitch Albom), nor very imaginatively directed (by Jessie Dean). Fanciful “film clip” reenactments and soul-searching flashbacks alike fall flat—never mind the glitz of the red carpet.
 
Chuck Welcome’s uncommonly paltry set should’ve been a sign. So, too, the (mis)casting of Gabriel Dean, the director’s husband. He’s not without a certain comic agility, but he doesn’t cut much of a figure as a buff sex symbol known for his "Chippencop" movies, or lend much depth to the guy’s “serious” side as a classically trained actor and loving husband who throws it all away. SP