Jamestown Gals: The Music of Lucille Ball and Peggy Lee

Jamestown Gals: the Music of Lucille Ball and Peggy Lee is a musical revue that grew from a positively daft idea. It seems that both women came from places called Jamestown. Ball, from Jamestown, New York; and Lee, from Jamestown, North Dakota. That’s it.

It’s a crazy idea for a musical revue and one that director Michael Walline might have done well to keep hidden, for the connections between the women are so tentative that they actually confuse the evening more than illuminate anything.

And yet…

This show is sheer delight, and brilliantly highlights the talents of everyone involved.

Taking this unlikely starting point, Walline has been able to toss together an irresistible hodge-podge of music and attach it to some of the most gifted musical theater talent in the region. Walline’s own choreography is inspired, and the show is pleasing from the first phrases of its opening number: “Here’s to the Girls.” By the time he puts his gifted company through their paces with “It’s a Good Day,” you’re hooked.

The focus is divided alternately between the boys and the girls, with Terrie George often standing in for the Peggy Lee numbers, John Fredo making a likeable Desi Arnaz, and Kelly Jakiel and Kathy Weese doing fine work with much of the Lucille Ball material. Fredo also does a Bea Arthur turn opposite Marc Sacco’s wacky Lucy, with both men in drag, in “Bosom Buddies” from Mame. Walline also makes divine use of Arin Lee Dandes, a sexy little porcelain doll of a girl with a soaring and wonderful voice.

Jamestown Gals is the sort of captivating evening that reminds us why there is MusicalFare. The talent lavished upon the project has taken generations to cultivate and is marvelous. Every member of the cast bursts across the proscenium like a star. Dandes with her exquisite voice; Fredo with his masterful showmanship; George with her confident moves; Jakiel with her irrepressible personality and sense of comedy; Sacco with his appealing playfulness and sense of fun; and Weese, who moves, dances, and wisecracks like nobody’s business.

The band—with Allan Paglia at the keyboards, Dave Siegfried on the bass, Jim Runfola on the reeds, Jeff Cooke on percussion, and Larry Easter on the trumpet—is sublime.

One could quibble with the occasional over-amplification of voices. The forced rivalry between the women in “Friendship” and “Sisters” misfires—it is impossible to believe that these ladies do not like each other, and their feigned fury to be on stage wearing the same dresses might better have been directed at the unseen costume designers. (The frocks, by the way, look terrific on everybody, including the men, and are lit wonderfully by Chris Cavanagh.) Great clothes by Loraine O’Donnell and Olivia Ebsary, who remind us just how very stylish the 1950s could be. Chris Schenk’s set is handsome enough for Hollywood.

Forget that the show was inspired by Lucille Ball and Peggy Lee. Just go and delight in the marvelous local talent. It is unsurpassed on any stage, anywhere.

TRIANGLES

Road Less Traveled Productions’ evening of one-act plays, Triangles, is a fun idea, expertly executed by an exceedingly strong cast. The theme is love triangles and infidelities, and the plays include August Strindberg’s classic two-hander, “The Stronger,” in which the wife speaks as her husband’s other love remains silent; Emanuel Fried’s “Triangle,” an updated response to the Strindberg play; and a new work by Jon Elston called “The elliptical.”

Directed by Scott Behrend, the production is ambitious in its scope, and includes an original score composed and performed live by Al Kryszak, which adds a great deal to the atmosphere. Between and after the three plays Jon Elston has arranged lines mined from the selections that amplify the themes. The effect is highly engaging and thought provoking.

Lisa Vitrano and Kristen Tripp-Kelley, two of the region’s most skillful realistic actresses, tackle the material in the first two plays with impressive subtlety and insight. Vitrano does all the talking in the first, Tripp-Kelley in the second.

The Elston piece is sprawling, but contains some marvelous writing and provocative insight. Todd Benzin, Kelly Meg Brennan, and Bonnie Jean Taylor make a perfect cast, and indeed, each does some of his or her best work in this production. Three friends from high school find their relationships overlapping in ways they never could have predicted.

This evening of one-act plays so strong reminds us just how robust the Buffalo theater scene is, and amplifies that this has been an uncommonly good theater season so far.