It’s easy to enjoy a musical like Chicago, or Guys and Dolls or Anything Goes. Even though they deal in criminal behavior, they find a way to make scoundrels likable. Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party (based on Joseph Moncure March’s epic poem) strikes an uneasy balance between glitz and degeneracy, tawdriness and ecstasy. When guests indulge in an orgiastic night of cocaine, drunkenness and indiscriminate sex, we forgive them because the soiree is posh, and everyone loves a good time.
Queenie and Burrs are a couple. The playground has closed down (if you know what I mean) with no explanation. Both are rough around the edges, but skilled at rejoinders and self-deprecation. When Burrs first appears, he bemoans his role as vaudeville clown and good-time guy. As each guest explains their trade: thug, hooker, Lesbian, under-aged girl, producer, it’s clear we’re witnessing a jazz age Sodom and Gomorrah. When the mysterious Mr. Black arrives, Queenie is tantalized. She comes on to him, with no discretion whatsoever, goading Burrs to a fit of temper. Queenie and Burrs launch into a tumultuous fight, and things get ugly quickly.
The music, book, and lyrics (all by Lippa) are cynical and exquisite; expressing the pervasive disappointment and malaise that informs the characters’ lives in vivid, dark detail. Bluesy ballads and angry horns. Isaiah Harris’ choreography is inventive and satisfying. Tamara Ballard’s costumes are working class, fancy dress. Dapper or flashy but perhaps a bit weary.
Director Adam Adolfo’s vision for The Wild Party fits the material. It’s set backstage in a vaudeville house, in Manhattan. It’s 1928. Burrs and Queenie are hard-edged and recalcitrant, too disaffected to fix a stuck relationship. The same apathy and ennui infects the guests, up for a good time, but jaded. Perhaps its just a matter of taste, but it might have been better if the trappings were a bit more dazzling. Something that invites us into the narrative. Adofo’s work (as we might expect) is impeccable. The Wild Party ’s a rowdy, often funny, gripping descent.
Bishop Arts Theatre Center presents: The Wild Party, playing October 10-27th, 2019. 215 South Tyler, Dallas, Texas 75208. (214) 948-0716. info@bishopartstheatre.org