Love on Asphalt

By T.E.Kalem

SEESAW

Written, Directed and Choreographed by MICHAEL BENNETT

Music by CY COLEMAN

Lyrics by DOROTHY FIELDS

Broadway would rather rely on a reflex than a new idea any time. The trouble is that some of these reflexes are as unreliable as they are automatic. One such automatic reflex is the assumption that any hit play of the past can be transformed into a successful musical. The process goes like this: chop the original text into fragments, toss in songs and dances, and whir everything together at the pace of a Waring blender. The resulting concoction blandly eludes taste, flavor or identity.

This is more or less what has happened to the 1958 hit Two for the Seesaw--except that the blender breaks down from time to time. The hero, Jerry Ryan, is a WASP lawyer on separation leave from 1) Omaha and 2) his wife. Ken Howard, who plays this role, bears an uncanny physical resemblance to New York Mayor John Vliet Lindsay. The heroine, Gittel Mosca (Michele Lee), is an artsy Jewish girl on the lam from The Bronx to Greenwich Village. She is spunky and sassy, but inwardly scared. Out of mutual need, the pair promptly share bedded bliss until sense collides with sensuality.

Over this almost wistful tale of bittersweet love is superimposed the geometric grid lines of New York, the monolithic city, the steel-and-glass giant. Film projections flash on high-rise panel backdrops and form skyscraper spectaculars. At their shadowy base laps the treacherous asphalt tide of the urban jungle. This translates into dance numbers with the slashing tempi of switchblades, though none are shown or used. Hookers, casual muggings and cops as cynical as the wink of an eye breeze across the stage, less in menace than in roguish mockery. Never mind if any of this is strictly true; it matches the urban mythos of the moment, and provides the musical comedy brass to go with the plot's violins.

Granted that the show is an entertainment hybrid, Writer-Director-Choreographer Michael Bennett is unstinting in his professionalism. Aided by Grover Dale, Bob Avian and Tommy Tune, Bennett's dances have a carnal thrust that evokes aspects of both the play and work life of the city. One balloon-saturated number featuring the elongatedly energetic 6-ft. 6-in. Tommy Tune is a bit like meeting E.E. Cummings' mythical "goat-footed balloonMan" in Central Park in the spring.

Cy Coleman's music is amiably melodic and Dorothy Fields' lyrics ingratiatingly intelligent, though the score never soars toward the memorable. Apart from their notable acting strengths, the sheer likability of Michele Lee and Ken Howard is infectious. She is a warm, supple sprig of femininity; he is a tongue-tied Adam trying to invent a word for love. A playgoer ends up half wishing that the pair could swap their teeter-totter affair for the merry-go-round of marriage. . T.E. Kalem

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