Off and Running

By T.E.K.

MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS Music and Lyrics by William Finn

In horse-racing parlance, this musical has shown "early foot." Breaking out of the gate in April without an official opening, Falsettos has been S.R.O. ever since, and moves to a larger theater in late August. Broadway producers have lined the aisles, and, at 29, Composer-Lyricist William Finn is a mini-celebrity.

In flavor, March of the Falsettos has an exhilarating champagne tang; in substance, it carries the weight of a cork. In an operatic mode, sans dialogue, Finn somewhat erratically unveils the bittersweet saga of Marvin (Michael Rupert), who divorces his wife Trina (Alison Fraser) to be with his male lover Whizzer Brown (Stephen Bogardus). As Marvin's owl-eyed young son Jason (James Kushner) puts it, "My father's a homo/ My mother's not thrilled at all."

However, Marvin is innately domestic ("I want a tight-knit family"), and through the agency of a psychiatric guru, Mendel, played in an excruciatingly droll fashion by Chip Zien, a leaky roof is kept over all heads. From the opening number, Four Jews in a Room Bitching, the humor is spikily and spicily urban and ethnic. The actors are spirited, and Director James Lapine's tempo is stopwatch crisp. In astringence and cleverness, Finn is the child of Stephen Sondheim. In the current musical theater, no one could choose a better master or pay an apter tribute.

-- T.E.K.

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