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The Gang's All Here said. “It’s all so in character, you know.” THE THEATRE “February House,” an ambitious new chamber musical about the eponymous residence (directed by Davis McCallum, THE GANG’S ALL HERE at the Public), serves as a showcase for the welcome talent of the thirty-year-old Artists unite in “February House” and “The Common Pursuit.” singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane, who is responsible for its lyrics, music, and or- BY JOHN LAHR chestrations. (The book is by Seth Bock- ley.) The eclectic crew of outspoken res- idents give Kahane an opportunity to explore a gallimaufry of musical forms: operetta for Britten (Stanley Bahorek) and Pears (Ken Barnett); Southern folk ballads for the Georgia-born McCullers (Kristen Sieh); hymns for Auden (the ex- cellent Erik Lochtefeld) and settings of his own poems; and musical comedy for Gypsy Rose Lee (Kacie Sheik). Kahane also has a dashing word horde. At the prospect of rooming in the house, the deeply closeted Britten blurts, for in- stance, “They’re obsessed with innu- endo / I prefer diminuendo, my dear / Qui- etly queer.” Britten and Pears, a prissy pair, call out of Kahane some of his most vivacious musical ideas. In “A Certain Itch,” which opens Act II on a high comic note, they stagger downstage in their long johns, scratching and screaming in “rec- itative, furioso”: “There are bugs / There are bugs in my bed / There are bugs in my bed / Everyone wake up and get dressed.” For all its freshness and drive, however, “February House” is a compendium of rookie mistakes. To think musically is easy for Ka- hane; to think theatrically is not. He has a lot of possible events to wrangle: the British expats writing their opera “Paul Bunyan”; McCullers trying to figure out her third novel, “The Member of the Wedding,” and o. 7 Middagh Street, in Brooklyn art I found in any large city of the coun- her troubled marriage; the German-born Heights, was a four-story Victorian try,” Denis de Rougemont, a Swiss writer, activist Erika Mann (Stephanie Hayes), the houseN on a short, maple-lined row that noted. Over the years, its louche and lively daughter of Thomas, starting the magazine dead-ended into the shadow of the Brook- collection of eccentrics and exiles included Decision; and Davis helping Lee write “The lyn Bridge. The house was condemned in W. H. Auden and his poet boyfriend, G-String Murders,” which became a best- 1945, but it looms large in the mythic Chester Kallman, Carson McCullers, seller. But, instead of taking advantage of landscape of New York City. At the Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Jane and the fascinating panoply of incident and be- height of its notoriety, between 1940 and Paul Bowles, Oliver Smith, Marc Blitz- havior that history provides—the house’s 1945, the building—dubbed the Febru- stein, Richard Wright, and Gypsy Rose inhabitants generated a lot of genuine ary House, by Anaïs Nin, because a num- Lee. When Janet Flanner, a Paris corre- melodrama—the musical skims over the ber of its residents had birthdays in that spondent for The New Yorker, first heard complexity and nuance of these moments. month—was a kind of creative power- about this artistic hive from its queen “February House” seems to forget that the- house, a magnet for modernists in the arts. bee, George Davis, the former literary atre is a game of show and tell: too much is “All that was new in America in music, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, she thought cleverly told and not actively staged. To painting or choreography emanated from he’d said “bawdy house,” not boarding take an obvious example, in “A Little ENA that house, the only center of thought and house. “It’s just the same, George,” she Brain”—for which Kahane steals the idea Ñ of Lorenz Hart’s “Zip” and tries to best the Sieh, Lochtefeld, Sheik, Fleisher, and Hayes in Gabriel Kahane’s chamber musical. master—Gypsy Rose Lee tells us that she LUIS GRA 128 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2012 TNY—2012_6_4&11—PAGE 128—133SC.—LIVE ART R22262_RD prefers brainy men (“You’d like to get me there will be no political discussion.’ ” into bed? / Well, I’ve got to know that you Auden’s schoolmaster’s command and his have read”); in “Zip,” she strips while apolitical adamancy are part of the fasci- thinking out loud. The former is a musi- nating debate about art and politics that cal turn; the latter, in which action and ex- gives Act II a dramatic thrust and hints at pression are at ironic odds, is musical the- the promise of the material. atre. For the spectators, the fun is in The real star of the show, of course, connecting the dots—good dramatists let is the house itself. In Riccardo Hernan- them find the clues, rather than solve the dez’s minimal set, the place is conjured by puzzle for them. the outline of a roof, a parquet floor, and The vexed, impressionistic first act takes a few well-placed, high-camp antiques. a long time just to get the characters on- It’s an odd but tidy arrangement. In real- stage. In “A Room Comes Together”—a ity, 7 Middagh was sensationally clut- potentially terrific number, which lifts its tered, stuffed to overflowing with Amer- dynamic organizing principle, it seems to icana, which reflected something essential me, from Stephen Sondheim’s “Putting It about Davis, who was a collector of all Together”—the residents sing about creat- things weird, including people. This idea ing a place for themselves, concluding, comes up only notionally, in “A Room “When a house comes together / You are Comes Together,” when Davis tells us not alone / When a house comes to- about his passions for things (“I grow gether / It’s home.” If the song were doing weak over antique teak”) and for people its theatrical job, the characters and the fur- (“A Southern belle who burns so bright / A nishings would be gathered and introduced literary pinup who is quite the sight”), but in the course of the singing, ready for action the song doesn’t bring them to life. at its conclusion. Instead, as in Noah’s Ark, “February House” has enough going the characters lumber on afterward, mostly for it to warrant a rewrite and another two by two, each with his own “issue” and production. I hope it gets one. Kahane has wash of eccentricity. As a result, the show the luck of talent; now he needs the luck feels winded right off the blocks. of better collaborators. For the moment, Because the collaborators don’t man- what could have been a banquet turns out age to get the array of artists properly to be a tray of hors d’oeuvres, a selection defined and interacting in Act I, the script of tasty bits and pieces that don’t quite of “February House” plays at times like make a meal. SparkNotes. “There’s Carson McCullers, girl wonder, fresh off her first novel. n Simon Gray’s 1984 play “The Com- Wystan Hugh Auden, the greatest chain- mon Pursuit” (in revival at the Round- smoking poet in the English language,” about’sI Laura Pels, under the direction of says Davis (Julian Fleisher), who narrates Moisés Kaufman), another high-flying the tale, but whose own cultural pedigree group of would-be literati convene in the and cachet are never established. (Davis’s book-lined rooms of Cambridge to found charm and humor, which were substantial a literary magazine. Gray crisply tracks the in real life, are confoundingly absent from lives of the six undergrads up and down Fleisher’s charisma-free performance.) (mostly down) the greased pole of literary The greatest narrative waste is Gypsy Rose life. Full of rueful laughter and piquant Lee, whose bighearted liveliness was a stoicism, “The Common Pursuit” shows catalyst for the group, and who gave as us how the characters are betrayed by time, good as she got in her teasing friendship by one another, and by their own self- with Auden. By cartooning her crudely as destructiveness, from which class and a shrill, charmless bimbo with the voice of privilege can’t protect them. By bookend- Kay Starr, the musical really overshoots ing his drama with the buoyant scene in the runway. Of all the residents, Auden, which the characters meet up as students passionately in love with Kallman (the to found the magazine, Gray traces the effective A. J. Shively) and in retreat from distance from idealism to cynicism, and the war, has the most compelling dra- sends us home with a bellyful of the bitter- matic arc. According to Paul Bowles, sweetness we know is in store. It’s all very “Our communal living worked well British; in our depleted moment, it may largely because Auden ran it. He would even be very American. As Noël Coward preface a meal by announcing: ‘We’ve got famously sang, “With a scowl and a frown, a roast and two veg, salad and savory, and we’ll keep our peckers down.” THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4 & 11, 2012 129 TNY—2012_6_4&11—PAGE 129—133SC..
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