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We're talking Cohan's biggest hits, too: "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Give My Regards to Broadway," "Harrigan," "Mary Is a Grand Old Name," "Over There." What's more, they've all been placed where they're structurally able to have the most impact, such as at the end of both acts and in the early-second-act show-stopper spot, and choreographed to electric perfection by Joshua Bergasse (also of the current Broadway revival of On the Town), who turns the five dancers in the six-person cast into a veritable army of tapping toes, swaying arms, and swelling hearts. Showmanship this lustrous boosts any musical, and indeed, there's no way to walk away from this stage biography of film star James Cagney, who defined the high-thinking gangster type, without coddling the Cohan ditties that have been earworming Americans for more than a century. And, hey, it's not that big of a stretch, right? Cagney began his career as a vaudeville dancer, and won his single Oscar for playing Cohan in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy. If all this is good news from the standpoint of leaving you swimming in such wonderful songs, it doesn't do much for Cagney, which, despite a game effort from Creighton, McGovern, and bookwriter Peter Colley, is as otherwise as cliché, nondescript, and forgettable as Cohan's songs emphatically aren't.
Despite this, Cagney never emerges as a complete, interesting person the way, say, Fanny Brice does in Funny Girl or Gypsy Rose Lee does in Gypsy. The details of who Cagney is as a man, behind his professional persona, simply don't seem to interest the authors much. We briefly meet Cagney's wife (Ellen Zolezzi) and mother (an excellent Danette Holden), for example, but they're barely supporting characters, and don't inform him in any way beyond gentle support. And though Warner is presented as the major influence in Cagney's life, he's presented as a flat, dullish dictator type who doesn't actually possess much imagination of his own. This is also responsible for one main sense of confusion: competing frames for the story. Though Warner introduces the show with the song "Black and White," in which he takes credit for making Al Jolson, Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, and Bette Davis, there are also scenes set in the then-future (1978), when Warner and Cagney bicker while waiting backstage before a SAG Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony. It's clear that the writers grasp the importance of the Cagney-Warner relationship, but they haven't yet figured out exactly what it means for their show. Determining that would help a lot. The evening is otherwise hackneyed and directionless, drawing what little zest it does from depicting broader personalities like Bob Hope, who shows up (played by Jeremy Benton) to offer his usually coercive badinage, and even Mae Clarke, who got a grapefruit in the face from Cagney in The Public Enemy. As for the score, it's barely evanescently pleasant stuff, but so substance-free (representative song titles include "Crazy 'Bout You," "Falling in Love," "A Work of Genius," and "How Will I Be Remembered?"), that not even Matt Perri's spirited five-piece band can make them come to life. (James Morgan's sets, Amy Clark's costumes, Brian Nason's lights, and Mark Pirolo's projections make similarly effective, if inadequate, contributions.) Though most of the cast is accomplished if unexceptional, Creighton works tirelessly to energize Cagney. A fine singer and an even better dancer (in both cases, superior to the real Cagney), he floats effortlessly through the musical numbers. Otherwise, his characterization is limited to an Irish lilt muted by unchecked ambition; he doesn't reveal many complexities or trade in much must-watch magnetism, making this less than the absolute star performance the show would need to overcome its writing. Only in one sequence do the individual elements suggest the potential of greatness. It's during the filming of White Heat, when Cagney, determined as usual, is working as much as he can within the bounds of the script to make his run-of-the-mill tough a multifaceted victim of circumstance. Through id-driven creativity, he transforms each scene into one of barely controlled chaos, with his character, Cody Jarrett, the only constant of stability. Seeing the impact one man makes on an entire art form is what the show seems to want to be about: how it's possible to subvert expectations to make something memorable out of something apparently pedestrian. This would suggest that there's no reason that tactic's two main proponents here, Cagney and Cohan, couldn't work together. As things presently stand, the latter is drastically upstaging the former.
Cagney
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