By Cynthia Citron

 It was very clear that everyone in the audience wanted to love the show.  Including me.  After all, a show calling itself Saturday Night at Grossinger's has to invoke visions of happy crowds of revelers, classic comedic shtick, excitement, tumult, romance, and fun!  So what's not to love?

What's not to love is Theatre West's lame production that opened last week in Hollywood.  It's hard to believe that a "musical comedy" based on the fabulous Borscht Belt kosher resort that fed and entertained society's "beautiful people" for six decades and launched the careers of some of America's funniest Jewish comics and best-loved singers could be turned into a flat, almost boring, evening of theater.  

The fault, dear Brutus, is in its stars.  Notably Barbara Minkus, who plays Jennie Grossinger as terminally cute.  I seriously doubt that Jennie Grossinger, the consummate balls-and-chutzpah businesswoman, built her long-lasting empire on a foundation of winsome and wheedling (and tiresome) adorability.

Further, the show is not about the goings-on at the hotel, but about the pseudo-life of Jennie Grossinger: a fictionalized heroine with a single-minded devotion to her hotel, a woman to whom all the world was family---except her own family, and who conducted a contrived and unconsummated (?) romance with the leading tumler on her staff.  Or at least that's how Rita Lakin and Doris Silverton conceived her.  Abetted by Stephen Cole, who wrote the book and lyrics (collaborating with Ronny Graham), and Claibe Richardson, who wrote the music.  Some of which is tuneful and catchy.  And some of which is set to dances well-choreographed by Devra Korwin.

In between the really corny comic turns by "Sheldon Seltzer" (a light-footed Barry Pearl, weighed down by a klutzy script), and the even worse dialect and dialogue allotted to Larry Gelman as "Papa Grossinger," there are ensemble numbers in which the cast of six is fleshed out by life-sized stuffed cotton dolls wielded by the principals.  Not a happy addition to the cast.

The six principals include Bruce Katzman as Harry Grossinger, Jennie's cousin-husband, and Jeff Wiesen and Eydie Alyson as their two kids, Paul and Elaine.  These last two have excellent voices and do well in a multitude of roles.

But that's the problem.  Despite their energy and vigor, six people cannot simulate a crowd.  And a crowd is what is needed.  No matter how much running around the stage Director Susan Morgenstern has them engage in, it's still an empty stage.  All the people who should be there are merely name-dropped in passing.  No funny anecdotes or reminiscences to make them a part of the history of this fabulous hotel, and a part of this show.

At its height, Grossinger's encompassed 1,200 acres with its own airport and post office, had 35 buildings and served some 75,000 guests (or 150,000 or 300,000, depending on whose statistics you believe) each year.

This West Coast premiere of Saturday Night at Grossinger's is a vastly different production from the one which opened in Fort Worth, Texas, and starred Ruta Lee and Gavin MacLeod. That was a huge production with a Broadway-sized cast.  And then the authors sat down and "re-imagined" the show from the point of view of the Grossinger family.  They pared down the cast to six and augmented them with stuffed dolls.

The real people are sorely missed.

Saturday Night at Grossinger's will run at Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Boulevard West, in Hollywood, Thursday through Sunday, until May 22nd.

* * *

In reviewing Saturday Night at Grossinger's I came to the sorry conclusion that six actors alone, no matter how well intentioned, could not simulate a crowd nor provide enough sizzle to make that legendary Catskill resort come alive.  That very same week, five exuberant actors at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego proved me wrong.

In a dazzling new musical, Himself and Nora, playwright Sheila Walsh and composer Jonathan Brielle stunningly embrace and people the continent of Europe as their peripatetic hero and his mistress-muse move from one country to another.  Their hero is James Joyce, that inscrutable Dubliner who exiled himself from his beloved Ireland the better to evoke it with his innovative and radical prose.

Matt Bogart plays Joyce with a swagger and a bounce—and a voice so marvelous and strong that if the real Joyce had been able to sing like that he never would have written Ulysses.And the gorgeous Kate Shindle (she was Miss America in 1998) plays Nora Barnacle, the love of his life. She, too, has a spine-chillingly beautiful voice and she plays Nora with a saucy Irish charm.

But the surprise package are the three back-up actors: David Edwards, Frank Mastrone, and Kathy Santen, who play everybody else with a vigor and vivacity that leaves you breathless. Joseph Hardy has directed them with such precision that they move from one character to another without losing momentum.  And Tobin Ost has dressed them in period costumes that are both beautiful and authentic.  Together they portray everyone from Joyce's parents to his boyhood priest, his neighbors during his 10 years in Trieste, his patrons, Harriet Weaver, Sylvia Beach (of the famous Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co.), and poet Ezra Pound, and his children, Giorgio and the schizophrenic Lucia.

Himself and Nora is a love story.  From the moment the young Joyce sees the uneducated chambermaid who is to become his lifelong companion and, after 27 years together, his wife, he is enthralled.  He follows her around with pad and pencil, recording her oddly witty and perceptive comments and incorporating many of them into his rambling, stream-of-consciousness wordplay.  She recognizes his genius, even though she doesn't understand his books, and calls him a "fornicator with words."  She also keeps his burgeoning ego in check in a mocking song titled "The Grand Himself."

In addition to Sheila Walsh's intelligent script, James and Nora's story is played out in a full complement of  brilliant songs provided by Jonathan Brielle.  There are melodious love songs destined to become popular hits as well as hilarious patter songs accompanied by sparkling, high-spirited dances.  In one, the two nostalgic Dubliners teach their Italian neighbors the names of the nearly unpronounceable towns and rivers in Ireland in a boisterous romp that in another time might have been written by Sylvia Fine and sung by Danny Kaye.

And in addition to providing the costumes, Tobin Ost has outdone himself by designing a powerfully effective set.  A brick cathedral on the left frames the stage and segues into a more prosaic house at its other end.  A revolving ramp also glides forward and back and morphs into a variety of devices for the actors to sit or dance on or traverse.  And completing the scene are a panoply of stairs and feathery balconies that afford the cast opportunities for movement and a suggestion of changing venues.

This production is a world premiere.  Some 14 previous premieres at the Old Globe have moved from San Diego to Broadway.  This one is a sure-fire 15th.  And one that will probably still be playing when the 16th, 17th, and 18th productions find their way to Broadway as well.

The Old Globe Theater is located in San Diego's beautiful Balboa Park.  Himself and Nora will be performed there through April 24th.