No Way to Treat a Lady

[August 8th, 2007]

A musical comedy inspired by the film adaptation of a hardboiled crime novel doesn't sound like the sort of thing any reasonable person should be forced to sit through. The very idea brings to mind nightmare visions of mobster chorus lines and harmonizing P.I.s. But despite its inauspicious origins, No Way to Treat a Lady, the last production in Broadway Rose's summer season, is a much better show than you might think.

Christopher Gill (Leif Norby), an unemployed actor desperate to escape the shadow of his famous mother (Luisa Sermol), grows so desperate for a mention in The New York Times that he goes on a strangling spree. He's pursued by Morris Brummel (Joe Theissen), a hangdog detective desperate to escape the apartment of his overbearing mother (also Luisa Sermol) and torn between his obsession with the case and his infatuation with socialite Sarah Stone (Adair Chappell).

As the body count rises, Gill and Brummel form an ambiguous cop/killer relationship, complete with midnight phone calls, that will be familiar to anyone who's watched Silence of the Lambs. In the context of musical theater, though, it still feels fresh. Writer and composer Douglas J. Cohen avoids tastelessly campy grotesqueries to explore the growing interdependence of the two protagonists and Gill's increasingly bizarre psychosis. The creepy parallels drawn between Brummel and Gill are accentuated by the rotating door motif of Sean O'Skea's inspired set.

This is good stuff—class warfare, the loss of self in modern society, and the role of the media in creating monsters—but director Abe Reybold wisely avoids anything too heavy, pushing for laughs in scenes that could otherwise be downright disturbing. This is a musical comedy, after all.

The all-local ensemble is stellar: Norby, a man who is regularly called "a theater god" by his fervently devoted fans, plays Gill with a manic charisma that falls somewhere between James Callis' and Peter Sellers'. He's outgunned vocally by Joe Theissen, the Lake Oswego teacher whose warm, friendly baritone brought down the house in the finale of last summer's 42nd Street. Adair Chappell also performs admirably, but the real star here is Luisa Sermol, who takes on a half-dozen characters and nails them all. She is a treasure.

The down side? The show's songs, which pull from the usual bag of classic Broadway tricks, are pleasant enough, but not particularly memorable. Hey, you can't have everything. .