Red Eye of Love
Opening Night: September 4, 2014
Closing: September 28, 2014
Theater: Dicapo Opera Theatre
Selma Chargesse is torn between her two loves—great wealth and idealism and the two men in her life that offer her one or the other–Wilmer the naïve young man in search of “the key” and O.O. Martinas, the proprietor of the world’s largest meat department store. Could she have both? Red Eye of Love is that rare musical ready for prime time and an easy choice for an evening of theater that tugs at the heart and tickles the funny bone.
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September 4, 2014
It’s a tough time for fans of musicals. A few weeks ago, we endured Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter, a labored, Icelandic rock extravaganza set inside the title character’s body. ‘Now comes Red Eye of Love, in which the heroine must choose between an old meat merchant and a younger — but mentally unstable — doofus. Few things are as trying as forced whimsy. The most frustrating thing here is that composer Sam Davis has come up with some real nuggets; old-fashioned melodies that could have been lifted from a 1950s show. If only there had been money for a small orchestra rather than two pianos. And if only those tunes weren’t hamstrung by Arnold Weinstein and John Wulp’s painful lyrics.
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September 4, 2014
Take The Threepenny Opera, swap out the classically idiosyncratic Kurt Weill–Bertolt Brecht score for one steeped in the American musical comedy tradition, and then drench the entire thing in bacon grease and you might get close to the amusing but woefully undercooked satire that is Red Eye of Love, the latest production of Amas Musical Theatre, at the Dicapo Opera Theatre. An adaptation of Arnold Weinstein’s 1961 play of the same title, by Weinstein and his then-director, John Wulp, but with new music composed by Sam Davis after Weinstein’s death in 2005, the show is about as mixed up as steak tartare during an earthquake — and rather less nutritious. Like Threepenny, it’s a caustic and cynical examination of class warfare, though this one is set in a New York City (and United States) that’s more mythical, if not archetypal, than recognizable.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 5, 2014
The plot of Red Eye Of Love is a gentle love triangle. In real life, too, this show represents a gentle and genteel love story, that of John Wulp whose devotion to the original non-musical production of Red Eye, written by Arnold Weinstein and directed by Wulp, led to their 50-year collaboration musicalizing this sweetly silly play. The result, at the Dicapo Opera Theatre, is the Amas Musical Theatre’s robust and amusing staging of the musical, now with music by Sam Davis and book and lyrics by Weinstein and Wulp. That it took 50 years and several composers to come up with this modest show is true love. Red Eye Of Love immediately brings to mind such campy pastiches as Little Mary Sunshine, The Boy Friend, Curly McDimple and Dames at Sea – all wonderful, but very much of their time, their cultural targets—period movie musicals, operettas, etc.—clearly and affectionately joshed. What was campy and satirical in the 1960s is virtually meaningless to millennial audiences whose cultural references change at the speed of cyber-communication.
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September 5, 2014
Based on a 1961 play by the late Arnold Weinstein, this singing curiosity by Weinstein and John Wulp, with music by Sam Davis, spins around a romantic triangle — and a department store for meat. Fat cat O.O. Martinas (Kevin Pariseau) owns a palace of protein. Dimwit Wilmer Flange (Josh Grisetti) possesses nothing, including a clue. Hotsy-totsy Selma Chargesse (Alli Mauzey, invaluable) is the woman torn between them. It’s a potentially juicy tale of haves versus have-nots and the key to life — as in, money. No beefs about director Ted Sperling’s prime-cut cast — leads and ensemble, who all serve up the right saucy irony. Robert Indiana’s simple backdrop provides a fine set. The songs, though, are a mixed grill. They’re at turns tuneful, trying and cloying, and come by way of three men in cow suits.
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September 5, 2014
Perhaps you have sometimes wondered, when you’ve run out of worthier things to think about, what that airiest of musicals, The Fantasticks, might be like if it developed a social conscience. O.K., so you haven’t. Neither had I until recently. But now that I’ve planted the idea in your head, should you improbably find yourself aching to act upon it, you might consider heading for the Dicapo Theater on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That, I’m afraid, is about all I can offer as incentive to see Red Eye of Love, which opened on Thursday night in an Amas Musical Theater production. And how sincerely I wish I could be more enthusiastic! This long-gestating musical, based on a 1961 play by Arnold Weinstein, has clearly been a labor of fanatical devotion for those involved in it. That includes the 86-year-old John Wulp, who won an Obie Award for directing the original play and is the co-writer (with Weinstein, who died in 2005) of the book and lyrics for this version.
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