Delightful MANHATTAN MADCAPS - a shoestring DROWSY

All you DROWSY CHAPERONE fans who can't get enough of 1920s musical comedy are advised to hightail it up to Symphony Space to catch MANHATTAN MADCAPS OF 1924, which I saw last night. A refreshing lemonade rickey of a musical revue, it features a talented cast of eight (Howard Kaye, Christine Bokhour, Nick Verina, Katie Allen, Ivy Austin, Michael Simon Hall, Staci Rudnitsky and Sidney J. Burgoyne) and twenty-three Rodgers and Hart songs, nicely divided between the familiar: "Way Out West", "Spring Is Here", "Manhattan" - and the arcane: "The Stonewall Moskowitz March", "At The Roxy Music Hall", "Who Are You" - a lovely forgotten ballad written for the film version of THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE - "All Dressed Up Spic n' Spanish", "Manhattan Melodrama", "Simpatica". "My Prayer", "The Heart Is Quicker Than The Eye" - given that material, you really can't go wrong. There is the merest wisp of a plot (concerning the romantic and career convolutions of four couples in 1924 New York City) which serves as connecting tissue between the songs. The stage, which seems no bigger than a kitchen table, is well used by choreographer Regina Larkin, and Annette Jolles directs with nary a wasted moment. Of the nifty cast, I particularly liked Hall, Verina, Burgoyne, Rudnitsky, and the wonderful Ivy Austin, who played a dizzy blonde showgirl whom Hall tries to mold into a tragic actress for his Bleeker Street Drama Group ("Johnny, does Hedda Gabler HAVE to kill herself?"). Her goggle-eyed comic numbers were delicious (she could get laughs just by twitching her shoulder)and she scored with a tender "Nobody's Heart Belongs To Me" and showed off a creamy belt in "The Bad In Every Man".
To my regret, I had not known of her work before, but she's definitely someone to watch.

MANHATTAN MADCAPS OF 1924 is only running till Monday, July 24 - Try to go if you can. It's a real bargain at $23 a ticket ($19 if you go to the Symphony Space Box Office).

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