"Mame" Review by the Boston Globe

'Mame' to please: a zesty show

By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 5/5/2003

Auntie Mame is heading toward 50, but she's been immortal for most of her life, star of a best-selling novel by Patrick Dennis in 1955, a Broadway play in 1957, a hit movie the next year, a popular Broadway musical in 1966, and a legendary disaster movie in 1974, when Lucille Ball was dimly visible through the Vaseline-smeared lens. Mame has always been a great gift to a charismatic actress of a certain age; my first Mame was Gypsy Rose Lee. Since then Mame's been a summer-stock staple, a favorite of community theaters everywhere. Some of the lines are so famous that people who quote them don't even know where they come from anymore. ''Life is a banquet,'' Auntie Mame proclaims, ''and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death.''

The story in its various manifestations made history because it projected a gay sensibility into mainstream popular entertainment. The creators may not have consciously known that's what they were doing, and neither did the public; everybody loved it. The character of Mame is irresistible; she's the kind of rich, rescuing relative everyone longs for, and the kind of person we'd all be better off being because of her zest for living and her intolerance for any form of buttoned-down bigotry.

The North Shore Music Theatre production of Jerry Herman's musical ''Mame'' is one of the most lavish in the theater's history: There's a cast of 32, a wardrobe of 400 costumes, and a lot of new technical gizmos, including a revolving stage and a flying window frame from which Mame sings ''Open a New Window.'' Herman's music is derivative -- he even steals from himself in the title song -- but it's pretty and charming, and the show still has the power to amuse.

The strong, versatile cast sings, acts, and dances up a storm in director Barry Ivan's perpetual-motion staging, and musical director Michael Biagi keeps everything shipshape. Ivan's only misstep is to include an offensively swishy caricature of a male hairdresser/manicurist -- in this, of all shows. Daniel Plimpton is earnest as the young, orphaned Patrick who comes to live with his Auntie Mame and learns that martinis should be stirred, not shaken (''it bruises the gin''); Adam Monley brings an attractive singing voice to the older Patrick, who needs to be rescued from his Connecticut snobbery. Chuck Wagner is burly and hearty as Mame's southern beau, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, and Lisa McMillan is a sharpened battle-ax as Mame's bosom buddy, the fork-tongued Broadway star Vera Charles. All the rest of the performers are good, and Eleanor Glockner, Thos Shipley, Rosemary Loar, and Christy Faber are outstanding in cameo roles. Cindy Benson steals the show as giggly Agnes Gooch, the mousy nanny and secretary who, thanks to Mame's encouragement, learns to live -- all the way into a maternity dress. To the title role, Beth McVey brings experienced professionalism and a Broadway resume. She des not move in the aura of stardom, so she has to sing and act the part. She sings it admirably and knocks herself out with her acting, although on press night some of the lines tied her tongue in knots. She's a good sport riding that perilous-looking window and perching herself high above the stage on a crescent moon. But she was seriously let down by the costume designer: Her 18 outfits were outrageous enough (a zebra coat flung over a matador-inspired dress), but many of them didn't fit, and some of them fit all too well. Only in the Scarlett O'Hara hoop skirt -- acres of floating white organdy -- did McVey appear as fabulous as Mame is supposed to look all the time, and that wasn't her fault.

Mame

Musical by Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee, and Jerry Herman

Directed and choreographed by: Barry Ivan. Conducted by: Michael Biagi. Set, Dex Edwards. Lights, Kirk Bookman. Costumes, Susan E. Picinich.
At: the North Shore Music Theatre, Thursday night, through May 18. 978-232-7200

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