TOVARICH
www.theaterscene.net review
By Victor Gluck

When the musical version of Tovarich based on the Jacques Deval-Robert E. Sherwood play opened in 1963, it had the bad luck to appear during a newspaper strike. However, the performance of the non-singing Vivien Leigh as the Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna wowed critics and audiences alike, particularly Leigh’s rendition of the Charleston. The show has not had a New York revival until now. Musicals Tonight! has tweaked the book by David Shaw (Redhead) and restored eight songs by Lee Pockriss and Anne Croswell that never made it to Broadway. The results are a sophisticated and elegant period musical that is a total delight.

Thomas Sabella-Mills’ direction has obtained three-dimensional performances from his entire cast, not a small feat in a light musical comedy. He has also created clever dances for this concert staging. As Russian nobility, Barbara McCullough and Al Pagano are utterly charming. Pagano also does terrific work as stage fight director for the very convincing fencing match. They are given a run for their money by Laura Beth Wells who exudes exoticism and sex appeal from every pore as their countrywoman and friend Natalia Mayovskaya. The entire ensemble for this concert staging is so well prepared that the cast never needs to look down at the scripts in hand. Musical director and vocal arranger James Stenborg has performed a yeoman service restoring the trunk songs to their true glory.

Set in 1927, Tovarich tells the story of the Grand Duchess Tatiana (McCullough) and her consort Prince Mikhail Alexandrovitch Ouratieff (Pagano) who find themselves impoverished and in Paris after the Russian Revolution. As they are the keepers of four billion francs entrusted to them by the late Tsar Nicholas, they are of interest to both the Bank of France and the Soviet government. When they discover that the police are turning their backs when they steal food and that a Soviet spy is hot on their trail, they decide to take positions as butler and maid at the home of banker Charles Davis and his wife Grace, renaming themselves “Tina” and “Michel.” Everything works out until the Davises give a dinner party for an oil cartel and Tina and Michel’s cover is blown by their guests as well as Soviet Commissioner Gorotchenko whom they have been trying to avoid.

The score by composer Pockriss and lyricist Croswell contains an interesting mix of love songs, ballads, and patter songs. Pockriss’ melodic music is often set to waltz rhythms as well as Russian tempos and twenties jazz. On the original cast album the best songs are “A Small Cartel,” “Nitchevo,” and “The Way It Used to Be.” However, as McCullough and Pagano are better singers that Leigh and her co-star Jean Pierre Aumont, many of the other songs (with hints of Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady and Gigi, those archetypal period musicals) are more effective than as previously heard. Tatiana’s “I Know the Feeling” (with its Jacques Brel sound) and Tatiana and Mikhail’s duet, “All for You,” now seem like real finds. Mikhail’s second act solo, “Managed,” which appeared in the original production but was not recorded, gives Pagano a wonderful soliloquy, much in the style of the title song to Gigi.

Among the restored songs that impress are Tatiana’s impassioned, “I Refuse,” Mikhail’s sweet, “Lullaby for a Princess,” and their duets, “Her Highness and Her Husband” and “Poor Little Coffee Pot,” possibly cut from the original production because of Leigh and Aumont’s musical weaknesses. As the cabaret singer Natalia Mayovskaya, luscious Wells brings down the house with the new, “Opportunity (Knocks)”, as well as the previously recorded “That Face.”

Ronald E. Hornsby and Dana Domenick as the Davis children, who develop crushes on Tina and Michel respectively, give delightful performances of “Stuck with Each Other” and “Uh-Oh.” Steven Ted Beckler and Shorey Walker as the Davis parents make the most of their clever duet, “Say You’ll Stay” in which they offer Tina and Michel all their hearts can desire if they will take the jobs. And the witty patter song “A Small Cartel” which includes Beckler and Walker as well as members of the ensemble continues to end the first act on a high note. Although Roger Rifkin has no songs as Commissar Gorotchenko, he brings his very able authority to bear on the events of the plot.

The musical team of Pockriss and Croswell are also responsible for the delightful musical version of The Importance of Being Ernest, entitled Ernest in Love, which Musicals Tonight! revived two seasons ago to much acclaim. With Tovarich, a seemingly lost musical, Musicals Tonight! has moved up to a new level with a sophisticated and elegant evening that should restore the reputation of this nearly forgotten but charming musical.