Pump Boys and Dinettes
Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, NJ, April 11, 2016
Reviewed by Chip Deffaa for Cabaret Scenes
I caught the opening night of Pump Boys and Dinettes (directed by John Foley) at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse and was thoroughly underwhelmed. This slight, modest country-pop/rock musical revue is quite a letdown after some of the big, ambitious productions (like A Bronx Tale) that have graced Paper Mill of late. With a cast consisting of just six actors/singers/musicians, it is certainly inexpensive to mount, and that, presumably, factored into Paper Mill’s decision to do a production.
But there isn’t much to this show. It seemed amiable and unpretentious when it originally debuted Off-Broadway in 1981. (It was an expansion of a two-man act that singers/musicians Jim Wann and Mark Hardwick had previously put together.) It found enough of an audience to transfer to a bigger venue (the Latin Quarter nightclub, then known as the Princess Theatre), and eventually spawn a successor, Oil City Symphony (which I found more substantive and entertaining).
Pump Boys, however, seemed lost on the big Paper Mill stage. The material (by Wann, Hardwick,John Foley, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan and John Schimmel) is far from compelling. Songs are connected by the flimsiest imaginable scraps of dialogue. The competent cast worked hard, but I found myself repeatedly checking the program to see how many songs were left.
Alysha Umphress (most recently seen as Hildy in the Broadway revival of On the Town) is excellent and makes the most of the material she has (playing a part originated by the great Debra Monk). She’s entertaining, and it’s always nice to see her. But the material here is much weaker than the material she had to work with in On the Town. I also liked Julie Foldesi (who played the other waitress), who was appealingly warm and folksy. The three male singers/actors/musicians (some of whom I’ve seen before in much stronger shows) gave adequate, if not memorable, performances.
Some of the songs are fun, and I liked the way they used kitchen utensils as percussion instruments. But I didn’t care for the sound of the piano they used (which was sometimes too prominent in the mix), and the show often felt over-amplified to me. My ears were being assaulted— not a pleasant experience for me.
I’ve seen a lot of great shows this season; this was not one of them.
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