Craig Bohmler
The Composer Lyricist Cabaret
Festival of New American Theatre
Phoenix Theatre Company, Phoenix, AZ, May 14, 2022
Reviewed by Lynn Timmons Edwards
The Festival of New American Theatre was back in action this year after being forced into hiatus during the pandemic. The Phoenix Theatre Company is going all in on the development of new American musical theater having just launched a new $20 million capital campaign that includes the expansion of the 250-seat Hormel Theatre to 500 seats and technical upgrades specifically designed to accommodate pre-Broadway show development. Arizona’s Craig Bohmler and Drew Fornarola (who resides in New York City) may each be working on the next Broadway hit right now. They were both invited to create a 45-minute cabaret of their work which was presented back-to-back on the last weekend of the festival. Fornarola’s cabaret is reviewed separately.
Bohmler’s newest musical, A Beautiful Place with book by Michael Grady and Linda DeArmond Grady and lyrics by Steven Mark Kohn, was given two readings on May 6 and 7. It is based on a true story about Holocaust artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, who secretly taught art classes to hundreds of children in a concentration camp in the years just before most everyone, including her, boarded a Nazi train to their death. The children’s artwork was hidden away and was discovered years after the buildings were abandoned.
Bohmler’s brilliance is his ability to write for the singer. English isn’t always an easy language to sing, but he understands intervals and places open vowels on notes that otherwise could be a problem. His songs support the text and allow the story to take center stage. I understood every word, which is a rare experience in 2022.
The cast of 15 was led by Equity performers Elyse Wolf as Friedl and Rusty Ferracane as her devoted husband, Pavel. The cast, including many children, surprisingly performed at the professional level PTC offers in its fully staged shows. Perfect direction for a reading was provided by David Ira Goldstein, former Artistic Director of the Arizona Theatre Company.
The story is sad; I cried at the end, but there were moments of levity that helped the two hours fly by. It remains to be seen whether it will find a New York audience that is used to pop/rock musicals, but I hope many more people get the chance to be inspired by the message that hope and beauty can be born out of despair, and that although art may not save us, it can be key to making the journey worthwhile.
For the cabaret, Bohmler once again provided the piano accompaniment and chose 13 songs from five of his musicals, three with lyricist Marion Adler and two with lyricist (and Bohmler’s best friend of 40+ years) Steven Mark Kohn, who flew to Phoenix to be the co-emcee. Bohmler’s first two musicals, both with lyrics by Adler, are diverse. Gunmetal Blues is saucy and tongue-in-cheek noir. We met two characters, Carol Indigo, played by Cassie Chilton who sang “Blonde Song,” and Sam, played by Rusty Ferracane, a very hungover private eye who went to bed with a case of whiskey and woke up with “The Gunmetal Blues.”
After the success of their first collaboration, Adler approached Bohmler with the idea of The Guardsman, giving Bohmler a chance to merge music theater with his classical training. The cast delivered three polished numbers from it. Kaitlynn Bluth is a pretty ingenue who delighted with “One Great Love,” which was followed by a comic duet by Ferracane and Bohmler on “Chopin,” and ended with all three singing “The Language of Flowers.” The selections rivaled the score of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
Adler also provided lyrics to All the More to Love in which six actors play 48 roles all revolving around interactions in a women’s plus-size dress shop. Ferracane (who I suspect has played the show before) was a redneck husband, and once again he joined Bohmler for the very funny “She’s Let Herself Go.” Ferracane was joined by Bluth for the finale of Act I and the title song “All the More to Love.” The cabaret finished with an upbeat, inspirational finale from the show “Get Out There and Dance.”
Kohn was charming as he took the stage to talk about two of the shows that he has worked on with Bohmler—a children’s musical called The Quiltmaker’s Gift (which was commissioned by PTC and has since seen 35 productions), and perhaps their next hit with a book by Ferracane, Happy Texas. Imagine escaped convicts, a children’s beauty pageant, love lost and found, and a heaping helping of Texas charm. Bluth and Chilton opened with “Crazy Game,” and Chilton soloed on “What I Wanted.” Chilton is a talented singer with a big voice, and she will star as Patsy Cline in PTC’s Always …Patsy Cline, which runs from June 8 to August 7, 2022. For cabaret, she would be wise to cover her tattooed arm and lose the nose ring; I found they distracted from Bohmler’s songs.
When you consider that Bohmler hosted from the piano and the singers stood behind music stands, the cabaret displayed immense talent by the composer and both lyricists and was delivered with professional polish by the three singers. Here is hoping that Phoenix Theatre Company will produce more cabarets outside of the Festival of New American Theatre.
