Source: The New York Times
Date: November 21, 2007
Byline: Anne Midgette
William Finn - Make Me a Song
Blue neon over the stage outlines a craggy face with a sardonic smile that hovers in afterglow even after the light is switched off. The face is that of William Finn, songwriter, and it is an appropriate illustration for a revue of his work, "Make Me a Song," at New World Stages. Like the songs, at once slightly mocking and slightly cartoonish, it dominates the stage much as Mr. Finn's persona dominates the songs, to such an extent that even when a voluptuous blonde (Sally Wilfert) is singing, you hear the dry voice of this gay Jewish songwriter coming through her own.
The mild tension between the eager, can-do spirit of a four-person show (Mr. Finn's third revue in 10 years) and the slightly acerbic content of the songs creates a diverting light entertainment. In addition to the singers — Ms. Wilfert, the smoky-voiced Sandy Binion, the hunky but strained D. B. Bonds and the Everyman Adam Heller — the show features the requisite tireless pianist, Darren R. Cohen, sometimes interjecting a line, and submitting to being spun around on his piano at the center of the stage every other song or so, a stock device by which the director Rob Ruggiero, who conceived this show for TheaterWorks in Hartford, keeps the energy level up.
The songs are taken from some of Mr. Finn's less-well-known shows ("A New Brain," "Romance in Hard Times" and a work in progress, "The Royal Family of Broadway"), as well as from his successful "Falsettos," but not, unsurprisingly, from "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," which is still running on Broadway, at least through Jan. 20. They tend to be loose-limbed and discursive, working their way into an A section and proceeding to a resolution in a B section, with stops at several other letters along the way (as in "Hitchhiking Across America").
The weakest songs are the most formulaic: "Heart and Music," about two ingredients necessary to make a song, epitomizes a certain kind of bright-eyed Broadway jingle that in Mr. Finn's voice rings slightly false.
Whether funny, like "Republicans" (which is chopped up and inserted as a recurrent gag in between other songs), or sober, the songs are personal without being maudlin, with the possible exception of "Anytime," a deliberate tear-jerker for and about a deceased friend. The best example is "Passover," a reminiscence of a childhood holiday that grows poignant without wallowing in sentiment, simply acknowledging family members who have died, and getting on with it.