THEATER REVIEW
TENDERLOIN
LIKE many of the Encore concert musical revivals at City Center, “Tenderloin” is fun for a while — even if the musical is threadbare.
In the Encore formula, a cast of choice performers carrying book and sporting formal attire render the show’s songs while the tedious complexities of the book have been pared down to necessary information or comic shtick. A chorus of lissome lasses and lads cavort merrily.
“Tenderloin” — about a pious reverend’s efforts to clean up the lewd Tenderloin quarter of New York City in 1893 — opened on Broadway in 1960, with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott.
The minister is a worthy if naive do-gooder, and the whores a likable and politically savvy bunch of gals.
The villain is a corrupt policeman. Their link is a conniving young reporter who at first betrays the minister to the cops but at last sees the true path.
Patrick Wilson (from last year’s “Bright Lights, Big City”) plays and sings the reporter with loads of sleazy connivance and sexy charm.
Wilson aces the song, “Artificial Flowers,” a phony ballad about an invented poor girl who’s up in heaven — a song that soon has the show’s ladies in tears and convinced of Wilson’s goodness.
He’ll later repeat this trick in the bordello, where he invests a story in “The Picture of Happiness” to convince everyone there of his good intentions. Both songs are cheerfully dishonest and the best things in the show.
David Ogden Stiers (from TV’s “M*A*S*H”) is a solid, sane presence as the reforming minister, but he’s hampered by the banality and blandness of much he has to sing.
The women are of two sorts — the nice and the nasty. Sarah Uriarte Berry, the prissy princess of Fifth Avenue whom Wilson somehow falls for, makes the most of a dreary role.
The spice girls of the Tenderloin are more fun: sassy Yvette Cason, cynical Jessica Stone and true-love-finding Debbie Gravitte. But most of the cavorting by the trollops is lame and lazy.
Director Walter Bobbie tries his best, but is limited by the essential dishonesty of the material — and its mediocrity.