No reunion here: The Twelve-Pound Look’s Emmy (Courtney Reed, right) has just married Harry Sims (Bryan Fenkart).
In this theatrical age of digital scenery, hybrid storytelling and contemporary subject matter, Reunions seems old-fashioned with its painted backdrop for scenery and simply told stories set in pre–World War I Europe. Yet from this old-fashioned presentation come many of the show’s pleasures, including some charming ditties, fine period costumes and note-perfect performances, particularly by a couple of beloved old hands of the New York stage.
Joanna Glushak (left) plays Dona Laura, with Reed as her caretaker Petra, in Reunions’ second part, A Sunny Morning.
To create Reunions, Jeffrey Scharf (book and lyrics) and Jimmy Calire (music) adapted two one-act plays written circa 1914: The Twelve-Pound Look by J.M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame) and A Sunny Morning by the Spanish dramatists (and brothers) Serafín and Joaquín Alvarez Quintero. “Lovers reunited … two instances we here portray” is the common theme, per a brief musical prologue.
A Sunny Morning, the second and shorter of Reunions’ pieces, brings one of the season’s more surprising romantic pairings, with Chip Zien and Joanna Glushak—Broadway stars in the 1980s—as septuagenarians sharing a park bench in Madrid who don’t immediately recognize each other from when they were in love decades ago. Dona Laura (Glushak) sees Don Gonzalo (Zien) as just a crotchety old man when he sits down beside her, complaining that the bench he wanted was already occupied.
Juanito (Daniel Torres, left) attends to the elderly Don Gonzalo (Chip Zien) in A Sunny Morning.
Once Laura and Gonzalo get past their initial hostility—but do not introduce themselves by name—they begin to reminisce about their youth in Valencia. She pretends to be the best friend of Laura, who he remembers (in song) as “the silver maiden … pure radiance from foot to brow,” and he pretends to be the cousin of Laura’s suitor Gonzalo.
Even after they realize they are sitting with their long-lost love, Laura and Gonzalo keep up the ruse, thinking the other person doesn’t know who they are. Glushak and Zien are a pure delight in their flirtatious deception, embodying their characters with such precision and feeling—from small gestures with a handkerchief or parasol to the emotional journey as Laura and Gonzalo rediscover their love—that they suffuse the stage with a romantic and nostalgic air. Zien also partakes in a few bits of physical comedy involving snuff-induced sneezes and reading a book. The joy of experiencing these performances, coupled with the story’s optimism, sends audience members out on a high note.
Chilina Kennedy (left) and Reed costar in the new musical Reunions, by Jeffrey Scharf and Jimmy Calire. Photographs by Jeremy Daniel.
It is in Reunions’ first piece, however, where they get a better story, as The Twelve-Pound Look’s chance reunion comes with a social message. The playlet takes place in the Edwardian-era London household of Harry Sims (Bryan Fenkart), who is about to be knighted and needs a secretary to answer all the congratulatory letters and telegrams that are arriving by the butler’s silver plateful. His wife, Emmy (Courtney Reed), offers to do it. “It would make me feel useful,” she says, but Harry demurs: “You are useful. You are the ornament of our household. … When something more needs doing, a woman of quality rings for the servants.”
Then the typist from the agency arrives: Kate (Chilina Kennedy), a woman from Harry’s past, whose disappearance has vexed him for 14 years. Kate eventually explains her departure, and though it doesn’t give the ever pompous and oblivious Harry pause as it should, her visit leaves his wife reconsidering her own possibilities.
Pearl Rhein (in back) plays violin onstage during A Sunny Morning, starring Zien and Glushak.
The principals are well cast here, too. Kennedy’s excellent vocals add heart and heft to Kate’s proto-feminist songs “In a Room Like This” and “I Had to Give Us Up,” and her duet with Reed, “The Usual Thing”—in which Emmy tries to dictate Harry’s acknowledgments only to hear that Kate has already typed exactly what she was going to say—is also a musical highlight, for both its tunefulness and its wry commentary. The Twelve-Pound Look ends with a nice twist—and with hope, albeit of a different kind than A Sunny Morning.
Reunions’ score in general is melodic, if not earth-shattering. Each of its plays sags a bit in the middle, and producers should have taken advantage of the natural break after the longer Twelve-Pound Look for an intermission (run time is about 100 minutes), but the show is a mostly agreeable diversion. And it’s pretty to look at: costume designer Jen Caprio created lovely gowns as well as quietly elegant day wear for the characters, and Edward Pierce’s scenic design centers on a foliage-patterned carpet that’s suitable for the Simms drawing room, then appropriately stands in for the park’s leaf-strewn ground in A Sunny Morning.
The production could do without its turntable stage, since it’s not used to represent characters’ movement or compensate for problematic sight lines. Plus, such a “high-tech” element is unnecessary in a show that succeeds by offering old-fashioned pleasures.
The musical Reunions runs through Dec. 21 at City Center Stage II (131 W. 55th St.). Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with matinees at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit reunionsthemusical.com.
Book & Lyrics: Jeffrey Scharf
Music: Jimmy Calire
Director & Choreographer: Gabriel Barre
Sets: Edward Pierce
Costumes: Jen Caprio
Lighting: Ken Billington & Mitchell Fenton
Sound: Megumi Katayama
