IN TROUSERS
Almost any gay man has gone through what Marvin goes through in In Trousers. Even if there hasn’t been a wife, there’s inevitably a girlfriend who’s been hurt, and the sense of failure and guilt that goes with the experience can be unbearable. But such situations, as intense as they are in real life, rarely translate effectively into good art; the specifics of the story tend to reduce the emotions involved to melodramatic bathos.
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In In Trousers, the 1979 “prequel” to Finn’s better-known March of the Falsettos, the author-composer approaches his tale from an unusual angle. In fact, In Trousers is all angles. Nothing is ever approached head-on; there are no direct confrontations or confessions, no big “moments” of realization. Marvin’s marital breakup and sexual self-discovery is recounted in a series of songs that trace the feelings produced by events, not the events themselves–though those events are clear through the songs.
Intimate, decorous, and wryly funny, In Trousers is perfectly suited to a cabaret setting, and that’s where it’s being done by the Alliance Theatre–in the Avalon (former site of Tut’s and the fabled Quiet Knight). The stage isn’t a whole lot larger than a postage stamp, and the actors nearly fall onto the audience at moments, but that’s all part of the charm. Where In Trousers falls short, unfortunately, is in the key performance of Logan Bazar as Marvin. Bazar is simply an inadequate singer–he forces his notes and almost never connects with the words he’s singing. And the petulant, swishy air he adopts makes it difficult to accept the idea that Marvin’s homosexuality comes as a surprise to anyone: Bazar affects the worst stereotypes associated with being gay. Worst of all–and the other actors are also guilty of this, though less intrusively–Bazar sings at the audience, not to us. The direction, credited to Sheila J. Wurmser and Edward Kerros, aims at stylization in the performances but too often settles for just mugging; Scott Sandoe’s musical staging is both cluttered and limp. The only really secure performance comes from Sara Minton as Miss Goldberg–her bravura belt and her clean and confident gestures never go too far in a medium–cabaret theater–where less is definitely more. Music director Jack Short must share with the singers the blame for the sloppy ensemble phrasing. Robert Van Tornhout’s set design, on the other hand, is delightful–white panels brightly decorated with strokes of primary colors in an abstract expressionist style that complements the abstractness with which In Trousers tells its story.
