THE PROBLEM IS WOMEN; THE PROBLEM IS MEN
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I hope my friend never sees The Problem Is Women; the Problem Is Men, because if she does she’ll feel confirmed in the idea that musical theater is no place for interesting or original ideas. Everything about The Problem seems shopworn–cribbed from some other era. The show’s premise–pull together a group of characters and have them kvetch and sing about their love problems–is very 70s, but the problems discussed seem culled from half a dozen past decades. One character is still hung up on a campus radical she met in the late 60s. Two other characters, recently divorced from each other, must deal with the 1930s screwball- comedy problem of having to work together though they still love/hate each other. There’s even a guy hung up on the 1920s: “Whatever happened to Rudolph Valentino?” he sings at one point. Even the score is derivative, containing so many references to gospel, blues, calypso, tango, pop, and very lite rock that every measure reminds the listener of other, better songs.
The recycled quality of this show would not be half so annoying, however, if Alan Barcus–credited with the show’s music, book, and lyrics–had shown the courage of his convictions and actually written a show about the difficulties of romantic love. But he devotes precious little time, for example, to what used to be called the battle of the sexes. Oh, Lucy and Lindy, the bickering divorced couple, snap at each other from time to time; but these fights seem more bits of business meant to burn up stage time than important psychological events. Just how unimportant they are becomes clear near the end of the show, when Lucy turns on a dime from skeptical, ambivalent, angry survivor to bubbly, cheerful, emotionally unscarred woman ready to fall deeply in love in a matter of seconds. Even in this crazy, mixed-up world, I guess, true love is still possible.
Certainly the six cast members exhibit signs of not really believing the show’s message. Though they’re supposed to be telling us their innermost secrets, they have a lot of trouble delivering their lines convincingly–and especially when those lines are preposterous, unfunny, or just plain silly. During the show’s forced happy ending, Lucy (Gayla Goehl) and Jack (Jim Price) meet at a singles bar, fall in love, and patly deliver some of the most sickening lines in the show. “This is a love story–” Lucy tells us in that bland, matter-of-fact narrator’s way, pausing at precisely the right moment for Jack to take up where she left off: “By two people who think it’s possible.”
