In Julie's shadow

Victor/Victoria misses the mark

by Robert von Stein Redick

I have stumbled on the most original stance imaginable for reflecting on Victor/Victoria: I have never seen Julie Andrews in the title role(s). Whether this proves an advantage or a handicap may hinge on whether you find the tale's unusual journey from screen to stage intriguing or merely a not-so-clever device for returning its 60-year-old star to Broadway. There can be little question that it was a device: both the 1982 hit film and the short-lived, much-debated 1996 musical starred Andrews as Victoria Grant, a penniless English singer adrift in 1930s Paris, who rockets to stardom by impersonating a female impersonator. Both were directed by her husband, Blake Edwards. But there's no sign that the couple took the segue to stage for anything less than the challenge it is: Edwards roped in Henry Mancini (his old Pink Panther collaborator) to compose the lively if unenchanting score, while the erstwhile Mary Poppins sported a voice that could still (as the script demands) plausibly shatter glass.

The excitement was immense, and brief. The Tony Awards passed Victor/Victoria by; an embittered Andrews developed a throat condition; the show folded in a hush. Other actresses took the play on the road.

The current Victoria is Anne Kanengeiser, who debuted with the Maine State Music Theatre last week. Like other successors, Kanengeiser performs in the tangible shadow of Andrews, a task about as enviable as covering U2 in Dublin. No matter its history, the title role demands to be played to the hilt. When Victoria stumbles into the tinsel-and-satin nightclub, soaked through and frumpy in an absurd turquoise dress, Kanengeiser's woe is convincing enough, though the suavity of her benefactor Carroll Todd (John-Charles Kelly) is more so. "Toddy" is the club's immaculately proper emcee. He has just opened the show with the moderately seductive "Paris by Night," strolling among a dozen androgynous dancers in skintight tanks and the odd champagne-sipping, cigarette-waving patron. His defense of Victoria begins with a bluffing match with his boss (Benjamin H. Salinas) over her talents; his unflappable smile does not fade even when the latter dismisses both Victoria's singing and Toddy himself from his job.

The production's troubles begin back at Toddy's flat. Now we're ready to discover the true Victoria -- at the cabaret she is scarcely allowed to speak. Redressed in a man's striped pajamas, short hair combed back in the style of the Eurythmics' Annie Lennox, she does look the part: androgynous, starry-eyed, strong. This is her chance to sing from her ironic depths, to skewer the man-centered world that's let her down. But Kanengeiser simply does not fill the moment with herself. "If I Were a Man" sounds strained and uncertain; Victoria's punch to the nose of Toddy's jealous ex-lover (Will Woodrow) might have been performed in a swimming pool.

Here and throughout the evening, it's Kelly who springs to the rescue. The idea to remake Victoria as "Count Victor" is his, and so is most of the passion about the deceit. Kanengeiser's failure to project stands out all the more against Kelly's excitement -- but not because his part is overplayed. "The trick for a drag queen is to act like a woman, which very few can," he sings. Increasingly, we come to believe him, even though the queen in question really is a woman.

The dilemma continues during "Victor's" dance numbers. It does make one's head spin, though not perhaps as director Bruce Lumpkin intends. Playing a woman struggling to seem a man struggling to seem a woman (still with me?), Kanengeiser holds back. When dancing, she does not flaunt her femininity, as a knockout transvestite will. When her gangster love-interest King Marchon (a leaden Mark Jacoby) appears and voices his doubt that she's really a man, she declines as well to enact masculinity. Perhaps she fears succeeding too well in both? If so it is a pity: what we hunger for is more evidence that her lie could bewitch Paris, not reminders that she is not all she seems.

Further distraction from this central weakness takes the form of the congenial Squash (Ed Romanoff), Marchon's bodyguard and a sexual secret-keeper himself; and Norma Cassidy (the exquisite Beth Glover), King's fragile and perfectly brainless piece of blond arm-candy, whose "Paris Makes Me Hawrny" strikes the most genuine note of the evening.

But alas, the unintended distractions drew more comment among the patrons as we filed out -- including the most excruciating gaffe I've ever witnessed on stage: a 10-minute, yard-wide view through misplaced flats, where oblivious stage hands wandered, bickered, and generally shattered any illusion that we were elsewhere than Brunswick. It would be wrong to draw many conclusions from these first-evening accidents. About as wrong as omitting to mention them: the play simply ceases for as long as we're forced to wonder if the nightclub decor is about to crash onto the dancers' heads.

Still, the play remains Kanengeiser's trumpet, to wind fully or flat. Without mentioning the first Victoria by name again, I submit that our current transvestite has all it takes to make us forget her predecessor. Her voice could shatter glass, if raised to do so. One hopes it will be.

Victor/Victoria plays through July 8 at the Pickard Theater on the Bowdoin College campus in Brunswick. Call (207) 725-8769.

Robert von Stein Redick can be reached at robvsredick@earthlink.net.