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The New York Times/ ­- N.Y./Region, Sex, 13 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
Mornings After, Many of Them
A Review of ‘Carry It On,’ in Red Bank, N.J. By ANITA
GATES Fairly early in “Carry It On,” Maureen
McGovern imagines the tabloid headline when she
dies: “Disaster­-Theme Queen Bites the Dust” appears
on a National Enquirer­-like page on the wall­-size video
screen upstage. And that’s as good an introduction to
Ms. McGovern as any. You know her name, of course,
but it is understandable if all you can think of when you
reflect on her voice is that plaintive song “The Morning
After” from the movie “The Poseidon Adventure”
(1972) or the equally poignant “We May Never Love
Like This Again” from the equally disaster­-filled
“Towering Inferno” (1974). Ms. McGovern’s career took
off with those recordings when she was in her early
20s, and both won Oscars for best song. Then she sort
of disappeared. At 62 — although she says she
prefers to give her age “in Celsius: 17” — Ms.
McGovern is sharing both her career
rise­-and­-fall­-and­-rise story and a good bit about her
personal life in this almost­-solo show, Two River
Theater Company’s latest main stage production. It’s
an uneven but eventually satisfying mix of songs and
anecdotes. The first full­-length musical number is “The
Times They Are a­-Changin’,” and the jarring
arrangement is enough to make Bob Dylan react the
way Rick Santorum says he does to the separation of
church and state. Jeffrey Harris, the show’s pianist,
also did the show’s music direction and arrangements,
and he has devised some irritatingly show­-offy
passages for himself. The second­-worst example of his
overwrought work is Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die”
(“There’ll be one child born and a world to carry on”),
and it happens to be the finale. Thank heaven there is
a different encore. Ms. McGovern’s patter seems
forced and artificial at first, too, going on about “The
Wizard of Oz,” Emily Dickinson, her childhood home in
Ohio and her musical idols, including Judy Collins and
Mary Travers. It would have been nice if Philip
Himberg, the director and the star’s co­-author, could
have forced a little more liveliness into those
anecdotes. But Ms. McGovern either eases into them
or becomes carried away with memories of social
activism. “The 1960s sort of snuck up on me,” she
says, and goes into Joni Mitchell’s classic “Circle
Game” (“The seasons, they go round and round”).
However, by the time she does the title number, a
protest anthem by Joan Baez, with a backdrop of
violent scenes from the civil rights movement, the
audience is hers. In the best numbers, her voice is big,
powerful and capable of crystal­-clear notes with layers
of emotion. Maya Ciarrocchi’s projection design is a
significant part of the show. It’s not wildly innovative,
but the images are well chosen and artistically edited.
Ms. McGovern sings “The White Cliffs of Dover” to a
portrait of her father in his World War II uniform. She
sings “When I’m 64” and “Let It Be” in front of a
changing collage of the Beatles in their youth. But it is
annoying when the cover of Carole King’s “Tapestry”
album (1971) fills the screen, followed by only a few
lines of “You’ve Got a Friend.” An image like that
seems to promise a medley. (Considerably later, she
does “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”) The show also
suffers from some common flaws of contemporary
revues. Too many great songs are begun but cut off
after a few bars. Whether it stems from rights and
permissions problems or a desire for an extensive
song list, the practice is just frustrating for audiences.
Some numbers seem like time­-fillers or attempts at
Shakespearean­-style comic relief, like the medley of
funny sounds in 20th­-century pop lyrics, from
ting­-tang­-walla­-walla­-bing­-bang to the
nah­-nah­-nah­-nah of “Hey Jude.” And aside from loving
reminiscences of Ms. McGovern’s parents, her life
story seems a dispiriting series of encounters with
seemingly good people who went on to betray her.
Don’t even ask how she feels about the man who
directed her on Broadway in “The Threepenny Opera.”
Mortality, loss and the passing of time are major
themes in “Carry It On,” which should not be a surprise
for a performer now in the fifth decade of her musical
and acting career. And bittersweet is what Ms.
McGovern does best. “Carry It On,” by Philip Himberg
and Maureen McGovern, is at Two River Theater
Company, 21 Bridge Avenue, Red Bank, through April
22. Information: (732) 345­-1400 or trtc.org.
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