A RARE TREAT SERVED PIPING HOT
The Stephen Schwartz/Joseph Stein musical The Baker’s Wife never made it to Broadway. The musical folded in Washington. D.C. in 1976 before reaching New York City but has since gained something of a cult status in both the United States and England (listen to the “original cast” CD starring Patti LuPone and Paul Sorvino, and you’ll understand why this is so). To call this a rarely produced show is an understatement, so area audiences are hereby alerted to run on down to Actors Co-op to catch this underheard gem of a score. And with Richard Israel helming, you won’t even notice that the story is slight (Israel’s direction of the Jones/Schmidt musical 110 in the Shade was so sterling that you would never know it’s a somewhat problematic show—his production also won last year’s Ovation Award for Best Intimate Theatre Musical). The dough rises beginning this week in Hollywood, and stays fresh through Oct. 25, 2015.
Stein (Fiddler on the Roof) based his libretto on the famous 1938 French film La Femme Du Boulanger, one of those 1930s movies from France that both romanticized and patronized rural France and French peasants. The only baker in a Provencal village has died in a freak accident and the villagers are in a state of panic. They need their bread like a drug addict needs his fix. Finally, a new baker comes to town, a portly middle-aged man with a pretty young wife. The man makes superb bread and the village is once again content.
A crisis develops when a local young buck sweeps the baker’s pretty wife off her feet. Their hormones pulsating, the couple runs away to another town, leaving the baker distraught; and what’s worse for the village, he stops baking. To restore normalcy to the village’s culinary life (and get back their delicious croissants, brioches, and loaves of crusty bread) the locals conspire to bring the wife back.
There is a nostalgic element to the story: it’s a flash back to a more innocent time when rural France represented the sturdy values of its country’s culture, much like The Music Man recreated a never-never land of small town American life at the turn of the last century.
Schwartz’s (Godspell, Pippin, Wicked) score has some first-rate numbers—the baker’s plaintive “If I Have to Live Alone,” the haunting “Chanson,” and the young bride’s “Meadowlark,” which is one of the best songs Schwartz ever composed.
The cast (in alphabetical order) includes Greg Baldwin, Kelly Brighton, Tracey Bunka, Greyson Chadwick, Chelle Denton, Brian Dyer, Nick Echols, Larray Grimes, Rachel Hirshee, Tim Hodgin, Natalie Hope Macmillan, Christopher Maikish, Jeffrey Markle, Brandon Parrish, Michael Riney, Lindsey Schuberth, Treva Tegtmeier, Stephen Van Dorn and Michael Worden. Returning to Actors Co-op are Music Director Jake Anthony (having done an amazing job on their Mystery of Edwin Drood), and Choreographer Julie Hall, who offered terrific work on both Drood and 110 in the Shade.
photos by Lindsay Schnebly
The Baker’s Wife
Actors Co-op
David Schall Theatre, 1760 N. Gower St.
(on the campus of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood)
Fri & Sat at 8; Sun at 2:30
Sat at 2:30 (Sep. 26 & Oct. 24 only)
ends on October 25, 2015
for tickets, call 323.462.8460 or visit ActorsCo-op.org
