Theater Review: ‘Leaving’ with a song

By Joseph Hurley

LEAVING QUEENS, by Kate Moira Ryan and Kim D. Sherman. A Women’s Project Production at Women’s Project Theatre, W. 55th St., NYC. Through March 18.

In the 1970s and into the ’80s, New York’s burgeoning off-Broadway theater movement was flooded with a series of well-intentioned, modest musicals with casts of perhaps six to10 performers doubling and tripling in a variety of roles, singing inherently undemanding musical scores to the accompaniment of a single piano.

The Women’s Project production of "Leaving Queens," on view through March 18 at the West 55th Street venue formerly known as Theatre Four, but now renamed the Women’s Project Theatre, is something of a throwback to those days.

Though those tinkling pianistics are now often augmented by state-of-the-art synthesizers, and in this case the sound is fleshed out by a violin and a cello, the effect is largely the same as it was in the heyday of all those vest-pocket musicals.

Singing actors, often well-trained and vocally capable, hurl themselves at a score that sacrifices lyrics in an attempt at producing pure musicality.

So it is, frequently, with the earnest "Leaving Queens," adapted by Kate Moira Ryan from her own 1996 play of the same name, now graced by a musical score by Kim D. Sherman.

As a straight play, "Leaving Queens" was workshopped at the now-razed Theatre Row Theatre on West 42nd Street, a hopeful venture, then and now, of the endlessly energetic Women’s Project.

When "Leaving Queens" appeared on Theatre Row, playwright Ryan admitted that the work wasn’t a "coming of age" play about her own voyaging into the world, but, rather, her efforts to "understand" and "discover" her own father, Timothy Ryan, on whom the character Joseph Grant, the one who actually does the titular "leaving," is based.

As a musical, "Leaving Queens" opens in Kosovo, where Megan Grant (Alice M. Vienneau), the author’s stand-in, is a photographer for a United Nations organization, moving among a rag-clad clutch of "peasants" who are singing, rather confusingly, a number entitled "Let Me In."

The most interesting aspect of "Leaving Queens" is probably the plot’s connection to the Museum of Modern Art, where the playwright’s grandfather Thomas Ryan, who had emigrated from County Tipperary with most of his 13 siblings, had worked for most of his adult life.

Thomas Ryan had, in fact, become MOMA’s head guard, after working there for two decades, during which time his son, the writer’s father, frequently accompanied him to his workplace, eventually functioning as Edward Steichen’s "gofer" when the great photographer was preparing what was to become one of the most admired exhibitions in the history of the art, namely "The Family of Man."

All of this is reflected in the new musical, and, in fact, the score’s best song is probably "Family of Man," which comes along early in the second act. Equally appealing is an item called "Spit and Polish," delivered with glee by Cynthia Sophiea as the superficially starchy MOMA functionary Miss Cleaver Smith.

The sections of "Leaving Queens" that deal with Megan Grant’s home life, her relationship with her young son (appealingly played by Alexander Bonnin, who doubles as the adolescent version of the author’s father), are closer to musical boilerplate. The situation is not helped by the doubling of the performers, which, at times, makes it difficult to be certain of the relationships uniting (or dividing) the characters.

Jim Jacobson does good work as Thomas and the adult Joseph, with red-haired Sean Dooley making a solid contribution as the teenage Joseph, whose darkish adolescent hair appears to have reddened in his late teens, only to darken again in adulthood. Such are the perils of doubling, tripling, and multiple character casting.

Paul Niebanck is saddled with the task of having to impersonate, albeit rather briefly, not one, but two, sterling photographers, Steichen and Ansel Adams, who, according to the text, loathed each other.

The cast of "Leaving Queens" does what it can with material that might have benefited from further workshopping.