© Long Beach Independent, Press Telegram
Feb. 22, 1976
'The Most Happy Fella' Finds the CLO at Its Best
by David Levinson
At its insouciant best, the Long Beach Civic Light Opera is everything
musical theater should be: bright, fast, colorful and fun. It is at its best
in "The Most Happy Fella", which opened Friday at the Jordan Theater.
The Frank Loesser musical is an ideal vehicle for the company and for its
star, Michael Quinn.
Quinn plays an aging vineyard owner who with a bit of amiable mail fraud
woos and wins a San Francisco waitress. He has a sturdy opera baritone
voice and the good artistic judgment not to use it operatically. He
manages to look like one of those Napa Valley grape growers who is out in
a vineyard at sunup to smell the earth, taste a grape or two and think about
marketing strategy. When this Most Happy Fella turns his attention to the
strategies of romance, one or two things go awry. If the didn't, there
would be no musical.
As Rosabella, the name he gives the object of his affections, Victoria
Mallory is properly pretty, confused and winning. She is, in fact, exactly
the sort of girl who should be named Amy - "Tear up your list, it's Amy,"
as Loesser once advised - and was, by her parents. Her voice is a little
thin. Her figure is just right. So is her acting.
This is one of those rare shows in which there are no weak spots in the cast
of characters and in which the partners in the subplots are as well
matched as the leads.
As the third member of the menage the grape grower accidentally created,
Lowell Harris is a forgivable scamp. Thousands of young men might be able
to sing the role, but there cannot be many who could rise above the operetta
style inplied by the songs as effectively as Harris does.
It would not be fair to call Kelly Britt - who plays a waitress friend of our
heroine's - a scene-stealer. She is much too sympathetic a character
for that. But she is one of those dream character actresses who can get a
laugh by saying "Hello". (That's occasionally necessary, for Loesser
wrote his own book, and he was not as hard on himself as his old collaborators,
Abe Burrows and George S. Kaufman, might have been.)
Miss Britt's partner in mischief is Wayne Bryan, and he is a very funny man.
He can get a laugh with a twist of his hips.
Two CLO favorites - Vince Trani and Stan Throneberry - are joined by Michael
Ross as an uninhibited trio of country types.
The sets and lighting are up to the CLO standards, which are professional
but never stuffy. The same can be said for the chorus, which dances
and sings with energy and precision. The orchestra is vigorous enough, but it
does not swing; the percussion is right out of Minsky's.
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