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Rare Musicals Return in Mini-Size Form

By Matt Windman

6:03 PM EDT, April 7, 2008

'Take Me Along,' at the Irish Repertory Theater (handout)

Take Me Along:
Half a Sixpence:

While the critics swooned en masse over the weekend for Lincoln Center's lush revival of "South Pacific," we decided to shake things up by checking out what Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway had to offer in musical revivals.

To figure out why the Irish Repertory Theatre is reviving the 1959 Bob Merrill musical "Take Me Along," you'd have to play Six Degrees of Separation: "Take Me Along" is an adaptation of the play "Ah, Wilderness!" which was written by Eugene O'Neill, whose parents were Irish.

It's hard to believe that "Take Me Along" has not received a major production since a 1985 Broadway revival that folded on opening night. Its score includes the satirical love duet "But Yours," the gorgeous ballad "Promise Me a Rose" and a rousing Act Two opener with the priceless lyric "If Jesus don't love ya, Jack Daniels will."

This all-Americana flavored show looks at a middle-class Connecticut family on the Fourth of July in 1920. To sum up its sentimental plot, Aunt Lily is an old-maid schoolteacher waiting for Uncle Sid to lick his drinking problem and finally marry her, young Richard is anxious to experience "life" and gets drunk, and patriarch Nat Miller is trying to make sense of it all.

With an excellent 11-actor cast and 4-musician band, Charlotte Moore provides a charming, immensely pleasurable production. In particular, William Parry (Nat) and Beth Glover (Lily) give extremely heartfelt performances. If you see the show, by all means, take me along!

We also checked out the 1965 musical "Half a Sixpence," which is receiving a piano-only concert production courtesy of Musicals Tonight. It is based on an H.G. Wells novel about a shop clerk in 1900 England who unexpectedly inherits a fortune.

Unfortunately, all the book scenes fell flat, and it didn't help that four cut songs were unnecessarily interpolated. Still, Jon S. Peterson is wonderfully animated as lead character Arthur Kipps, constantly breaking into tap dance frenzies and slapstick comedy.

"Take Me Along" is at the Irish Repertory, 132 West 22nd St, 212-727-2737. Thru May 4.
"Half a Sixpence" is at the McGinn/Cazale Theater, 2162 Broadway, 212-868-4444. Thru Sun.