Damn Yankees at the Muny in St. Louis

St. Louis is certainly a baseball town, which may explain why Damn Yankees (Broadway's only successful baseball musical) has been something of a perennial on the Muny stage. The current production - which plays nightly through Sunday [August 9, 1998] - has about as many hits as strikes and no real McGwire-style homers, making it a pleasant but somewhat disappointing finale to an otherwise solid season.

The story is a variation on the Faust legend. This time, it's middle-aged Washington Senators fan Joe Boyd who sells his soul to the devil - or Mr. Applegate, as he prefers to call himself - in return for youth and a chance to lead the Senators to a pennant by defeating New York's "damn Yankees" - but not before negotiating an "escape clause" that will allow him to return to his wife and home after the season ends. The transformed Joe - now named Joe Hardy - leads the Senators to a string of victories as an ace hitter and outfielder. Meanwhile the devious Applegate recruits Lola, his best seductress, to lure Joe away from his wife and break the escape clause.

Damn Yankees has a bright and funny book by George Abbott and Douglas Wallop - based on Wallop's then-popular novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant - and a lively score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. It was, sadly, their last collaboration, since Ross died six months after the show opened, at the age of 29. The original also had inventive and difficult choreography by Bob Fosse and star performances from Ray Walston as Applegate and Gwen Verdon as Lola. The current Muny production, unfortunately, has choreography by Keith Cromwell that is basically Bob Fosse Lite and of the four principals, only two - Joel Higgins as Applegate and Ken Page as Van Buren, the Senators' manager - have any real star quality.

Higgins is an expansive, Harold Hill-style Applegate. It's a different approach, but it works, especially in the show-stopping "Those Were the Good Old Days". And Page is a completely charming Van Buren, putting his own personal mark on the show's big hit, "Heart". Christina Saffran Ashford has a fine voice and certainly looks sexy enough as Lola but her dancing isn't up to the level of her singing, which detracts from the overall effect. This is especially unfortunate in numbers such as "Whatever Lola Wants" and "Who's Got the Pain?", which cry out for the legs and charisma of a star dancer.

In fact, dancing is generally a weak point in the production. On Monday night the baseball ballet in "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal MO" was something of a mess and the "Beatnik" bar dance sequence in "Two Lost Souls" only slightly better.

Still, there is fine work from many of the supporting players, including Susann Fletcher as nosy reporter Gloria Thorpe. And Marcus Chait is a convincing Joe Hardy - no easy task, given the vapid nature of the part. So, on the whole, this is a reasonably entertaining Damn Yankees and fans of the show will probably like it well enough. Personally, it only made me want to listen to my 1955 original cast recording again.

Damn Yankees continues at the Muny through August 9th. Call 534-111 for ticket information.