The Naples Press: Gulfshore gives ‘Sweet Charity’ a meticulous production

Friday, April 25, 2025

Gulfshore gives ‘Sweet Charity’ a meticulous production

https://www.naplespress.com/2025/04/25/gulfshore-gives-sweet-charity-a-meticulous-production

You do not buy a Big Mac for the taste of prime grade sirloin. You buy it for the blend of flavors, those juicy condiments, the cheese and the convenience of scarfing it down via a bun transportation system.

You do not buy a Big Mac for the taste of prime grade sirloin. You buy it for the blend of flavors, those juicy condiments, the cheese and the convenience of scarfing it down via a bun transportation system.

Sweet Charity is something of a Big Mac musical. It may not be the creative pinnacle for Neil Simon, who had to be corralled into writing the script after the failure of its first writers; the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields team also has written scores with more critical acclaim. But taken together with Bob Fosse’s precision choreography and the prime matter of a Federico Fellini film for its plot, producers can assemble a tasty meal here.

Gulfshore Playhouse has twisted itself into a pretzel to do that, beginning with bringing in Kate Marilley as Charity, the eternally optimistic taxi dancer whose luck is so bad her profession is even obsolete now. Marilley’s Charity isn’t brash but has no use for small persona: She doesn’t speak when she can explode; her arms are punctuation. And she not only wears her heart on her sleeve — it’s tattooed on her arm. She’s an irresistible, if slightly airheaded, Charity. Marilley is so flexible she can kick her foot to her forehead, which she does any number of times in the show. And her comic skills turn funny moments into hilarious ones. Just wait for the scene of her night stuck in a closet listening to the celebrity who brought her home make up to his volatile girlfriend.

Even playing three characters, it’s tough for Benjamin Lurye to keep up. But Lurye is a master of multiple roles. He is convincingly all three of Charity’s would-be sweethearts, slipping seamlessly from the money-grubbing Charlie, who steals her purse, to a fragile Italian film star to the neurotic Oscar Lundquist. CEO & Producing Artistic Director Kristen Coury pointed out his triple duties before the performance to save people from looking for three different actors — as we would have.

Some of the show’s finest moments, however, come in the ensemble numbers. They’re an inspired pairing of costumes by Leon Dobkowski and choreography by Dan Dunn, who is also the director here. The routine of jaded young women enticing ticketholders to dance with them in “Big Spender” oozes glitter and grind, heightened by their mesmerizing octave slurs and one-to-two-word rounds (Fun! Laughs! Good time!)

But there’s kinetic art in the synchronized black-and-white geometrics — squares, dots, opart waves, even tiger stripes — on the dancers flouncing in an assortment of hemline styles to “The Rich Man’s Frug” in the swank Pompeii club. That number alone is worth the price of admission.

Sweet Charity counts several songs that have crept into the American songbook. “Big Spender” is so infectious playgoers around me were singing along softly. “If My Friends Could See Me Now” is also on that list, and if “Where Am I Going?” sounds familiar, it was given an easy-listening boost as a track in Barbra Streisand’s breakthrough album.

Much of the music can play outside the work itself, except for the “Rhythm of Life,” the sendup of a hippie church to which Oscar invites Charity as a destination date for his “Church of the Month” club. Its lyrics, clever in print, aren’t always intelligible onstage, so we miss some of the pokes at organized religion and the Love Generation. The flashlights used in the underpass “sanctuary” dance are also blinding, so it was lost on some of us who had to shut our eyes. It’s more proof church isn’t meant to be easy.

The scene does give Maya J. Christian a chance to shine as a female version of the jazz-fueled pastor, Daddy Brubeck, which she does. So do Kelly MacMillan, Cayla Primous and Kyra Source as Charity’s dance hall chums, never without comment on their friend’s vulnerability and with the same advice for her they want for themselves (“There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This.”) Matt Wolpe is the perfect Herman, their boss, whose brusqueness is total bluff.

All this plays against Kristen Martino’s suave set of geometric shapes with neon. They’re somewhat kinder than the actual environment would have been for Charity’s workplace, but they’re versatile for mood and location changes. A dressing room rolled expeditiously onstage as needed, as did the aforementioned closet where Charity is stashed. An elevator even appears. Everything flows compatibly with the story, song and dance they hold.

Perhaps Sweet Charity is not Cordon Bleu theater material. But it rises to the top of its Big Mac potential in this Gulfshore Playhouse production: a satisfying and tasty evening of theater.

TO SEE IT

What: Gulfshore Playhouse production of Sweet Charity

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, with 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday matinees and 3 p.m. Sunday matinees, now through May 4

Where: Gulfshore Playhouse, 100 Goodlette Frank Road S., Naples

Tickets: $44-$114 at gulfshoreplayhouse.org; information at 239.261.7529