STAGE REVIEW : ‘BEAUTIFUL LADY’ AT TAPER

Elizabeth Swados’ “The Beautiful Lady” treats the plight of a generation of Russian avant-garde poets who sang of the coming revolution and then found themselves forbidden to sing by it--in some cases, murdered by it. The listener at the Mark Taper Forum might be more moved if the piece itself felt a stronger urge to sing.

In the old-fashioned consecutive manner, I mean. Swados does end each act with a straightforward choral anthem. But each gives the effect of a quotation. The first is a traditional folk song, “Do Not Awaken My Memories,” symbolizing the passing of Czarist Russia. The second, “For a Change Shall Come,” could well be a traditional Communist Party anthem. The long silent stare at the audience that follows the latter makes its ironic intent clear. Swados’ own musical voice is more complex. As in “Nightclub Cantata”--this show, too, is set in a cabaret--her songs here make the listener feel slightly dyslexic. The letters are clear, but they don’t easily hook up into words and phrases. And, once you do get the phrase, it’s too late. Swados has changed the meter or jumped to a new key.

Rather than long repeated lines, she deals in fragments, united by a sharply percussive bass line and decorated by some alluring instrumental effects, suggesting sunlight dancing off dangling brass. As pure sound, it’s a delight, but the ear can’t give full attention to the lyrics, whose syllables Swados doesn’t hesitate to wrench out of place, in order to hew to her musical line. It’s an odd priority in an evening devoted to the sacredness of the word.

Effect: frustration. Marc Blitzstein wrote in much this disjunct style for the previous generation, and his attempt to link a mildly avant-garde compositional style with the forms of the American musical never quite “took.” So far, Swados hasn’t been able to make a convincing connection, either. “The Beautiful Lady” doesn’t change that.

It remains an original notion and a beautifully presented show--perhaps the best prepared musical ever presented at the Taper. (Swados was the director and, I assume, musical director, with Gary Mascaro helping with the choreography.) We begin before the revolution in an imaginary St. Petersburg cabaret, The Stray Dog, one of those places where the wild poets come in to read their work, to the delectation of the bourgeoisie.

Our hostess is JoAnne Worley, who wisely makes no attempt to sound Russian. She’s simply a big-hearted lady who enjoys presenting her proto-beatniks and probably enjoys even more making money off them. We’ll come to see later that their position under the revolution will be far worse, but there’s no illusion that the poets at the Stray Dog are living any kind of an ideal life.

The names we might recognize include Mayakovsky (Michael Hoit), Mandelstam (Michael A. Shaner) and perhaps Blok (Donn Simione). Equally young, gifted and mad are the women: Karen Trott’s Akhmatova and, especially, Katey Sagal’s abandoned (and how she loves it) Tsvetaeva. We also meet Yesenin (Daniel McDonald), who will marry Isadora Duncan and end a suicide.

They all end badly. They’re partly wrecked by the realness of life (a superb poem by Blok on this) and partly done in by the cruelty of the revolution, which will devour any poet who dares to diverge from the official line. They understand, too late, that poetry to the revolution is simply a tool--not words of liberation, as they had thought, but words to make others fall into line.

They are still hanging around the Stray Dog (a gray, gritty design by Karl Eigsti), and their mentor is still Worley, now a party official preaching duty with the same relentless cheer with which she once celebrated their madness. It would have been interesting if the script (by Swados and Paul Schmidt, who also translated the poems) had dealt with the decade when many of these people were actually making state artistic policy, but perhaps that’s one more irony than the evening had room for.

What we’re left with is a lesson, perhaps not that new, about the way a repressive system will destroy its best and brightest people almost by instinct. We hear some first-rate poetry. We listen to some fascinating sound patterns (Swados’ textures suggest the old avant-garde definition of music as “colored sound”), and we relish the special energy of a musical-theater ensemble--a word that fits this company--on the small Taper stage.

But, alas, this “Beautiful Lady” chooses not to sing.

‘THE BEAUTIFUL LADY’ A musical at the Mark Taper Forum. Music and lyrics Elizabeth Swados. Book Swados and Paul Schmidt. Russian poems translated by Schmidt. Presented in association with Seymour Morgenstern. Director Swados. Co-choreographer and assistant director Gary Mascaro. Set Karl Eigsti. Costumes Marianna Elliott. Lighting Arden Fingerhut. With JoAnne Worley, Natasha Lutov, Karen Trott, Michael Hoit, Michael A. Shaner, Daniel McDonald, Katey Sagal, Don Sparks, Donn Simione, Mark Bradford, Stephen Breithaupt, Sally Champlin, Randy Hamilton, Gary Imhoff, Karon Kearney, Lisa Michaelson, James Rich, Kathryn Skatula. Musicians John Sidney Boswell, Marvin B. Gordy III, Harvey Newmark, Ann Patterson, Dan Sawyer. Plays Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7:30 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30. Closes Oct. 13. At The Music Center, 135 N. Grand St. (213) 410-1062 or TDD (213) 680-4017.