STAGE REVIEWS : ‘PROMISES’ TAKES TOO LONG TO FULFILL

There is much that’s inviting about “Promises, Promises” at Elizabeth Howard’s Curtain Call Dinner Theatre: purposeful, even surprising staging and a likable performance by George Quick as Chuck Baxter, the callow executive looking for love and success in all the wrong places.

But it has one major problem--at almost three hours (including two short intermissions), this production is just too long. This Burt Bacharach-Neil Simon musical (based on the Shirley MacLaine-Jack Lemmon movie “The Apartment”) is really too light to sustain interest for three hours. Director John J. Ferola generates a momentum early on and sustains it through the second act, but it just dies in the third. By that time, interest in whether Chuck gets the girl and learns that there’s more to life than a key to the executive bathroom might be flagging.

There is some visible fat in this production. Several scenes could be trimmed without losing their dramatic or comic impact, and the reprises of at least one number (the unabashedly sexist “Where Can You Take a Girl?”) could be cut altogether.

As musicals go, however, the story is more interesting than most as it follows the misadventures of Chuck, who angles for promotions by lending his New York flat to mid-level managers who need a convenient place to take their dates. Chuck, really more a sweet-hearted wimp than a schemer, dreams of wooing Fran (played by Ronda Skolnick), a young woman at his office, but she’s already having an affair with the boss (Michael Wren), who just happens to be one of the guys using Chuck’s apartment. What to do?

With everything centering on Chuck, it’s up to Quick to keep the audience interested. He succeeds for most of the show with some heartfelt singing, and by making Chuck the most personable doormat imaginable. This guy gets stepped on repeatedly but keeps his optimism throughout. Even when you realize that he hopes to win favor by providing his apartment, he still doesn’t come across as a conniver but rather more as a hapless victim of ambition and corporate pressures. This Chuck could get sympathy combing his hair.

As Fran, Skolnick is less effective. It’s not that she’s doing anything wrong, it’s just that she hasn’t made enough out of the character. This Fran needs more shading. We see the vulnerability, but where is the passion that would keep this churchy young woman in a destructive relationship with a married man? There’s nothing wrong with Skolnick’s singing, though--she has a melodious, well-modulated style.

This must be the season for on-stage waterworks. First there were the showers for “Singin’ in the Rain” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and now there is a little cloudburst here when Chuck strolls onto the street with an open umbrella. It’s a charmingly unexpected moment that underscores the attention to detail in Greg Henrichsen’s sets.

“Promises, Promises” continues until May 24 at Elizabeth Howard’s Curtain Call Dinner Theatre, 690 El Camino Real, Tustin. Information: (714) 838-1540.