PRINCE MUSICAL : ‘ROZA’: LIKE A ZORBA IN A HOUSECOAT

Inside “Roza” there’s an interesting musical trying to get out.

Or perhaps it’s trying to lie low. The official business of the new Harold Prince musical at the Mark Taper Forum is to celebrate Madame Roza, the same lady we met in the Simone Signoret film.

You will recall that Madame Roza took in kids for a living, being too old to pick up men. Prince’s star, Georgia Brown, is every bit as what-the-hell as Signoret was, and, in addition, she can sing. “Live a little,” Brown advises on her death bed, to music by Gilbert Becaud, and it is clear that she has lived a lot.

When Brown is on, either alone or with Bob Gunton as a hooker who used to be a boxer until he got a “snip-snip” job, “Roza” makes a brave if rather synthetic try at being a toast to survival, on whatever terms--”Zorba” in a housecoat, if you will.

But since Prince has already done “Zorba,” he may have been intrigued by something else here. Beneath the story’s admiration for Madame Roza, there’s a sense that she is smothering the life and manhood out of her favorite ward, an Arab lad named Momo (played, in two stages, by Brian Noodt and Alex Paez).

Without meaning to do so, Madame Roza may be inflicting a snip-snip job of her own on the boy. He doesn’t want to stay with her, to be a bird in her cage, but he can’t leave. It bothers him, and it bothers us, but strangely, the show never squarely faces his ambiguous feelings for his substitute mother--never puts them into song. A whispered, quickly retracted “I hate you” on Roza’s deathbed is as close as Momo can come.

It’s frustrating. It seems the most genuine part of the show, but it’s avoided. Imagine watching “Gypsy” without “Rose’s Turn.” If musicals are about feelings demanding expression--and God knows there is nothing subtle about the rest of this show--why not go all the way? If Momo can’t be allowed to hate Roza with some clarity, he can’t fully love her either: He stays an undefined character, a bit like young Patrick in “Auntie Mame.” This will be a much more convincing musical when it takes its central love story (which is what it is) all the way to the mat.

There are subsidiary problems. Becaud’s music (Julian More did the lyrics as well as the show’s book) is pleasant but tame: There are lots of numbers in the show, but few musical scenes. (And Brown is a bit too prone to doing them as numbers, forgetting the other people on the stage--although she interacts beautifully with the kids in her spoken scenes.)

Noodt has an awkward time as young Momo, admittedly a boy at an awkward age. The backward Arabic sentences sound forced, not at all what he himself would say--and this is supposed to be a wild street kid.

Otherwise, Prince’s supporting cast is amusingly at home on Alexander Okun’s crazy apartment set, probably the most intriguing arrangement of levels and corners ever crammed onto the Taper stage. Marcia Lewis is especially delicious as a sharp-tongued neighbor whose progress to respectability through the years is almost as interesting as what happens to Madame Roza.

What is supposed to happen to the Gunton character over the years is hard to say, but I wish that costumer Florence Klotz had resisted the idea of dressing him like Carmen Miranda in one of the party scenes. (There are many party scenes.) Every transvestite dresses up like Carmen Miranda. ‘ROZA’

A new musical at the Mark Taper Forum. Book and lyrics Julian More. Music Gilbert Becaud. Based on Romain Gary’s novel “La Vie Devant Soi.” Director Harold Prince. Choreography Patricia Birch. Musical direction and arrangements Louis St. Louis. Orchestrations Michael Gibson. Set designer Alexander Okun. Costumes Florence Klotz. Lighting Ken Billington. Assistant to the director Ruth Mitchell. Production stage manager Jonathan Barlow Lee. Stage manager Tami Toon. Prepared in association with the Producers Circle Co., Mary Lee Johnson, Martin Richards, Sam Crothers and Les Editions Musicales et Artistiques. Cast Georgia Brown, Brian Noodt, David Chan, Mandla Msomi, Monique Cintron, Yamil Borges, Michele Mais, Ira Hawkins, Neal Ben-Ari, Jerry Matz, Marcia Lewis, Al DeCristo, Bob Gunton, Stephen Rosenberg, Thuli Dumakude. Thom Keane, Edward Jacobitz, Alex Paez. Plays Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $17.50-$23.50. Closes June 14 (213-410-1062 or 714-634-1300; deaf community TTD 213-680-4017).