‘ROZA’ : Taking a Longer Look at the Play’s Flashy Charm

“Roza” is doing very good business at the Mark Taper Forum, but no one has ever pretended that that was to be its final destination. And the other day the announcement came. It opens Aug. 27 on Broadway.

I saw the show for the second time at the Taper recently. Nothing drastic had been changed since opening night. (Rewrites are supposedly on the way.) But, with opening night out of the way, it was easier to forgive the show its problems and to enjoy it for its flashy charm.

The problems are real, though. The show’s chief product--and salesperson--is Georgia Brown as Madame Roza, who has so many children she doesn’t know what to do. Her voice is ground glass and cigarettes. Her figure is a thing of the past. She growls that she hates kids, and she puts a ragamuffin to bed as if he were the Christ child. (Roza is Jewish but ecumenical.) It’s a super performance.

Ah, but the story. (Julian More did the book.) Maybe it shouldn’t matter that Madame Roza takes action only once during the entire show: the moment in the second act when she flummoxes the father of her favorite ward, an Arab lad named Momo.

Maybe it shouldn’t matter that we have to take it on faith that the child-welfare people actually are on Roza’s tail and that the doctors won’t let her die in her apartment.

Maybe it shouldn’t matter that one minute Roza has terminal asthma and the next minute she’s knocking ‘em dead, like Piaf at the Blue Angel.

And maybe the last doesn’t matter. Musical theater has a long tradition of dying heroines who suddenly sing up a storm.

But, if we’re to buy this story rather than brush past it, we need an early demonstration that its heroine actually is the tiger, the survivor, that everybody in the show (including Roza) keeps insisting she is. And we need to feel that she genuinely is in trouble with the authorities. Messengers are boring in the theater, even when they’re singing.

“Roza’s” second asset is its very pleasant score. Audiences who resent theater songs that have to be figured out will love Gilbert Becaud’s songs. As in his “What Now, My Love,” they deal in one thought at a time--at most. “Moon on a Silver Window”--Momo’s growing-up song--is particularly attractive. In the 1950s, these songs would have been all over the radio. Even in the hard-rock ‘80s they’ve got a chance. It’ll be a shame if there isn’t an original-cast album.

Does it matter that these are pop songs rather than theater songs, that all they know how to do in the second chorus is to repeat the first chorus?

Does it matter that Julian Moore’s lyrics are so ordinary? “Don’t even think about tomorrow . . . your heart will sink about tomorrow . . . there’s nothing pink about tomorrow. . . .”

Does it matter that there’s no song about the central issue in the show--Young Momo’s need not merely to find his place in the sun (i.e., moon) but to break free of Madame Roza?

Well, if you’re just browsing, it doesn’t matter. But if you think of music in the theater as a way of tapping specific emotion, of going deeper into the characters than words alone can do, then it does matter. “Roza” has several entertaining numbers, but it never explains who is doing them.

A third strength is its physical production. No reservations here. It’s superb. Particularly Alexander Okun’s set, depicting the shabby apartment house where Roza and her raffish friends have their block parties (an incessant activity in the Paris slums.)

Okun sets the building’s hallways and stairs at odd angles, as if the place had been hit by an earthquake, and Ken Billington’s lighting uncovers dozens of unexpected playing spaces. The effect is that of an urban ant hill.

It’s also interesting to see how costumer Florence Klotz uses cheap, gaudy fabrics to establish both the poverty of Roza’s lowlife pals and their attempt to make a little magic for themselves. Without question, “Roza” looks great at the Taper--better, maybe, than it will at the Royale.

But back to the story. Bob Gunton plays a transvestite hooker who used to be a heavyweight boxer until he had a “snip-snip” operation. (The dialogue is a little coy.) He exists to give Roza a girlfriend and to give Momo, oddly enough, a father figure.

Interesting. And Gunton’s performance has dignity. Unfortunately, he has to sing some of the dumbest songs in the show. One doesn’t know what to make of this character. If he’s as capable and wise as he seems, why doesn’t he do more to help out Roza and Momo?

And so on. Musicals need to leave out a lot in order to make room for songs, but they can get away with this only when the audience knows the characters coming in, as in “Mame.” “Roza,” however, is based on a 10-year-old French movie that not everybody has seen. The thinness of its characterizations may be overcome in New York by the accessibility of Becaud’s score, by the vitality of Harold Prince’s staging and by Brown’s presence--but I wouldn’t put money on it.

Was it proper to try it out at the Taper? No less proper than trying out Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” at the Old Globe Theatre last winter in San Diego. The American musical needs help these days. If the show in question has merit, if the people involved have integrity, if the contract is carefully drawn and if the resident theater has some real control over what’s put on its stage, such an arrangement can benefit both the commercial producer and the resident audience.

Such an arrangement can also be abused, and we’ll see examples of that in years to come. But it’s fine to have “Roza” at the Taper, and it’s nice that local audiences are enjoying it. As for those rewrites, one can only quote the advice of Laurence Olivier to a certain American movie star whom he was directing in a play: “Be better!”