THEATER REVIEW : ‘MARRY ME A LITTLE’ DOESN’T MAKE IT

It isn’t easy to make it as a song in a Broadway musical. What are the odds that you will get cast in a show that actually gets made, or that the leading lady won’t take a violent dislike to you, or that your producer won’t accuse you of slowing down the action and fire you for your impudence?

It seems sadly fated that most of them will wind up cast aside on the road to the Great White Way. It seems a monument to injustice when some of them belong to Stephen Sondheim--one of the most brilliant Broadway composers working today.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone came along and brought all those tunes back to life in a musical of their very own? Wouldn’t it be grand to have a man and a woman move from a fantasy song cut from “Follies” to a romantic duet cut from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” to a number about disillusioned love cut from “Company”?

Only if you want to see them end up side by uncomfortable side in “Marry Me a Little,” playing at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage through Aug. 30.

It’s not that this game production doesn’t try valiantly to breathe life into Craig Lucas’ and Norman Rene’s tortured concept. Under the imaginative direction of Tom Gardner, in the scope of a little over one hour, the real-life husband-wife team of Deborah May and George Deloy try to create a portrait of two people yearning for and frightened by intimacy. At Sondheim’s insistence, not one word is spoken between the 18 songs.

Silence is not their problem--they fill that eloquently. As May and Deloy move around the same apartment space together, surrealistically unaware of each other’s presence, they paint touching miniatures of their lonely lives: He screws in a bare light bulb and she puts a Chinese lantern over it; she sets the table for one at her end, he settles down to a frozen dinner at his.

Ironically, what defeats them is the whole excuse for this venture--the mixture of songs. It may seem like a compliment to Sondheim to yoke this pastiche of also-rans from eight different musicals, two of them unproduced. But to suggest that the songs from different shows are interchangeable is actually more of an insult. This show is about as satisfying as being offered a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces from different puzzles. It makes you appreciate the artistry that goes into establishing a musical integrity within the body of a production that works.

May’s and Deloy’s voices are lovely--it would be wonderful to see what they could do with something of substance. Accompanied by the skillful, unostentatious music director Bruce K. Sevy on piano, May is especially successful in capturing the subtle Sondheim nuances with her clear, sweet upper register. She seems born to the material, becoming the siren in the sizzling “The Girls of Summer” from the short-lived show of that name, and tearing with just a bit of a growl into the somewhat lascivious “Can That Boy Foxtrot” from “Follies,” all the while looking more and more fetching in Lewis Brown’s costumes of varying slinky lengths of negligees.

Deloy, while a solid performer, enjoys his strongest moments with May who, in the course of the play, he meets in fantasy, but not in reality. When Wendy Heffner’s lights glare nakedly on Alan K. Okazaki’s cozily cramped high-rise flat, and Corey L. Fayman’s sound provides the insistent, discordant beat of trains and cars, Deloy and May all but walk through each other as they go about their business. True love may be right under your nose, this clever concept seems to say--if people would only look and see.

When they do get together for the charming fantasy of “A Moment With You” from Sondheim’s first professional venture, the unproduced “Saturday Night,” the lights soften and dim, blurring the set. Then bubbles fall from the rafters and Heffner’s lights begin to dance in circles around the theater walls. While May and Deloy sing, they dance a Rogers and Astaire-type number, choreographed with wit and style by Wesley Fata.

The show does have individual songs worth listening to. The true Sondheim connoisseurs will be intrigued with the numbers that didn’t make into their favorite musicals. “There Won’t Be Trumpets” is a rouser from “Anyone Can Whistle” that was deferred in favor of a speech that got a bigger hand, and “Your Eyes Are Blue,” a tender courtship song from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” was lost when two less than tuneful actors playing the lovers were fired in New Haven, Conn.

Unfortunately, however, even the best of these songs aren’t married even a little. And without that marriage there is no magic. Just some music going bump in the night.

“MARRY ME A LITTLE” Songs by Stephen Sondheim. Conceived and developed by Craig Lucas and Norman Rene. Director is Tom Gardner. Musical director is Bruce K. Sevy. Choreographer is Wesley Fata. Set by Alan K. Okazaki. Costumes by Lewis Brown. Lighting by Wendy Heffner. Sound by Corey L. Fayman. Stage manager is Maria Carrera. With Deborah May and George Deloy. At 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2. Will play in repertory with Michael Frayn’s “Benefactors” beginning July 17. Closes Aug. 30. At the Cassius Carter Centre Stage in Balboa Park.