Stage : Musical ‘War’ at SCR: Few Victories to Claim

War is hell.

Or so we thought. But in 1978, Canadians Eric Peterson and John Gray glommed on to the writings of one Billy Bishop, a Canadian World War I flying ace, and found a way to turn our heads around. War was still hell in “Billy Bishop Goes to War,” their two-man musical distillation of the journals of the 24-year-old Billy, but we also got the strong and wistful notion that it had been terrifically exciting.

This honest and benign little musical, written in song and as letters home to a girlfriend, has now been revived on South Coast Repertory’s Second Stage under more problematic conditions.

When Gray (writer-composer-musician) and Peterson (who played Billy) brought their engaging “Billy Bishop” to L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum in 1980, it had the complexity and grace of a rueful reminiscence. With 72 kills under his seat belt and lots of medals to show for them, Billy was not apologizing for his taste for blood. He was exulting in it.

Shooting down the enemy, he found out, was what he did best. He had answered the air war’s siren call like a tactical acrobat thrilled by its derring-do. What interested him were the seat-of-the-pants heroics, not the heroism per se. “We were off to fight the Hun / And it looked like so much fun . . . “ is a whispery, haunting theme in the show that sounds like nothing so much as a college drinking song hushed by ambivalent memories.

The production at South Coast is the theatrical offspring of Ben Halley Jr., sharply remembered for his recent wild-eyed, quirky Feste in SCR’s Caribbean “Twelfth Night.” Halley has played Billy a couple of times before and is credited with this staging, as well as taking on Billy and the 16 other parts the role encompasses.

The results are mixed. That Halley is an African-American when the real Billy was a white Canadian is revisionist history and something we are simply required to accept. This is the theater, goes the assumption, where suspension of disbelief is mother’s milk and anything is or should be possible.

Duly noted, but the real difficulties lie elsewhere. Succinctly put, Halley is not optimum casting. Billy and his friends do not come naturally to him.

He approaches them by going the distance with a requisite sense of humor and not much more.

His readings of the flyer’s ordinary beginnings and bouts with cavalry before he discovers the exhilarating freedom of the skies are intelligent but routine. Being very tall and densely packed, Halley is not physically versatile, a factor that dulls the edge of his bumping and grinding as that French chanteuse , Helene, and blunts the irony of a particularly deft song of hers about survival.

All of this was complicated Saturday evening by the inescapable fact that Halley appeared to be losing his voice. He plowed on to the finish, but at what sounded like great cost to his vocal chords. The endurance was admirable but the limitations grew progressively more severe, leaving Halley few options for variety or nuance, let alone song. It would be senseless to make judgments along those lines. One wishes him rest and full recovery.

Halley gets excellent support at the upright piano by John Ellington, who contributes a high, mellifluous tenor to the singing. He is the ideal unobtrusive stage companion.

Production values by Peter Maradudin (lights) and E. Scott Shaffer (set and costumes) are minimal, relying on a few strategically placed boxes of ammo and some graphic rear projections.

They do nicely. But in retrospect, and Saturday’s circumstances notwithstanding, Halley might have benefited from the services of a director other than himself. It’s not easy to see yourself on stage and even harder when the part or parts are so absorbing that they leave no room to step back and take a more dispassionate look.

Another pair of eyes would not have solved all the problems, but they might have softened a few.

‘Billy Bishop Goes To War’

John Ellington: Narrator/Pianist

Ben Halley Jr.: Billy Bishop, Upper Classman, Adjutant Perrault, Officer, Sir Hugh Cecil, Lady St. Helier, Cedric, Doctor, Instructor, Gen. John Higgins, Tommy Lovely Helene, Albert Ball, Walter Bourne, German, Gen. Hugh M. Trenchard, Servant, King George V

A revival by South Coast Repertory of the play with music written and composed by John Gray in collaboration with Eric Peterson. Director Ben Halley Jr. Sets and costumes E. Scott Shaffer. Lights Peter Maradudin. Sound Production manager Edward Lapine. Stage manager Andy Tighe. Assistant stage manager Randall K. Lum.