MUSIC REVIEW : Pacific Symphony Gives Its Regards to ‘Broadway’

Endless choruses of “Hello Dolly!” Plenty of familiar numbers from “Mame.” Isn’t that what you’d expect from a program entitled “Jerry Herman’s Broadway?”

But that wasn’t exactly the scenario Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center when the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, supplemented by four vocalists with solid theatrical experience and a youthful vocal ensemble, paid tribute to one of the most successful composer-lyricists in the business.

Though Herman’s two best-known musicals were certainly represented, they didn’t dominate the list by any means. Instead, the presentation, conducted by Tony Award-winner Don Pippin, took a more thoughtful approach, emphasizing the themes that run through the composer’s work, while utilizing some of his less well-known songs and shows.

In a fitting climax, Herman himself joined Pippin and the orchestra on stage for his “The Best of Times Is Now,” a tune whose lyric--included as an insert to the program--neatly sums up the songwriter’s positive, yet existential emphasis with phrases such as “Hold this moment fast / And live and love as hard as you know how.” As Herman played piano, some members of the audience, lyrics in hand, felt moved to add their voices.

Another thread that runs through Herman’s scores--the inherent worth of the individual--was well represented with “I Know What I Am” from “La Cage Aux Folles,” sung in an almost triumphant manner by George Hearn, who won a Tony as best actor for his role in that musical in 1984. The singer, who earlier had struggled a bit in the upper register during the reflective “Song on the Sand” from the same show, opened up for the assertive declaration and made its message ring.

Along the same lines, but with a decidedly feminist twist, was Paige O’Hara’s singing of “Wherever He Ain’t” from “Mack and Mabel.” O’Hara, the voice of Belle in the animated film hit “Beauty and the Beast,” brought a harder, more mature edge to her delivery than one would expect from Disney’s tender young Beauty. And Herman’s lyric, a clever declaration of freedom, proved the perfect vehicle for her assertiveness. The familiar “It Only Takes a Moment” provided her with an opportunity to use the pure, youthful tones that won her the role of Belle.

Most theatrical of the guest vocalists was Lee Roy Reams. He performed the title tune from “La Cage Aux Folles” with a huge red boa wrapped around his tux and accented particularly witty or risque (or both) lines in the lyric with facial tweaks and half-spoken, half-sung phrasing. He swept across the stage with some snazzy but hardly complicated dance steps during “It’s Today” from “Mame,” all the while singing with strength, confidence and expression.

B.J. Ward, a singer whose experience includes Las Vegas shows as well as the theater, brought solid tones and a spare vibrato to “Time Heals Everything” while pushing Hearn to new heights during their exchange in the wedding scene from “Milk and Honey, “ Herman’s first production. She teamed with O’Hara for “Bosom Buddies,” a tune in which the strong sense of self Herman gives to his individuals runs up against itself when two friends exchange facetious compliments and out-and-out insults.

The orchestra, though not always at its best when working with singers, provided secure accompaniment here, and competent readings of the medleys of waltzes and marches from the Herman catalogue. A limp tempo hampered their rendition of “Mame,” and the program might have been better off without that war horse. “Hello Dolly!” with Pippin at the piano, was given an international treatment with versions ranging from mambo to oom-pah-pah and can-can before ending with a star-spangled Dolly arrangement. Each of these clever readings was mercifully brief.