STAGE REVIEWS : ‘Under One Umbrella’ Covers Different Lifestyles

A divertimento for all persuasions--straight, gay, lesbian--has unfurled its musical umbrella at the Rose Cabaret in West Hollywood. “Under One Umbrella,” with book, music and lyrics by Bob Milrad, is an affectionate revue with a touch of bite, featuring a six-member vocal ensemble celebrating lifestyle diversity.

To underscore the point that radically different couples, however insular, all live under the same umbrella, director David Galligan has staged the company singing and cavorting in myriad umbrella poses. The effect is a multi-hued, occasionally twirling canopy that gives the production a lyrical, low-key stylishness.

The material is an apt framework for weekly performances that benefit the AIDS Mastery Foundation (Wednesday) and Project Angel Food (Aug. 19 and 26). Galligan, a one-time theater critic, has become something of a journeyman, musical theater maven, having directed the past six AIDS Project L.A. benefits, plus such diversions as “Blame It on the Movies” and “Trouble in Tahiti.”

Galligan smoothly interweaves the trio of diverse relationships in a gender-balanced cast, blurring, for the moment, the sheer geometrical precision that threatens to turn this human rainbow into a schematic chart.

As cabaret entertainment in an intimate, nightclubby atmosphere, with creator Milrad banging out the tunes on an offstage keyboard, the show is audience-friendly and the lyrics animated with a verbal clarity that projects every word like a bell.

As for those words, among the most refreshing and unexpected are in “Some Men in His Life,” a funny-touching number by two lesbians (Leslie Kendall and Freddie Weber), one of them pregnant, pondering the imbalance of raising a boy with no men around. In “Bakersfield,” a gay man (Bill DeLand) recounts with good humor that mid-adolescent moment in his old hometown when he discovered who he was.

Among the 15 songs, “We Worked It Out,” depicts a straight couple (Mark McGee and Kay Cole) hurdling the fences of marital adjustment, while “Look at Us” is informed by the conflict of a worrisome generational gap between gay lovers.

The numbers are largely jocular, wry and romantic. However, one song does cast a deep shadow--”While We Wait,” with its unstated specter of AIDS looming over a gay couple (Howell and DeLand again), lamenting friends who are withering from the disease.

“Under One Umbrella,” Rose Cabaret, Rose Garden Performance Art Center, 665 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, Wednesdays only, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 26. Benefits AIDS projects. $20-$25. (310) 854-4455. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.