Short Takes on a Life

Imaginatively assembled and very pleasant, the new musical revue “The Education of Randy Newman,” now at South Coast Repertory, uses Newman’s songs to trace the outlines of a songwriter’s life, much like Newman’s own.

When this two-hour, 40-minute show has glided to a close, however, you’re left with mixed feelings. The project is clearly a labor of love overseen by passionately talented people, but the result is somewhat tame. Which isn’t the word that Newman’s toughest work brings to mind.

Newman and the American pop-culture mainstream have had a pretty weird relationship for decades now. These days, he’s known widely for “Toy Story” odes to friendship--warm and reasonably fuzzy but, unlike the run-of-the-mill best song Oscar nominees, pretty good.

On the recent “Ally McBeal” season finale--a sort-of musical--there Newman was, at the piano, surrounded by America’s Most Adorable Lawyers on an officially hip and demographically attractive show. So what’s wrong with a little popularity? As he sings in “I Want Everyone to Like Me,” not included in “The Education of Randy Newman: “I’m a little insecure.” That insecurity’s as American as apple pie. Or as American as institutional racism. That subject was never set to more deceptively beautiful music than in “Sail Away,” one of the first tunes heard in “The Education of Randy Newman,” which, mockingly, makes the slavery experience sound like the most glorious win-win situation imaginable.

Conceived by musical director Michael Roth, SCR dramaturge Jerry Patch and Newman, the show is modeled on “The Education of Henry Adams,” the 1907 memoir written in wry third person by the grandson of John Quincy Adams (and great-grandson of John Adams). Adams wrote a penetrating critique of the 19th century from the vantage point of privilege. “The education he had received bore little relation to the education he needed,” Adams wrote of himself.

“The Education of Randy Newman” begins with a composer (Scott Waara) at work at a toy keyboard. Soon his characters come to life on stage. He spends much of the evening watching their stories, remembering his own.

In Act 1, the Newman character looks back on his birth in Los Angeles, his upbringing in New Orleans (the show’s songwriter spends more time there than Newman actually did). “Louisiana, 1927,” “Kingfish,” “Birmingham” and the nasty “Rednecks” serve as social backdrop in the young Jewish kid’s Southern education.

Act 2 brings the songwriter and his parents back to L.A. (plus a trip to Miami), where he encounters various belief systems (“It’s Money That Matters”) and shiny distractions (“You Can Keep Your Hat On”). The songwriter marries the woman who records an early song of his (the eternally gorgeous “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”). Chemical and sexual temptations come knocking, the marriage goes splat, a second marriage comes along (“Feels Like Home”). One man’s checkered education continues.

The story line isn’t stressed; it unfolds in fragments, images, pieces and bits. “Education” is directed and choreographed by Myron Johnson, a talent new to Southern California. Johnson has turned out wonderful work in his home turf of Minneapolis, for his company Ballet of the Dolls, among others. Here, the main concern is fluidity, not virtuosity.

In Act 1, Johnson and company must contend with a dubious scenic conception by designer Ralph Funicello; all those endlessly sliding, shifting, rotating set panels and staircase units become a blur--literal screens for a fairly complex projection design. Act 2 works better simply because the actors aren’t fighting for focus.

It’s good to see and hear Waara, after the dweeby confines of his previous area assignment, “The People vs. Mona” at the Pasadena Playhouse. He leads a solid if unspectacular cast consisting of Jordan Bennett (who plays, among others, the songwriter’s father); Sherry Hursey (Mom); Gregg Henry (relishing his variations on the theme of moral rot); John Lathan (whose “Roll With the Punches” is an Act 1 highlight); Jennifer Leigh Warren (“Days of Heaven”), who lends some real sparkle; and, as the composer’s First Love, cool, easygoing Allison Smith, of TV’s “The West Wing.”

Musical director Roth, who also did the orchestrations and vocal charts, worked on “Randy Newman’s Faust” at the La Jolla Playhouse. He knows his stuff. He leads the seven-piece onstage band with grace and force.

Roth, Patch and Newman haven’t settled for the same old revue, certainly. But finally the show’s dynamic range is limited--surprising, since the songs run the gamut from vile racists to carnival freaks to the open road to, inevitably, “Short People.” Is there something about Newman’s catalog that resists theatrical treatment? Two previous Newman revues, “Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong” and “The Middle of Nowhere,” dating back to the 1980s, took more of a just-the-tunes-ma’am approach, and neither quite took.

This one’s close. It’s logically ordered and musically accomplished. But something stronger and more urgent needs to come out of all that strong, urgent, beautiful music.

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* “The Education of Randy Newman,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ends July 2. $33-$52. (714) 708-5555. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Jordan Bennett: Dad, others

Gregg Henry: A Kingfish, others

Sherry Hursey: Mom, others

John Lathan: Doctor Tap, others

Allison Smith: First Love, others

Scott Waara: A Songwriter

Jennifer Leigh Warren: Teacher, others

Conceived by Michael Roth, Jerry Patch and Randy Newman. Directed and choreographed by Myron Johnson. Musical director and arranger Michael Roth. Scenic design by Ralph Funicello. Costumes by Judith Dolan. Lighting by Donald Holder. Sound by Francois Bergeron. Projections by John Boesche. Production stage manager Patrick Heydenburg.