A Troubled Life, a Troubled Show in Latest Incarnation of ‘Andersen’

One thing’s for sure with “Frank Loesser’s Hans Christian Andersen”: You will believe a Dane can fly. For in truth we have here “Martha Clarke’s Frank Loesser’s Hans Christian Andersen,” and everyone in this half-crazy, elegant misfire spends 50% of their stage time above the stage, not on it--floating figments of its subject’s tortured romantic imagination.

Clarke, the celebrated theater and opera director, is best known for her stern, mesmeric music-theater pieces: “The Garden of Earthy Delights,” “Vienna: Lusthaus,” “Miracolo d’Amore.” Often the former dancer employs flying rigs as part of her choreographic vocabulary, enabling her performers to twirl, float, run against the wind, skate an inch above the ground as if on ice.

Few think “Broadway!” when Clarke’s name comes up. Yet a director of separate but related avant-garde credentials by the name of Julie Taymor found an entirely new audience for Disney’s “The Lion King.”

On paper it’s a nutty and rather tantalizing prospect, this new “Hans Christian Andersen,” which opened Thursday at the American Conservatory Theatre’s Geary Theatre, backed by substantial Broadway producing money.

Clarke’s love of flying made for a good start, certainly. But could Clarke’s sensibility complement that of her librettist, Irish novelist and playwright Sebastian Barry, known for his gritty, aching brand of lyricism?

Could these sensibilities, in turn, make a satisfying connection to the Loesser songs, including “Thumbelina,” “Inchworm” and “Wonderful Copenhagen”--material written for (and far better than) the sticky-sweet 1952 Danny Kaye movie?

Well, it’s a no on both counts, unfortunately. “Hans Christian Andersen” is an uncompromising but ashen disappointment.

Clarke and Barry got the OK from Loesser’s estate to ditch the movie’s story line.

The real Andersen was born into grinding poverty, taunted mercilessly throughout childhood for his ungainly eccentric looks, nursed a terrible crush on Swedish songbird Jenny Lind and loathed children (at least he enjoyed saying so). Despite his “higher” aspirations, his international literary reputation rested on his copious fairy tales, written as he said so that “adults too should be able to listen in.”

That’s the theory here, too, although in practice I’m not sure whom it’s for. Clarke’s production begins with an insinuating prologue inspired by “The Little Mermaid,” in which mermaids and several stovepipe-hatted gloomy figures swim beneath the sea. We see the sea creatures saving a poor man in black from drowning. It is the story made plain: Andersen’s work saved him.

Then it’s dry land, and bad times. Andersen (John Glover) is looking back on his painful life, trying to come to peace with it. He both observes and interacts with his father (Jarlath Conroy), a struggling cobbler, and his careworn mother (Karen Trott).

Andersen reveals “the things that hurt me into what I am.” Librettist Barry did something similar in his plays “The Steward of Christendom” and “Our Lady of Sligo”: In both, a troubled figure revisited a troubled life.

Barry’s a rich man with language, though he appears uncertain in the role of librettist, collaborating with a nontraditional director. In this show’s harsh aesthetic setting, some of the songs sound silly--insane, really. They’re used in a kind of nervous-breakdown context. An unhappy picnic in the woods--young Hans, father and mother--is interrupted by Andersen singing “Thumbelina” as a diversionary tactic to ward off despair. Andersen finds solace in “Inchworm” after being humiliated by his venal schoolmaster (John Christopher Jones).

And “No Two People”? Here, the lovey-dovey ditty is sung by a pair of teenagers on a scaffold, being rolled slowly across the stage. They’re about to be hanged. Andersen and his fellow schoolchildren witness the hanging. This did happen to the young Andersen, but it’s perhaps best that the late Loesser didn’t live to hear it scored this way.

Three songs from Loesser’s “Pleasures and Palaces” (his final produced effort, which never made it to Broadway) have landed in this show, along with “Riddleweed” from “Greenwillow.” Many of these are used as transitional dramatic fragments, others as muted chorus numbers (“Copenhagen”). In musical terms, Clarke’s production has a lot going for it; in the instrumental passages songs such as “Inchworm” get straight to Andersen’s sad heart, as lovingly adapted by Richard Peaslee and orchestrated for 11 pieces by Michael Starobin.

As Andersen, Glover works hard, and his Act 2 direct-address storytelling session with the audience is the most effective and affecting thing in the show. But he really can’t sing. He really can’t sing. Nor can Conroy, and several others required to try. Teri Dale Hansen, who plays Jenny Lind, lends a gorgeous soprano to both Loesser and a bit of Mozart.

Clarke’s designers--sets by Robert Israel, costumes by Jane Greenwood, lighting by Paul Gallo--know what Clarke is after. Israel has fashioned some charming tin miniature houses, about 7 feet in height, wheeled this way and that by the cast. The backdrops of gray skies and stormy seas dominate much of Andersen’s reverie. (Exception: In Act 2 of this two-hour show, the palette opens up to a new world of color, particularly for the Chinese “Nightingale” scene.) But the look doesn’t quite jibe with the songs, which don’t quite jibe with Barry’s book.

Chalk this one up as an ambitious, unsatisfying venture, a not-quite musical that’s not quite a Martha Clarke tour de force, either.

*

* “Frank Loesser’s Hans Christian Andersen,” American Conservatory Theatre, Geary Theater, 405 Geary St., San Francisco. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. (this Tuesday at 7 p.m.); Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. (no matinee Sept. 20); this Saturday at 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 8. $21 to $67. (415) 749-2228. Running time: 2 hours.

John Glover: Hans Christian Andersen

Jarlath Conroy: Father

Karen Trott: Mother

George Hall: Grandpappy

Book by Sebastian Barry. Directed and choreographed by Martha Clarke. Sets by Robert Israel. Costumes by Jane Greenwood. Lighting by Paul Gallo. Orchestrations Michael Starobin. Music adapter Richard Peaslee. Flying by Foy. Stage manager Phyllis Schray.