‘Bounce’ needs more of it

The problem with world-class talents is more our problem than theirs. We expect the world of them, every time. Stephen Sondheim is a world-class talent. He has the right to do a modest, unpretentious show whenever he likes.

But the wit, melodic spice and stylistic brinksmanship distinguishing Sondheim’s music theater career, across hugely important shows and minor ones, leave you unprepared for the dispiriting mildness of “Bounce,” Sondheim’s first new show since “Passion” nine years ago.

There’s a lovely, casual quality to a host of Sondheim tunes past, ranging from the best of his first full-length score, “Saturday Night,” to the Jule Styne inflections of “Merrily We Roll Along” to the most fetching songs he wrote for the film “Dick Tracy.” So the straightforward, 32-bar world of “Bounce” isn’t so un-Sondheimian, really.

Yet the show lacks its titular ingredient. It’s not edgy enough in its love/hate brotherly dynamics and exploration in American rapaciousness, and it’s not funny enough to be a full-bodied musical comedy. It’s eh. And if there’s one reaction I thought I’d never have to a new Sondheim musical, it’s eh.

In one song, “Addison’s City,” Sondheim refers to architect Addison Mizner’s Spanish-Moorish-Xanadu aesthetic as “everything too much.” Despite flashes of inspiration, in “Bounce” everything is not quite enough.

The Goodman Theatre world premiere, which opened Monday, marks the reunion project of composer-lyricist Sondheim and director Harold Prince, their first since “Merrily” in 1981. “Bounce” also reunites Sondheim with librettist John Weidman, his man on “Assassins” as well as on “Pacific Overtures,” which Prince directed.

New as “Bounce” is, a half-century has passed since Sondheim first noodled with a musical about the early 20th century chameleons known as Addison and Wilson Mizner, a pair of Candides, American-style. An oft-quoted Broadway wag, Wilson Mizner had a resume spanning a hundred professions -- from prospector to boxing manager to screenwriter -- and a thousand more entrepreneurial scams disguised as professions.

Addison Mizner joined his brother in many of these. (He was one of several Mizner children in real life; in the musical, which like most musicals is only a little bit factual, there’s only the two of them.) He found his niche as an architect, and in 1920s Florida he put a giddy grin on the face of Boca Raton with his brother’s help, before the boom went flooey.

In scale and spirit, “Bounce” clearly heads in the direction of an old George Abbott show -- fast, medium-budget, loud and funny. The song titles bespeak a stripped-down, blunt-edged quality: “Bounce,” “Opportunity,” “Gold!” (which, for a time, was the show’s title, after “Wise Guys”), “Alaska,” “The Game,” “Talent” and “You.”

The show begins with a pair of deaths. Addison, played with unexpected force by Richard Kind, passes on in Florida, creditors at his door. Wilson, played by a strenuously jolly Howard McGillin, dies a screenwriter’s dream death in Hollywood: on his back, underneath a would-be starlet. The brothers meet in heaven and immediately begin fighting, just like old times. “Bounce” unfolds as an extended flashback, its picaresque structure detailing the boys’ ups and downs and near-constant rancor.

The Mizners’ life “wasn’t exactly a Horatio Alger story,” as one of the brothers puts it. From Papa Mizner (Herndon Lackey), the boys early on learned to grab opportunity by the nearest available metaphor, especially if the metaphors are of the gambling or pioneering or bouncing variety. From Mama, portrayed by screen legend Jane Powell with the kind of authority only a screen legend can provide, Wilson and Addison learned that their sibling rivalry was justified. Mama always liked the “fun” brother, Willie, better.

In a deceptively gentle waltz, “Isn’t He Something?” Mama lauds him for leaving her “drunk with laughter,” crediting Addie more offhandedly with leaving her “sober after.” The closeted homosexual Addison finds fulfillment with young Hollis Bessemer (Gavin Creel, who has a terrific low-key way about him). The other, deeply unsympathetic Mizner, Wilson, is the “bad” one, the disreputable drug addict and thrill junkie.

Early on, in the Yukon, he and Addison meet up with dance hall gal Nellie (Michele Pawk). Years later, in New York, Wilson runs into the newly married and divorced Nellie, now worth millions. They marry; he drags her down with what she calls “the gambling and the cocaine and the chaos.” Too many of Weidman’s book scenes don’t work. In the stridently wacky “New York Sequence,” a succession of Wilson’s business partners -- a prizefighter, playwright -- are shot dead in the nuptial bed shared by Wilson and Nellie. The door-slamming antics fall flat. In the Yukon, memories of Hope and Crosby in “Road to Utopia” are plundered, half-heartedly.

Twice, glimmers of the “Bounce” that could’ve been -- though preferably with a different title -- shine through the disappointment. Addison’s transformation from lost soul to architect seems to have pulled the best out of Sondheim. In the segment called “Addison’s Trip Around the World,” which rides on a pleasing “Paint Your Wagon”-y melody called “I’m On My Way,” Addison’s taste for collecting whatnots from Guatemala, Hawaii, Hong Kong and elsewhere leads him to realize he needs a place for everything. Why not design one? This segment goes somewhere and advances the narrative, elegantly.

When Act 2 takes the action to Florida, “Talent” (Hollis’ dream of building an artists’ colony) and “You” (an expression of love, sweet and funny) make you wonder if the real show here -- the show lost in the wings while Sondheim and Weidman focused on an increasingly sour brotherly love/hate relationship -- is the one about how Addison Mizner designed his dream of Jazz Age sunshine. But then, I suppose, comparisons with “Sunday in the Park With George” would run rampant.

The cast works hard. Kind, who always worked a little too hard on “Spin City,” comes through here with a canny, heartfelt performance. McGillin tries too, but he’s miscast; he doesn’t come naturally to seedy, larger-than-life bombast, and he oversells comic and dramatic material that doesn’t have enough comedy or drama going for it. Pawk insinuates with ease. But the ups and downs of these constantly reinventing folk aren’t much in the end.

Michael Phillips is theater critic at the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune company.