“A Man of No Importance,” an off-Broadway musical based on the 1994 film that starred Albert Finney as a Dublin bus conductor with an obsession for Oscar Wilde and a yen for amateur theatricals, was a natural fit for playwright Terrence McNally, the bard of lonely city dwellers with conflicted longings.
Collaborating again with Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), the team behind the musical “Ragtime,” McNally wrote the book for a musical that might just as easily have been the basis for another of his compulsively funny, emotionally searing character studies.
The scale here is far more compact than “Ragtime.” But “A Man of No Importance,” which is receiving a lovely revival at A Noise Within in Pasadena under the graceful direction of the company’s producing artistic director, Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, finds freedom in Wilde’s iconoclastic example.
Alfie Byrne (Kasey Mahaffy), a disciple of Wilde’s (in more ways than one), has decided to stage the heretical “Salome” with his ragtag troupe at his neighborhood church, St. Imelda. Alfie, who’s either being willfully obtuse or radically uncompromising, sees nothing sacrilegious in Wilde’s one-act tragedy.
At the defiant Wildean center is infamous Salome, Herod’s manipulative stepdaughter. Frustrated by her failed attempt to seduce Jokanaan (better known as John the Baptist), she demands the prophet’s head be brought to her on a silver platter. Her outrageous request is granted after she dances the dance of the seven veils for her besotted stepfather, in a play that careens into multiple taboos under biblical cover.
Alfie is convinced that he’s found his Salome after a mysterious young woman named Adele (Analisa Idalia) nervously boards his bus. He must get permission to stage the play at St. Imelda’s social hall from Father Kenny (Neill Fleming), who inquires whether there’s any immodest dancing in the entertainment.
“Not immodest, Father Kenny,” Alfie replies. “It’s art.”
For Alfie, art excuses what society finds objectionable. It’s the reason he takes refuge in poetry and drama. He recites verse on the bus as much to enrapture his passengers as captivate his handsome young colleague, Robbie (CJ Eldred), the bus driver whom he calls Bosie after Wilde’s fatal inamorato, Lord Alfred Douglas.
Homosexuality isn’t quite as dangerous in 1964 Dublin, when the musical is set. But the threats are real all the same.
Sharing an apartment with his unmarried sister, Lily (Juliana Sloan), Alfie prepares exotic meals at home before retreating into his private sanctuary, his bedroom. His sister can’t even imagine what he gets up to with all those suspect books he keeps piled up under lock and key.
Carney (David Nevell), who owns the butcher shop downstairs from Alfie and Lily, is also mad about the theater. Alfie has cast him in “Salome,” but Carney can’t believe the filth once he reads the script. He voices his concerns to Lily, with whom he enjoys mass in the day and alcoholic refreshments in the evening.
Clearly, Alfie’s soul is in danger, and Carney has appointed himself the man to save it. He formally complains to the parish authorities to put an end to “Salome,” but the real crisis comes from the shame and sorrow of Alfie’s repressed life.
When Alfie flamboyantly staggers out of the closet, he does so in the guise of Wilde, who makes dreamlike appearances in the musical (courtesy of Nevell, in a cleverly constructed dual role). Alfie’s liberation doesn’t go well for him, but his public disgrace can’t undo the goodwill he’s established through his championing of art. (The movie’s sentimental contours are still apparent, but the musical earns its affectionate ending by keeping the focus communal.)
“A Man of No Importance” is a love letter to the stage, yet another reason McNally was the ideal man for the job. This modest musical, which would no doubt wilt under the glare of Broadway, is at its most touching when chronicling the ways art lifts the spirits of everyday people who are blessed with no spectacular gifts yet nevertheless possess the inner lives of theatrical giants.
Mahaffy gives us a much younger version of Alfie than Finney’s late-middle-age version in the film. Time is not bearing down on Alfie in quite the same way, but Mahaffy makes us believe that the character is running out of hope.
The camaraderie between Mahaffy’s Alfie and Eldred’s Robbie, both of whom sing beautifully, is sweetly convincing. Robbie is a ladies’ lad, but he appreciates the poetic vistas that Alfie opens up to him. (Poetry hath charms to soothe the straight Dubliner’s breast.) Alfie may never realize his romantic fantasies, but his Romanticism transcends his straitened horizons.
Flaherty and Ahrens’ score is tailored to the characters with bespoke exactness. “A Man of No Importance” feels like a play that’s been set to music. If the musical has any ambition to be an extravaganza, it keeps the desire safely in check. Discretion is perhaps the work’s most charming asset. But an early number, “Going Up,” a group number led by Carney about the compensatory joys of putting on a show, injects some Kander and Ebb-style adrenaline into the proceedings.
The supporting cast is strong in voice and small-scale portraiture. Nevell, Sloan and Ed F. Martin as Baldy, the troupe’s loyal stage manager, all impress in a company that makes a virtue of inconspicuous excellence.
Most impressive of all is the way Rodriguez-Elliott conducts her large ensemble through rapid scene changes with gliding finesse. (Kudos to Francois-Pierre Couture’s logistically savvy scenic design.) “A Man of No Importance” not only celebrates simplicity but also depends upon it. What a treat to come across a musical that recognizes just how extraordinary the ordinary can be.
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