The Life
at the Theatre Building
And then there’s The Life, composer Cy Coleman and lyricist Ira Gasman’s 1997 musical about the drugs and prostitution in pre-Disneyfied Times Square, circa 1980. Taking a page from Lanford Wilson’s Balm in Gilead, Coleman, Gasman, and David Newman’s book gets the milieu down pretty well–the hookers and pimps and junkies and assorted hangers-on. Then they focus on the story’s main characters–a prostitute named Queen and her pimp-lover Fleetwood–and their attempts to leave the Life behind. The score contains some marvelous songs, with soaring ballads and witty novelty numbers. “I’m getting too old for the oldest profession,” one woman sings early in the show, while Queen, fresh from a weekend on Rikers Island, croons that it’s “a lovely day to be out of jail.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The problem is that Bellie can’t decide how raunchy to make his show. In one scene a cocktail waitress is enticed into stripping off her top, but in this production she primly keeps her back to the audience. Fosse would have found dance moves to say “stripped naked” without stripping her naked. By avoiding the play’s raunchiness, Bellie and his collaborators lose some of its power. Queen is a whore. Fleetwood is her love interest, but he’s also a pimp and a junkie who betrays her every time he blows their nest egg on some more blow.
Still, most of the best songs from the series seem to have been used in the first show, so this one feels like a collection of also-rans. There are some faves from last time sprinkled in–“I’m Just a Bill,” “Interjections!” and “Conjunction Junction”–as if to say, hey, we know this new score isn’t quite as good. It’s not, but it’s still fun.
