City of Angels

The F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company puts on the 1989 Cy Coleman / David Zippel / Larry Gelbart musical "City of Angels" at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, in a production running now through July 19.

The musical itself is slight, weaving together a "fictional" story about Stone (Jared Troilo), a hardboiled P.I. in Los Angeles in the 1940s and a "real" story about a novelist, Stine (Kyle W. Carlson) -- the gumshoe's creator -- adapting his work into a screenplay. Unlike his heroic creation, Stine finds himself compromised at every turn: By the movie producer, Buddy Fidler (Dan Goldstone), a libidinous dervish who re-writes everything Stine hands him; by the demands and dictates of his own literary creations (Stine and Stone argue over plot points and characterizations); and by his own wandering eye, which leads him to the boudoir of his secretary Donna (AnneMarie Alvarez) when his exasperated wife, Gabby (Lori L'Italien) is out of town.

Stone, representing Stine's better self, holds on to his integrity, but he pays for it: Between studio-mandated rewrites and Stine's own resentful attacks, Stone is besieged with plot twists and beat-downs that leave him battered and bruised. Among them: Stone is framed for the killing of a shady guru named Jimmy Powers (Rich Hoehn) while looking into a simple missing persons case, a mystery he's been hired by Alaura Kingsley (Katie Preisig), the younger wife of a millionaire, to clear up. An enemy on the police force, Lt. Munoz (Ben Gold), would love to see Stone go up the river and straight to the chair, and he's willing to goose the system along to make it happen --�even if it means the real bad guys get away with murder.

For all its convoluted complexities, the "fictional" story is pretty straightforward and it's given a glossy, pulpy treatment suitable to its filmic, B-movie genre. (We skip right over or get mere sketches of major developments, pausing once in a while for a steamy come-up, a compromising setup, and a warehouse explosion.) The "real" story unfolds in close parallel, and many of the same people Stine has to deal with are repackaged as recognizable cognates in the screenplay. Like the cheesy script, the narrative of Stine's life is chock-full of time-honored tropes and a more or less schematic style of plotting. This play is, after all, a musical, and the story lines are the scaffolding from which to hang the musical numbers.

Those numbers don't enthrall, however. The lyrics are clever; the music is catchy; but the singing is, by and large, merely passable (with a few standouts) and there are times when the venue's acoustics so distort the songs that it becomes a distraction and impairment. It's a shame, given the live six-person orchestra playing their hearts out behind a curtain in a corner of the space.

There are other issues as well. The scenic design by James Petty is anchored by a clever idea in which a large wall is pivoted, easily changing the locale from Stone's noir universe to Stine's imperfect "real" world. This would be brilliant in a larger venue, but in the black box of the Arsenal Center for the Arts it becomes problematic, and at a particularly unfortunate moment -- a clever duet in which women from both storylines are singing, their complaints lining up in a moment of meta synchronicity. The lyrical impact is blunted because the wall, swung out to divide the space, makes it impossible to see both characters at once; half the audience sees one of the women, and the remaining half sees the other. This fractures the story strands the book and lyrics strive to unify.

Music director Steven Bergman, a colleague here at EDGE, does a fine job -- from what I could tell, that is; but as noted in previous reviews of F.U.D.G.E. productions that have taken place in the same performance space, the venue is acoustically inferior. (This problem only points up the lack of versatile performance venues for small theater in the greater Boston area, a situation about to become drastically worse with the announced closing of the Factory Theater.)

Those are more than mere nit-picks, but even so, the cast deliver performances (many in dual roles) that are charged with charm and gusto. Joey DeMita may not have complete control over the factors that impact his sound design (there's a narration track that's muddy and hard to hear), but his eye for costuming is spot-on. Petty's vision for the scenic design might be a little too large to fit in the space, but he shows a sure grasp both of the times in which the play is set, and of the stylistic affectation of making the 1940s noir fiction a "black and white" visual experience, versus the more vibrant colors and more modern props used on the "real" world side of the set.

This is a big production, squeezed uncomfortably into a too-cramped space. That's commendable, but also tough: "City of Angels" should be bursting with fun, but in this case it's bursting at the seams.

"City of Angels" continues through July 19 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts. For tickets and more information, please go to www.fudgetheatre.com