Rodgers & Hammerstein's 'Allegro'

The plot isn't the point in director John Doyle's remarkable re-imagining of Rodgers & Hammerstein's 1947 "Allegro." In an elemental 90-minutes with a fractional cast of 12 where actors and orchestra are one and the same, a reduction that heightens the musical and thematic virtues of this profound musical, it is through simplification that the complexity of the human story emerges.

The pair's third effort after a triumphant "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel," "Allegro" boldly endeavored to comment on the then-and-still modern dilemma -- making a risk-benefit analysis of provincial integrity amid an urbane hullabaloo. As the title number pegs 20th Century life: "'Allegro' a musician would so describe the speed of it... We know no other way of living out a day... Hysterically frantic, we are stubbornly romantic and doggedly determined to be gay!" Concluding "Oh, how they spin!" this timely "Allegro" makes no secret of suggesting adagio in counterpoint to today's tech attack.

The story of a third-generation small-town MD, Joseph Taylor Junior, we bear witness to Joseph's life from birth to age 35. Ardent about his calling, he extols a doctor's nobility: "You know, a doctor doesn't always know what to do at first. He tries this or that, and it doesn't do any good. Then he hits it. And you see the patient get better every day. Well, then you know it's about the best thing a man can be -- is a doctor."

Devoted to his childhood sweetheart with equal idealism, the young doctor fights to stay true to himself but is in for doses of reality in both work and love. After marrying the sweetheart, he eventually succumbs to her ambitions and moves to Chicago where he finds himself stroking more vanity than curing ill.

Boasting an original cast of 134 at Broadway's cavernous Majestic Theatre, the 1947 audience who flocked to "Allegro" on the strength of precedent largely rejected its perceived buzzkill. With his current stripped-bare revival -- one of precious few the show has received -- in the tiny blackbox at Classic Stage Company, the Tony Award-winning director of "Sweeney Todd" and "Company" performs the beautiful trick of bringing a work of art back to life and redeeming its makers. His magic lies in doing as little as possible to let the music and its conduits shine.

There is nothing simple, however, about the skill set of this "Allegro's" superb cast of actor-musicians who interchange instruments as if any other prop. Elegantly amplified with a few sound and staging flourishes -- among which is a recurring heartbeat that carries powerful medical and emotional import -- it replaces bells and whistles with actual artistic chops.

It is hard to single out any one member of a cast where everyone deserves notice for baring his face and lifting his voice with equal measures of unselfconsciousness and conviction. Confidence oozes from this humble play that by the end feels like a perfect lyric poem of which one can't imagine changing a word.

Songs about the life cycle of man with lyrics like: "Starting out, so foolishly small, it's hard to believe you will grow at all. It's hard to believe that things like you can ever turn out to be men, but I've seen it happen before, so I know it can happen again," along with the use of a Greek chorus to state the obvious, underscore the redundancy of our actions and familiar patterns in which most lives unfold.

Yet this candor does nothing to reduce the rightful intensity each of us feels about our lives. As Willa Cather wrote in "O, Pioneers!" there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." Advertising this cycle only heightens its pain and its sweetness; each person gets her turn, and it's how she and her community respond to the plot of her life that ultimately define her shot at happiness.

Thirty years after "Allegro" opened on Broadway, Rodgers wrote in his autobiography, "Of all the musicals I ever worked on that didn't quite succeed, "Allegro" is the one I think most worthy of a second chance." He has gotten it.

"Allegro" runs through Dec. 14 at the Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street, in New York. For tickets or information, call 212-677-4210 or visit www.classicstage.org.