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By JOE PLUMMER; Times Leader Correspondent
Monday, September 29, 1997 Page: 2A
WILKES-BARRE- Like a football team that hides its lethal offensive weapons
until the second half, the cast of “Me and My Girl” came roaring out after the
intermission Saturday night at the F.M. Kirby Center.
Those ringers won the audience over with an irresistible second act that
had the packed house standing and cheering by the time curtain calls came
around.
Most of the cheers were for Ken Johnson and Eva Rainforth, the show’s two
leads, and for a superb second-act performance by James Sears as Sir John
Tremayne. Part of the woodwork in Act One, Sears came on late in the game as a
splendid song-and-dance man with a gift for comic timing and biting off an
insult worthy of a character actor on “Masterpiece Theatre.”
Some things are worth waiting for.
“Me and My Girl” is the story of a cockney who inherits a dukedom. It’s
been around since 1930 when it opened on the London stage, spawned an MGM
movie version in Hollywood, and played Broadway for 1,412 performances in
1986, outrunning “Guys and Dolls” and “The King and I,” and picking up a
handful of Tony Awards.
Bill Snibson, the cockney, has a delightful time trying to adjust to his
new-found royal ways; his girlfriend, Sally Smith, on the other hand, realizes
she’s no royal until her remarkable transformation at the end of the show.
Even at that, the couple goes back to Lambeth where they’ve come from, leaving
the dukes and earls to their own devices, perhaps a bit richer for the dose of
humanity Bill and Sally have brought them.
Johnson as the cockney lead is close enough to Jim Carey to make you think
you may be watching the road company of “Cable Guy,” but I doubt Carey can
sing and dance half as well as Johnson; certainly, the matinee-idol charm of
Johnson’s song, “Leaning on a Lamppost” is beyond Carey at his best, and
Johnson’s inspired tomfoolery during the “Song of Hereford” number in Act II
suggests that Carey could end up a Ken Johnson wannabe.
Whether he’s wrapping himself up in his regal robes resembling a soft ice
cream cone, using those same robes as the sides of a racing car or deflating
the robes like a punctured hot-air balloon, Johnson rules. His antics had the
Kirby audience applauding at least four times during one 30-second comic
routine.
He’s backed by a strong and energetic company, wonderfully unlike those
wan, third-string show gangs that sometimes bring us recycled Broadway like
warmed-over meatloaf. I especially enjoyed “The Sun Has Got His Hat On,” a
zany madcap number that opens Act II and keeps the fun going that “The Lambeth
Walk” began at the end of Act I.
All in all, it’s a promising start to the Kirby’s Broadway Series. Too bad
“Me and My Girl” couldn’t have stayed in town for more than one show, for only
to savor Ken Johnson’s antics a time or two more.