Politics gets personal in terrific 'Fiorello!'
TimeLine remounts hit show

by Hedy Weiss, Theater Critic
Chicago Sun-Times

published April 21, 2008

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

'Fiorello!" is back at TimeLine Theatre, two years after the company's wildly ambitious, wholly exhilarating and downright rare revival of this Pulitzer Prize-winning 1959 Broadway musical first played to sold-out houses and found itself unable to keep pace with the demand for tickets. The production is every bit as sensational the second time around, with most of the original cast back under the award-winning direction of Nick Bowling.

But watching it, this thought came to mind: If CNN or Fox want to see their ratings zoom in the long, hot months between now and Election Day, they might well consider putting their exhausted political pundits out to pasture for a night and replace them with a two-hour prime-time showing of this Jeff Award-winning production. (Well, a girl can dream, can't she?)

So just who was Fiorello ("little flower") LaGuardia, other than that guy for whom a major New York airport was named? He was the volatile, progressive, five-foot-tall, Italian-Jewish lawyer who worked tirelessly for New York's immigrants and working poor; the man who miraculously triumphed over the corrupt Tammany Hall machine to win a Congressional seat in 1916; the supporter of U.S. entrance into World War I (an unpopular stand mitigated by his own enlistment in the air corps); and ultimately the Depression-era mayor of New York.

But the genius of this musical -- with its whip-smart book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, and its irresistible, crackerjack score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, the duo that would go on to pen "Fiddler on the Roof" -- is that it creates a perfect blend of the political and the personal.

The men here wield much of the showy power, including: the larger-than-life Fiorello (PJ Powers in full bellowing mode); his endlessly devoted law partner, Morris (lovely, understated work by Michael Kingston); his jaded local political operative, Ben Marino (Terry Hamilton at his sardonic best, who comes close to stealing the show in "Little Tin Box," with invaluable contributions from "the five hacks" played by Thomas M. Shea, Steve Best, Dan Loftus, Andy Nagraj and Joe Savino).

But it's the love lives of the three principal women who give the show its fiery heart: the silvery-voiced, cameo-faced Andrea Prestinario as Fiorello's beloved first wife, Thea; the zestily comic Maris Hudson as Dora, the girl he helps when she is working in a sweatshop, and who later returns the favor); and, best of all, Rebecca Finnegan as Marie, the invaluable assistant who spends years in a state of unrequited love.

Donica Lynn brings a big voice and plenty of sassiness to the role of Mizzi, Mayor Jimmy Walker's uptown lady. And there is neat work by Alan Schmuckler, Vance Smith, Mindy Wetzel and Sara R. Sevigny. Special applause, too, for choreographer Linda Fortunato, ace musical director Doug Peck and set designer Kevin Hagan, whose terrific tangle of tenements, balconies, dreary offices, back rooms and speakers' platforms is enough to make you want to hold a caucus.

Vote early and often for this "Fiorello!"