The songs—about 60% of the score’s music, I figured, some in complete or near-complete form and others in fragments—were run straight through in sequence, from Ooh! My Feet! to a sort of overlapping medley/reprise at the close of the 65-or-so-minute intermissionless evening—a sort of endless recursion of the segue. This was made possible by the arrangements, which (if we grant the premise) were devised and played at a high level of professional skill, including good vocal/instrumental balances. Since the songs were completely divorced from any of the original’s context—from plot and situation, from character, and, obviously, from vocal type—the performers could not be said to be acting. (They went through their movements, but the movements were abstract; they did not represent even so much as the acting component of a danced story.) Acting is just what the word says it is—taking action. And to have any meaning, the action must be toward some goal (an “objective,” actors would say), which implies that it’s a step taken in a story, an aspiration toward a future, grounded in a personal past, or history. Without plot or character, past or future, situation or environment, what’s left? Feelings. But only the feelings of the performers themselves, a total emotional self-involvement, being expressed in a present with a very close horizon, a wailing in a desolate space. Plus, I suppose, at least the theoretical potential of a display of whatever sorts of virtuosity the performers might lay claim to. Inasmuch as the cooing and braying parched and flattened out nearly all the expressive range of the voices, no emotional specificity of even this feelings-for-feelings’-sake sort was possible, only the plea of a generalized Emotion. At times, the Emotion was given the appearance of extreme intensity: the face scrunched up into an alarming rictus, as if Tone-Feeling were to be extruded from the forehead and eye sockets, and then a predictably constricted sound would emerge. Anguish? Rage? A bathroom emergency? Take your choice. As for the virtuosity (there were a couple of attempts), it served only to render the song being nominally sung unrecognizable.

I see no value in critiquing the individual performances. That would make sense only if one granted the initial premise—which, as you may have gathered, I do not. There was one exception, though. That was April Matthis, who in addition to other duties sang Joey and Fresno Beauties. (She was not, by the way, credited with either in the song list inserted into the wretched little leaflet that substituted for a printed program, whereon these songs were credited to “All.”) ^(I)Alone of these performers, she dedicated herself to the actual content of her songs, made contact with that, and appeared to sing the songs for us, and not exclusively for herself. She rendered Joey very softly, in an attractive mike soprano with just enough vibrato to enliven the tone, and took Fresno Beauties with an easy, nicely pointed swing. Nothing to do with the timbres and energies of the originals, of course, but she found her own way into these two ear-catching numbers, and in the process did the non-binary trope no favors; both interpretations, but especially Joey, could be said to be the proof of the masculine through its opposite. These were also the numbers where I thought the arrangements made their best effects (and the ones closest to the Loesser/Don Walker originals), with chromatic wisps and swirls, pianissimo, for Joey and a fizzy, trumpet-led Mexicali feel for Fresno Beauties.