The Little Egypt-ian Musical That Couldn't and the Straight Plan That Can

Little Egypt
The Acorn Theatre

NYMF is a musical theatre festival, correct?
So what is a straight play doing in the festival?
It's not so much a straight play as it is a straight play with music in it. What show am I talking about, I know you're asking yourself. The show is Little Egypt, playing at the Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row.
Little Egypt is the point in the American Midwest where three rivers come together - much like the real Egypt, funny, right - and is the setting for the musical. The show follows the lives of three women, a returning college grad, and her mother and sister, as the come to terms with themselves and each other. So what we have here is a dining room drama, only thing is, there are toe tapping, lyrically slapstick musical comedy songs intermixed. The show is populated by some wonderfully talented people, the book was written by the wonderfully talented Lynn Siefert, the music by the talented Gregg Lee Henry, but for some reason it doesn't work.
First of all the music seems forced. The songs don't come out of the situations surrounding them, they come out of a need to make this a musical, or at least that's what I was getting. The songs slow down the momentum of the show, while by themselves they are truly funny and heart warming, but in the context of the "book" musical they are completely out of place. It's almost as if Ms Seifert called on Mr Henry, so that they could throw something together to get this bad boy on it's feet at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. And, kiddo, it hurt them, as was seen by the vastly empty house, as well as the three or four people that left at intermission. Here's my theatre on the reasoning behind these sudden departures.
The show was going along smoothly, then in comes a musical number, okay, it was alright, maybe they get better. More great story follows, then we are retched, as if by Brecht or Veil, out of the reality of the show and into unreality of a musical number by an out of work pariah in an Illinois shopping mall spouting that "Nobody's Immune". Hold the phone, what happened to the development of the story and these slightly off beat characters. This modus operandi continues on through the act, and we are left at intermission with a very abrupt ballad, pretty, but forcibly odd.
Come back from intermission into act two, minus the four people I saw leaving, and the same system is in affect. What the show needs, and what could have kept those people on their seats, was a lot less singing and dancing, and more script. I know I keep repeating myself, but it bares it, I believe.
Let's take a look at the actors. A cast of characters as uncouth and quirky as the ones assembled by Ms Siefert, need no help coming to life, but when you take a group of talented personalities and give them this script, character drawn hilarity ensues. From foible to foible we follow the lives of Celeste, odd ball college grad, Faye, her drunken sexed up mother, and Bernadette, her searching for Mr Right through a lot of Mr Wrongs sister. The thing is we care about these women, we want them to come out on top, until the start in with the singing and dancing, and all of a sudden the walls of reality come down around us.
It is a tricky thing to mix the music and the book, and sometimes the story lends itself to that way of presentation, but Little Egypt, pulls and bucks like a newly leashed trained dog. It fights the congruence of the two art forms, and the best thing that can be done for it, is to let one go. My advice let the music go, stick with what really works.
But bravo to the creative team for bringing this slice of mid west life to the New York stage, and for sticking with it.