Randy Newman’s only musical, “Faust,” is an odd bird: It’s never been staged in New York, yet it’s spawned a couple of famous-ish songs. You may have heard Bonnie Raitt’s version of “Feels Like Home” and Linda Ronstadt’s take on “Gainesville,” both from a 1995 studio recording featuring Elton John, James Taylor and Don Henley.
Fast-forward 20 years, when the Encores! Off-Center series finally brought “Faust” to New York, in a fascinating one-night-only concert Tuesday headlined by Newman himself, supported by a sterling cast.
And now we know for sure why “Faust” never made it to Broadway: It’s completely bonkers!
In this version of the classic tale, Lucifer (Newman) and the Lord (Isaiah Johnson) are boyhood friends who took different career paths. They’ve reconvened over a bet: If a sucker is willing to sign over his soul to the Devil, “Luci” can move back to heaven.
The target is a churlish Notre Dame sophomore, Henry Faust (Tony Vincent, late of “American Idiot”), whom the Lord and his sidekick angel, Rick (Michael Cerveris), sneakily try to influence. Stuck in the middle are fellow students Margaret (Laura Osnes) and Martha (Vonda Shepard, the erstwhile voice of “Ally McBeal”).
Director Thomas Kail did his best to keep the show going, but there’s little he could do to hold the disjointed book together.
But Newman is among our greatest living songwriters, and large chunks of “Faust” rank among his finest work. His biting, satirical wit is in evidence throughout, as when the explains their common origins to his old frenemy: “Some fools in the desert with nothing else to do/So scared of the dark they didn’t know if they were coming or going/So they invented me, and they invented you.”
In many ways “Faust” is more radical than “The Book of Mormon” — its Lord is just as manipulative as the Devil, and the show has zero sentimentality for religion. When a little blond girl (Brooklyn Shuck) tells the Devil that he should be a little nicer, he sweetly cuts her off, “How long have you been dead?”
Yet Newman is a humanist rather than a mere misanthrope — just think of his deeply emotional “Toy Story” tunes, among many others — and some of the best songs in “Faust” are surprisingly direct and beautiful.
The crystal-voiced Osnes is especially good on these numbers, including “Gainesville” and the heartbreaking “Sandman’s Coming.”
By the time the Broadway Inspirational choir rocks the closing “Glory Train” in full gospel mode, there’s only one response left to this most demented of evenings: Amen!