Most musical revues come across as a scattershot collection of songs. But “Closer Than Ever,” now receiving a sterling revival by the York Theatre Company, contains plenty of story lines — two dozen, to be exact.
Each of the 24 numbers in David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr.’s show, which enjoyed its first off-Broadway production in 1989 but has rarely been performed since, seems more like a concise one-act play.
Dealing as it does with themes of loss, love and dreams both fulfilled and unrequited, it’s like a musical manual for the middle-aged.
The tone ranges from comic to bittersweet to downright tragic, but warmth and wisdom resonate throughout. If you can’t find something to relate to here, you simply haven’t lived or loved.
A first-rate quartet of Broadway pros fully inhabits the songs. The perky Jenn Colella (“High Fidelity”) turns “Miss Byrd,” about a seemingly strait-laced office worker with a secret life, into a fun, erotic romp. Christiane Noll sings “Patterns,” a by-now familiar cabaret staple, with a moving world-weariness. The stalwart George Dvorsky is deeply moving in “If I Sing,” a son’s tribute to the musician father who mentored him. And the engaging Sal Viviano delivers “One of the Good Guys,” in which a married man ruefully recalls missed romantic opportunities as a touching seriocomic lament.
The performers engage with each other beautifully in such numbers as “She Loves Me Not,” depicting a roundelay of unrequited love complicated by sexual persuasion, and “Another Wedding Song,” in which a couple embarking on their second marriage are sure they’ve got it right this time around.
The set — featuring a half-dozen doors surrounded by cloud-filled backdrops — wittily reflects the terrific opening number, “Doors,” about the fateful choices we make:
“Doorways are good
they can be enlightening
Doorways can change you
which isn’t frightening
So tell me why my stomach is tightening
Looking at another door.”
Fluidly staged by Maltby and featuring expert musical accompaniment on piano and bass, “Closer Than Ever” has more substance than most book musicals. Let’s hope the York brings back the same team’s wonderful 1983 musical, “Baby.”