Gypsy Rose Lee, Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden walk into a house . . . This sounds like the setup for either a highbrow joke or Harvey Weinstein’s latest Oscar-bait movie, but it did happen in the early 1940s. And now this unlikely group forms the basis for the new musical “February House,” which opened last night at the Public.
Decades before MTV cooked up “The Real World,” the quartet shared a run-down house in Brooklyn Heights. It’s an irresistible premise, but unfortunately composer-lyricist Gabriel Kahane and book writer Seth Bockley had trouble moving beyond the sales pitch.
Several songs in the first act introduce the yearning characters. “All I need is a room for two/To hold a love that’s bright and new,” emotes the poet Auden (Erik Lochtefeld), younger boyfriend in tow. English composer Britten (Stanley Bahorek) and his own companion, singer Peter Pears (Ken Barnett), also hope for “nothing to hide/A life open wide.”
And then, in the second act, everybody explains why they’re moving out. Instead of a plot, “February House” lines up personalities like pearls on a string.
The show’s strongest when Auden — balancing his Christian faith and his homosexuality — and the gamine-like McCullers (Kristen Sieh) take center stage.
Fresh from writing “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” McCullers is so compelling that the show could have been just about her hesitation between the “comfort of what I know” and her yearning for strapping German refugee Erika Mann (Stephanie Hayes).
Kahane’s acoustic chamber score can be too beige, and way too polite, except where McCullers is concerned. There he achieves a kind of art-song nirvana, gorgeously rendered by Sieh, whose upper register recalls Joni Mitchell’s.
On the other hand, Kahane, Bockley and director Davis McCallum can’t do either funny or sexy — a number by Gypsy (Kacie Sheik) lacks va-va-voom.
Serving as narrator and den mother is campy George Davis (Julian Fleisher), a literary editor who supplies the housemates with “freshly baked scones and Benzedrine.” Davis knows he’s the least brilliant of them all, so he turns his life into art.
In a way, the ambitious “February House” is defeated by its raw material. Despite tackling sexual and political identity, emotional and creative turmoil, and even WWII, the show feels bloodless. It’s not easy turning art into life.