“Welcome to the Club,” which opened—and closed—last week at the Music Box Theatre, might not win a prize for worst musical in a season that produced “Carrie” and “Legs Diamond,” but it would certainly be in the running. Written by Cy Coleman and E.I. Hotchner and directed by Peter Mark Schifter, “Welcome to the Club” was set in an alimony jail. It had a book (by Mr. Hotchner) so regressive and vulgar as to beggar description, inane musical numbers (staged by Patricia Birch), and an overamplified score (by Mr. Coleman) so derivative that members of the audience at the preview performance I attended were actually humming along with the overture. The lyrics, on which the authors collaborated, rhymed “unveil” with “travail,” and “menace” with “tennis.” The show wouldn’t have been worth reviewing were it not for the presence of an extraordinarily talented and versatile young actor named Scott Wentworth, who played one of four male inmates implausibly forced to share their cell with a country singer (Sally Mayes). The three other inmates were played by Avery Schreiber, Samuel E. Wright, and Scott Waara, and the men’s wives were played by Marilyn Sokol, Marcia Mitzman, Terri White, and Jodi Benson, all but the first of whom were required to prance around in costumes (designed by William Ivy Long) that grew increasingly degrading as the evening progressed. The script and the songs were remarkable only for the way they seemed to promote racial and ethnic stereotypes that one had thought lost in the mists of time: the idea that Jewish women are loud, fat, crass, and calculating, and don’t put out; the idea that black men can’t think about anything but what the Messrs. Coleman and Hotchner would probably rhyme with “wussy”; the idea that people with no particular ethnicity or racial stamp are unutterably boring (this one was perpetrated by Mr. Waara and Miss Benson as a sugary young couple).
It would be inaccurate to say that Mr. Wentworth lent the enterprise its only note of professionalism. Though Mr. Schreiber wasn’t called on to do much of anything except be a well-known personality, Miss Sokol clearly meant to be surpassingly vulgar, and was. And some of the other performers acquitted themselves with a certain competence: Bill Buell was briefly funny as a prison guard; Miss Mayes maintained her dignity despite having to utter some of the worst lines in the show; Miss Mitzman kept a straight face while singing a song that consisted entirely of clichés; Mr. Wright and Miss White managed to mask any hostility they may have felt toward roles likely to raise eyebrows over at the N.A.A.C.P.; and Mr. Waara and Miss Benson succeeded getting through the evening without throwing up. But Mr. Wentworth made the evening bearable, and a palpable sadness descended on the audience every time he went offstage. I saw Mr. Wentworth perform the role of Tranio in a production of “The Taming of the Shrew” at Stratford, Ontario, last season, and I remember thinking him just the sort of actor we need to see on the New York stage. “Welcome to the Club” wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
Mimi Kramer
The New Yorker, April 24, 1989