She Loves Me follows Georg and Amalia, two parfumerie clerks who aren't quite the best of friends. Constantly bumping heads while on the job, the sparring coworkers can't seem to find common ground. But little do they know, the anonymous romantic pen pals they have both been falling for happen to be each other! Will love continue to blossom once their identities are finally revealed?
In celebration of Roundabout Theatre Company's 50th anniversary, She Loves Me returns to Broadway for the first time since it triumphantly launched Roundabout's musical theatre initiative over 20 years ago. This heartwarming musical comedy features a book by Tony Award winner Joe Masteroff (Cabaret), music by Tony Award winner Jerry Bock (Fiddler on the Roof) and lyrics by Pulitzer Prize and Tony winner Sheldon Harnick (Fiorello!). Six-time Tony Award nominee Scott Ellis (Roundabout's Harvey, The Mystery of Edwin Drood) directs.
Yes, much of the show is as sugary and sweet as Amalia's late-in-the-show dessert, but evident also are the pain and heartbreak of infidelity, unemployment, being jerked around by a loved one and getting fired from your job. David Rockwell's magnificent and ever-changing set design takes its cue from the book's pivotal object, a musical cigarette box being sold at a Budapest parfumerie in 1934...Levi and Benanti connect through their characters' mutual underlying loneliness. They're as charming as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, those 'You've Got Mail' stars, and they can also sing. Equally important, they never indulge in the usual musical-comedy tricks that attract Tony attention. Ellis wisely hands all that kind of Broadway shtick to the show's ill-matched secondary couple, played by the warring Jane Krakowski and Gavin Creel.
When a production has enough outstanding elements working in its favor -- as the Roundabout's revival of She Loves Me starring Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi certainly does -- your mind can fill in the rest, and more. Benanti, with her thrilling voice and zany self-deprecation, is perfect casting for Amalia Balash...Their lyrics, by Sheldon Harnick, marry gentle wit to character development with the highest technical polish; his rhymes get laughs not because they're tricky but because they're so apt...These nearly prose observations miraculously sit on music, by Jerry Bock, that maintains their contours while flowering into arias of enormous beauty, especially for Amalia, who has a heavy stack of them to sell. This is where Benanti's gifts become crucial. She is, no surprise, a joy to listen to -- even when, as last night, recovering from bronchitis. But she brings to the job of making beautiful sounds the natural comic's instinct of opening herself to heartbreak.
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