Broadway review: "I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road"

New York City Center Encore! began twenty years ago with a mission to revive the wonderful musicals of the past. With little to no scenery and brief rehearsal time, talented and often famous actors present 4 to 6 performances of each show. Actors hold scripts in front of them and may even blow a line or two, but the audiences don’t care. The program and some of the shows have been so well received that some shows like Gypsy, Chicago and Finian’s Rainbow, have opened on Broadway again. The City Center audiences responded so well that the presentations continue to this day. This season City Center is presenting the inaugural season of Encores! Off-Center with three Off-Broadway shows.

I’m Getting My Act and Taking It On The Road, with book and lyrics by Gretchen Cryer and music by Nancy Ford, was written in 1978 and ran for 1165 performances. The intimate musical is about Heather, a 39 year old singer who is rehearsing her new act, one that reflects her frustration with relationships and traditional roles played by men and women. She sings of strong women and the need to emancipate women from subservient roles. While the women in the audience applaud her, her manager, here played by Frederick Weller, expresses the views of the average man of that time period. The show fits neatly into the Encores format because of its intimacy; it only needed a backup band onstage. At the end, Cryer and Ford came out to take bows to tumultuous applause.

I have long been a fan of the show, having seen it years ago. The show was always meaningful to me, but I was concerned that the lead, Renee Elise Goldsberry who plays Heather and has a recurring role on television’s “The Good Wife,” wouldn’t do the music justice. I was pleasantly wrong; she was wonderful, even more impressive than Cryer, the original Heather. Goldsberry has a terrific singing voice and wonderful stage presence. She is well backed up by Christina Sajous and Jennifer Sanchez. I truly loved the performance, and so did many of the other women around me. Unfortunately, as an Encore presentation, it was limited to only a few performances, but I would gladly have returned to see it again. (I can’t say that about many shows, even many major Broadway shows.)

The show spoke to a generation of women at the beginning of the women’s liberation movement. I wonder how the younger people in the audience responded to the show, its message and the music? I wonder if they could understand the frustrations of the women of that generation. Sadly, I don’t think this show will “take to the road’ to be revived again, but at least some of us were lucky enough to see it this time.

Hopefully, Encores! will continue to produce these nostalgic shows to connect older audiences with newer and younger theater goers.