Ticky Ticky Tock... Please Make it Stop! by Matthew Murray

Chocolate. Opium. Pancakes. Name the most personally destructive substance you can think of, the one thing that most completely paralyzes your self-control and sends you into sputtering paroxysms of frantic gibbering the words, "Just... once... more." Now imagine it in musical form, sung seven times in rapid succession, with only brief respites in between to grant you a few seconds of peace before the next caressingly torturous incarnation starts. This is the closest earthly description that can be applied to what just might be the cruelest musical theatre song of all time: "Ticky Ticky Tock."

Perhaps the most mind-frying thing about this number, the engrossingly endless finale of the 2007 Off-Broadway musical Adrift in Macao, is that it's also one of the (intentionally) stupidest songs ever written. Peter Melnick's nightclub-nudging tune is the musical equivalent of the clink-clank-clash of a slot machine paying off, while Christopher Durang's lyric all but mocks your ability to resist its undulating charms with lyrics like: "Ticky ticky tocky Bangkok / What a place and what a city / Ticky ticky tocky knock knock / Who is there and do you think I'm pretty?" I'll spare you the rest. Suffice it to say, this song, which has been eating away at New York theatre freaks' brains since early 2007, when Adrift in Macao opened at Primary Stages, is now the crowning jewel of—or the best reason to avoid—the just-released cast recording of that production.

Whether you'll find the rest of this disc as worthy of repeated listening depends a great deal on your tolerance for spoof—and your ability to fill in the dramatic blanks between the tracks. This film noir parody (for which Durang wrote the book) played riotously, if loosely, onstage, with its smoky, shot-spilling songs punctuating the soft-boiled tale of Americans tangling with a mysterious force on the mysterious streets of exotic Macao. But because so much of the show's charm in the theater depended on Durang's well-demonstrated knowledge and uprooting of the movie genre's structures, tropes, and clichés, listening to this recording gives a markedly unbalanced impression of how quirkily charming the show really was. What's left is a collection of meandering songs that, while superbly performed, can't tell the story on their own, and don't satisfy quite enough to make up for that deficit.

So there are too many one-joke numbers stretched to untenable length: "In a Foreign City" for the beautiful singer Lureena Jones (Rachel de Benedet) stranded in Macao; "Grumpy Mood," sung by the disgruntled American expatriate Mitch (Alan Campbell) to the same tune (and, in a particularly glaring act of comic desperation, borrowing a lyric); "Rick's Song," for the club owner Rick Shaw, or rather the actor (Will Swenson) playing him, who doesn't have a solo elsewhere and is dying to sing; and "Tempura's Song" and "I'm Actually Irish" for the narrow-eyed, pidgin-speaking sidekick stereotype (a full-throttle Orville Mendoza, far better than the material demands) no Asian-themed simmering stew would be without.

In the remaining numbers, however, Melnick (Richard Rodgers's "other" grandson, who's at least as deserving of reverent, production-focused attention as Adam Guettel) and Durang unleash their talents in more satisfying—and vaguely more challenging—ways. Two performance numbers, the improvisational-romantic "Pretty Moon Over Macao" for Lureena and the bump-and-grind "Mambo Malaysian" for the spiteful chanteuse Corinna she ousts (the always-hilarious Michele Ragusa), become a quodlibet of surprisingly humorous complexity. The title song, for Mitch, Lureena, and Corinna, is the kind of purposeful, rambling rouser that always sounds a lot easier to pull off than it actually is. Lureena's belty, hand-waving farewell tune "So Long" is a legitimate solo showstopper that forgoes comedy in favor of attacking the (gasp) plot head on, while "Sparks" for Mitch and Lureena is a hunk of serious piano-drenched flirtation that could hold its own as a cabaret standard. The performers are all wonderful, with de Benedet inching ahead of the others because her tight-lipped delivery and piercing comic intensity that never gives anything away early.

Whether any of these pleasures are enough to sell Adrift in Macao to the average listener who didn't see the show is another matter. And one that, as soon as you hit that last track, ceases to matter much: "Ticky Ticky Tock" exists in its own little perpetual-motion universe, and escaping its vortex isn't easy. Yet it's ultimately the perfect representation of the flawed-but-fun show and score it concludes: brilliant, inane, and maddening, both annoyingly familiar and unlike anything else you've heard in a good, long while.

Posted by Matthew Murray on Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 8:59 AM | Item Link

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	BROADWAYSTAR'S FIVE DAY FORECAST

2007-08
Broadway Season

June 28 - Old Acquaintance (AA)

July 10 - Xanadu (Hayes) [Robert Ahrens, Dan Vickery, Tara Smith/B. Swibel and Sarah Murchison/Dale Smith]

Aug 19 - Grease (Atkinson)

Oct 4 - Mauritius (Biltmore) [MTC]

Oct 11 - The Ritz (54)

Oct 18 - Pygmalion (AA)

Oct 25 - A Bronx Tale (Kerr)

Nov 1 - Cyrano de Bergerac (Rodgers)

Nov 4 - Rock 'N' Roll (Jacobs)

Nov 8 - Young Frankenstein (Hilton)

Nov 9 - Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (St. James)

Nov 10: Local One Strike Begins

Nov 28: Local One Strike Ends

Dec 2 - Cymbeline (Beaumont)

Dec 3 - The Farnsworth Invention (Music Box) [Dodger Properties with Steven Spielberg, Dan Cap Productions, Fred Zollo, Latitude Link and the Pelican Group]

Dec 4 - August: Osage County (Imperial) [Jeffrey Richards, Jean Doumanian, Steve Traxler, Jerry Frankel, Steppenwolf]

Dec 6 - The Seafarer (Booth)

Dec 9 - Is He Dead? (Lyceum)

Dec 16 - The Homecoming (Cort) [Richards, Frankel]

Jan 10 - The Little Mermaid (Lunt)

Jan 15 - The 39 Steps (AA)

Jan 17 - November (Barrymore)

Jan 24 - Come Back, Little Sheba (Biltmore)

Feb 21 - Sunday In The Park With George (54)

Feb 28 - Passing Strange (Belasco)

Mar 6 - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Broadhurst) [Stephen C. Byrd]

Mar 9 - In The Heights (Rodgers)

Mar 27 - Gypsy (St. James)

Mar 29 - Macbeth (Lyceum)

Apr 3 - South Pacific (Beaumont)

Apr 17 - A Catered Affair (Kerr) [Jujamcyn Theaters, Jordan Roth, Harvey Entertainment / Ron Fierstein, Richie Jackson and Daryl Roth]

Apr 24 - Cry Baby (Marquis)

Apr 27 - The Country Girl (Jacobs)

Apr 30 - Thurgood (Booth)

May 1 - Les Liaisons Dangereuses (AA)

May 4 - Boeing-Boeing (Longacre)

May 7 - Top Girls (Biltmore)

TBA - Godspell

2008-09
Broadway Season

Oct 16 - Billy Elliot (Imperial)

Nov 08 - Dividing the Estate (a Shubert theater)

Dec 14 - Shrek: The Musical (Broadway) [DreamWorks]

Talked About
Not Scheduled Yet

TBA - 50 Words

TBA - Addams Family (Elephant Eye)

TBA - American Buffalo

TBA - An American Vaudeville [Farrell, Perloff]

TBA - The Beard of Avon [NYTW]

TBA - Being There [Permut]

TBA - Benny & Joon [MGM]

TBA - Billy Elliot

TBA - Brave New World [Rachunow]

TBA - Breath of Life [Fox]

TBA - Busker Alley [Margot Astrachan, Robert Blume, Kristine Lewis, Jamie Fox, Joanna Kerry & Heather Duke]

TBA - Broomhilda

TBA - Bye Bye Birdie [Niko]

TBA - Camille Claudel [Wildhorn]

TBA - Camelot

TBA - Carmen [Robin DeLevita and The Firm]

TBA - Catch Me If You Can

TBA - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [Bob and Harvey Weinstein]

TBA - Cry Baby [Grazer, Gordon, McAllister, Epstein]

TBA - Designing Women [Alexis]

TBA - Don Juan DeMarco [New Line]

TBA - Dreamgirls [Creative Battery]

TBA - Duet

TBA - Equus

TBA - Ever After [Adam Epstein]

TBA - Fallen Angels (Shubert) [Kenwright]

TBA - Farragut North [Richards]

TBA - Father of the Bride

TBA - The Female Of The Species (TBA)

TBA - Fool For Love (AA) [Roundabout]

TBA - Girl Group Time Travelers

TBA - Golden Boy

TBA - Harmony [Guiles, Karslake, Smith, Fishman]

TBA - Hitchcock Blonde

TBA - The Importance Of Being Earnest

TBA - Jerry Springer: The Opera! [Thoday, McKeown]

TBA - Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train (Circle)

TBA - Josephine [Waissman]

TBA - Leap of Faith

TBA - A Little Princess [Ettinger, Dodger]

TBA - Midnight Cowboy [MGM]

TBA - The Minstrel Show - Kander and Ebb and Stroman

TBA - Moonstruck [Pittelman, Azenberg]

TBA - Mourning Becomes Electra [Haber, Boyett]

TBA - Monsoon Wedding

TBA - The Night of the Hunter

TBA - The Opposite of Sex [Namco]

TBA - Orphans

TBA - Pal Joey [Platt]

TBA - Paper Doll

TBA - The Paris Letter

TBA - The Philadelphia Story

TBA - Peter Pan

TBA - Porgy and Bess [Frankel, Viertel, Baruch, Routh, Panter, Tulchin/Bartner]

TBA - The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert

TBA - The Princess Bride

TBA - Princesses [Lane, Comley]

TBA - Poe the Musical

TBA - Rain Man [MGM]

TBA - Robin Hood

TBA - Secondhand Lions

TBA - South Pacific

TBA - Speed-the-Plow

TBA - Stalag 17

TBA - Starry Messenger

TBA - Syncopation

TBA - A Tale Of Two Cities

TBA - Torch Song Trilogy

TBA - Turn of the Century

TBA - West Side Story

TBA - The Wall [Weinstein, Mottola, Waters]

TBA - Will Rogers Follies [Cossette]

TBA - The Wiz [Dodger]

TBA - Zanna [Dalgleish]

This list is compiled from various sources. If you have corrections to the Broadway Season, please contact us.

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