The silhouetted cut-outs of louche businessmen and the women who like louche businessmen are projected on a large screen, greeting us like opening credits as we take our seats for Promises, Promises. The television series Mad Men is obviously being invoked at San Francisco Playhouse, where the 1968 musical is having a rare revival in a production that hits its best moments when it tries least at being a splashy evocation of a big musical.
Put Jeffrey Brian Adams, as how-not-to-succeed businessman Chuck Baxter, alone on stage exuberantly delivering one of the brash Burt Bacharach-Hal David songs, and we are in a good place. Or put Adams, now in a state of romantic dejection, in a sad saloon with a deviously reluctant floozy, deliciously played by Corinne Proctor, and the show again hits its stride. But bring on the dancers for a production number choreographed by Kimberly Richards, and it can feel like we're at a regional trade show as a new car is being introduced �" more Rambler than Cadillac.
There is good news-bad news all along the way. The six-piece orchestra led by Kevin Roland creates a sound that comes surprisingly close to the original orchestrations that introduced studio-quality sound to Broadway. Where the news is unexpectedly disappointing is in the awkward and mismatched scenic design, unexpected because Artistic Director Bill English's sets are usually highlights of any SF Playhouse production. Projections on the large screens flanking the stage can be fun when suggesting an elevator's ascent and descent, but are often a confusion of period styles which occasionally give way to drab set-pieces that must be cumbersomely maneuvered on and off in English's staging. Slick it is not.
Librettist Neil Simon took liberties as he adapted Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's sardonic screenplay from the 1960 movie The Apartment, but the snappily clever dialogue that has defined Simon's career is tempered since the story still deals with some pretty crummy behavior, even from our hero, at a company where executives largely see female employees as quasi-call girls. Chuck Baxter, Adams' character, is more nebbish than Lothario, and doesn't directly partake in the spoils of superiors. But he starts climbing the corporate ladder by lending out his apartment for his colleagues' trysts. Adams still manages to hold our sympathy in self-effacing confessionals delivered directly to the audience.
Simon gets to display his familiar funny side in several scenes with Baxter's sardonic neighbor, an elderly physician, who cracks wise in a comically shrewd performance from Ray Reinhardt. The good doctor marvels at his neighbor's sexual exploits, mistakenly thinking the sounds of ecstasy are emanating from Baxter and his conquests, rather than the parade of adultery that usually finds Baxter waiting it out on the front stoop.
Baxter does have a crush on one of his officemates, but she has been more intimately involved with his apartment than with him. Fran Kubelik, sensitively played by Monique Hafen, is the plaything of the married big boss (a portentous Johnny Moreno) who has his own designated nights at Baxter's apartment. Chuck and Fran finally connect, first by declaring, in song, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," before promptly doing just that. This Promises, Promises doesn't quite deliver on its title, but it still has possibilities, possibilities.
Promises, Promises will run through Jan. 10 at San Francisco Playhouse. Tickets are $20-$120. Call 677-9596 or go to www.sfplayhouse.org.