Funny farm

The Brownbrokers' rambling Suit Case

by Bill Rodriguez

SUITCASE. With music, book and lyrics by Paul Grellong; music and orchestration by Charles Kroll. Directed by Eric Green and Nancy Johnston. At Brown University Theatre through November 23.

Theater productions that don't work as a whole sometimes are pleasantly surprising in the fine points. That's the saving grace with Suit Case, this year's annual Brownbrokers musical. Overall it's a sprawling ramble, like hitchhiking with some overly caffeinated chatterbox who begins to say interesting things but never stays focused on one topic. But there is plenty of energy and visual excitement, and once in a while a captivating moment when a character pops out crystal clear from the dream haze.

The intimacy of Leeds Theatre, rather than the usual proscenium stage for musicals at Stuart, helps us appreciate the details of Emily Jan's set design. The bric-a-brac of contemporary culture dangle in the background, like images on a pop-art collage. Most prominent on stage throughout is a crumpled jalopy with number 10 cans for headlights. It serves as a reminder of escape after it conveys three of the main characters across most of the country. They are in flight from the stresses of being proto-grown-ups in the business pressure-cooker that is Manhattan.

As Suit Case opens, Pickle (Joe Zarrow) and Mike (Noam Katz) are pals and 18-year-old corporate interns, floundering at their summer jobs. They are serving as temporary suits at a high-powered financial institution. Grad student Catherine (Katherine Powell) has had more time than they to become disillusioned, or at least disaffected, and one weekend the three end up driving through the South so that she can see her sister. (She never does get there, but that's no loss -- most motivations here are either vague or just flashed briefly, like business cards.)

Eventually, somewhere past Little Rock, a stowaway is discovered in the trunk. (How so late, or why this mode of travel, since he's carrying a suitcase full of money? Don't ask.) That's Heckleby (Taylor D. White), who's taking the cash home to his family in Odessa, Texas, to save the ol' homestead. The farm is threatened by his greedy sister, Bull Weevil, played with sinister aplomb by Rebecca White. She has plans for developing the farmland that would turn the area into a cultural circus, though we don't learn whether she's talking mall or theme park, since the desecration would be the same. (We just know that the plan is to save and exhibit things that would otherwise be thrown away, a process already accomplished on a small scale by Doc Grumbles, a wise-fool junk-collector who X-ina Nicosia keeps whimsically fresh.)

The only true innocents in all of this are Grandma (Alix L.K. Sobler), who owns the farm, and her granddaughter Aubrey (given heartfelt dimension by Miriam Silverman). Aubrey is about to marry Jonas (Rufus L. Tureen), who is in danger of turning to the Dark Side of the greed-head business Force represented by Bull Weevil.

The cast apparently was chosen for acting rather than singing ability, but in any event the songs by Paul Grellong and Charles Kroll have a pop sameness. Lyrics by Grellong tend to meander like the plot and aren't above forcing rhymes at gunpoint, as with rhyming "have faith in me" with "have faith in we." Co-direction, by Eric Green and Nancy Johnston, may have further worked against coherence. A committee of two is still a committee.

There are a couple of dance numbers brightly choreographed by Sara Ciarelli, and Jenny Ekberg's logo-intensive costumes are imaginative and fun. Suit Case is a collaborative effort in which the whole is less than the sum of its parts, but that doesn't diminish some of those parts. There are gems of talent that sparkle here, like diamonds in the rough.