No show was more eagerly anticipated this season than Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown. Based on the popular Pedro Almodovar film, it boasts a cast of Broadway luminaries. Maybe this is a case of too much hype leading to too much disappointment. Maybe it’s got more in common with Zenyatta finishing second than with a real flop. Because it’s not awful; it just doesn’t work.

The theme is simple, universal, and cynical: Love’s a bitch. The music, by David Yazbek, is certainly serviceable, and includes one really lovely song, “Lie To Me.” Catherine Zuber’s costumes are great fun, and totally appropriate to the year, 1987. Give me a purple and teal set, and designer Michael Yeargan, I will follow you anywhere.

But here’s the elephant in the green room. The production never gels, and even through the best efforts of accomplished director Bartlett Sher, it seem like a bunch of disparate characters in separate little vignettes, hastily stitched together to create a pretty but sloppy crazy quilt of a show.

It starts out well, with a blond bewigged Danny Burstein rolling onstage in a skeleton of a taxi, dressed in a bright yellow jacket, and singing his heart out. He belts out the opening number, “Madrid,” dancers and characters weave and bounce across the stage, and our hopes are high. Burstein is a performer who carries an inner light which he easily projects onto every scene he’s in. Unfortunately, as soon as he leaves the stage, the light dims.

Sherie Rene Scott is a wonderful performer with a knockout voice. As the actress Pepa, who is discarded by her lover via voicemail, she just seems to be in a different play. There is nothing even vaguely Spanish about her, and her heartbreak isn’t dramatic, dark, and desperate, just gloomy.

It’s easy to see why any woman would be driven to the point of desperation over the thought of losing Ivan. This rogue has the good fortune to be played by Brian Stokes Mitchell, one of the most handsome, dapper, and OK, just plain sexy men to ever trod the Broadway boards. Add to all this a voice to make strong women swoon and weak men crumble, you have an irresistible dynamo whose talents have been much better used elsewhere in the past.

I didn’t know what to expect from Justin Guarini, an American Idol runner-up whose dubious claim to fame was a truly awful movie, From Justin To Kelly, with AI winner Kelly Clarkson. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he has a fine voice, and as the reticent son with the loose fitting suit and big glasses, he brings Carlos to life in what could have been a totally lackluster part.

The biggest disappointment of the evening for me is that Superstar Diva Patti LuPone seems to be doing a parody of herself. Dressed from head to toe in leopard, and sporting huge movie star sunglasses, as Lucia, recently released from a long stay in the “rest home,” she should be stealing this show instead of making us wince. Why on Earth is she not given the opportunity to claim stage with a big show stopping number in her first scene, instead of a mediocre disjointed fragment? LuPone as a nut case should be maniacal and dangerous, not goofy.

The performer who comes off the best is Laura Benanti (left) as Candela. She is so ditsy and clueless, she perfectly sets up the laugh when she’s described as “the smartest model I know.” Benanti seems to be always in motion. She’s beautiful, she can sing up a storm, and she’s got plenty of Velcro on stage. The show picks up every time she makes an entrance.

This production reminds me of the old cut “If only they’d made that lovely fabric into a dress.” If only they’d taken all this talent and made a show that works.

Photo credit: Paul Kolnik

Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th Street
Through January 23, 2011

Michall Jeffers is an accomplished Cultural Journalist. She writes extensively, both in print and online. Her eponymous cable TV show is syndicated throughout the tri-state area, and features celebrity interviews, reviews, and commentary. She is a voting member of Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, American Theatre Critics Association, International Association of Theatre Critics Association. www.michalljeffers.com