Review: ‘They’re Playing Our Song’ hums with actors’ charms

How much you enjoy Neil Simon’s “They’re Playing Our Song” depends on how much you ultimately care whether the two comically mismatched artistic souls at the heart of the tale find happiness in their on-again-off-again romance.

Truth be told, it’s not all that easy – despite Simon’s reputation as king of the one-liners, who comes up with canned sure-fire laugh-getters every other line, such as “I tried to take a Valium, but I couldn’t unclench my teeth” or “Talking to her is like sending out laundry; you never know what’s going to come back.”

It comes down to the personal charm of performers Megan Parsley and Ray Wills to win us over, and they are mostly successful in this revival directed by Tom Frye at the Forum Theatre.

Parsley plays Sonia Walsk, a flakey free spirit who is never on time, wears hand-me-down costumes from old shows and doesn’t seem capable of either beginning or ending a relationship without a mess. Parsley has to walk a fine line between being delightfully “adorkable” and slipping into insensitive, obtuse and exasperating.

And Wills, who has a bit of an easier go, has to keep his Vernon Gersch – a somewhat conceited, uptight cynic who’s been through a string of failed engagements (he jokes that he buys rings by the gross) – witty without turning snide and mean.

The comedy is loosely based on the real-life relationship between multi-award-winning Marvin Hamlisch (“A Chorus Line,” “The Way We Were”) and award-winning lyricist Carole Bayer Sager (“Arthur’s Theme,” “That’s What Friends Are For”), whose musical collaboration in the late 1970s turned romantic for a time – between Sager’s first and second husbands (of an eventual three).

Playwright Simon said he was inspired by Hamlisch’s constant kvetching about the pair and surprised them with an impromptu script. They liked it so much they wrote a handful of songs to support it, mostly playful 1970s-flavored pop and a couple of touching ballads. All are serviceably pleasant, but only the title tune and the haunting “I Still Believe in Love” linger with you.

Wills, a Wichitan who’s had a successful Broadway career, plays Vernon with considerable charm but with a bit of a defensive edge. His character is quiet, perhaps even repressed, but Wills unleashes Vernon’s inner wild child a couple of times, to hilarious effect. His singing voice is steady and reassuring.

Parsley, a frequent performer at Crown Uptown, Mosley Street Melodrama and Cabaret Oldtown as well as the Forum, has a winsome kookiness that fits Sonia. Her singing voice opening night was beautiful when she was selling the emotion in a song, but, oddly, seemed to get lost and overpowered by the accompaniment in the quieter run-ups. Some parts of her duets with Wills also seemed to recede. Perhaps there was a sound system imbalance.

Backing the leads were two trios – Lance McDougall, Noah Montgomery and Diondre Teagle for Vernon; Tillie Ehresman, Cary Hesse and Stacy McCorkle for Sonia – acting as mini-Greek choruses to harmonize and vent the characters’ inner thoughts as well as provide back-up dance moves. They seemed underused, considering the potential.

Music director Steve Rue kept a lively, bouncy beat with his five-member combo. Ben Juhnke’s colorful and versatile one-piece set, which relied on changes of furniture and props for various scenes, has a Busby Berkeley art deco quality with stylized keyboards outlining a proscenium filled with the New York skyline. And Kathryn Page Hauptman’s costumes were a delightful eyeful to suit Sonia’s theater-inspired tastes, from “Annie Hall” to “The Cherry Orchard” to sort of a sexy Little Red Riding Hood.

This story was originally published September 28, 2014 at 5:58 PM with the headline "Review: ‘They’re Playing Our Song’ hums with actors’ charms."