All Is Love

Last year I went to see an original new musical at The NY Musical Theatre Festival. The Great American Trailer Park Musical was its name and, although there were some really fine actors involved with really fine singing voices, the material pretty much (sorry to say) bit the bunny. There were 15 shows put on under the Festival banner and a fine idea it is because it provides a venue for experimentation with new material and utilizes top notch talent that only NYC can provide, especially singers and dancers.

This year there are 34 entries in the Festival and last night I went to see All Is Love, a new dance musical and, again, the talent was right up there. The plot was a total cliché, being three bright young girl-things arriving in the big city, dazzled and thrilled, assimilating into the mainstream and eventually descending into the passion of the seamy side of life (eek) and being dragged into rape, physical abuse and sexual betrayal, not necessarily in that order. There is no spoken dialogue but it sure didn’t require a course in American Sign Language to get the gist. It was about an hour long and I really liked the music (on tape) and you sure can’t fault the dancing talent, both men and women. There ain’t nothin’ like NY theater dancing anywhere else in the world and even off-off-Broadway can field the best. But, admittedly, All Is Love is a work in progress and maybe they will eventually have a real show to give to the world.