Bang! Zoom! 'Honeymooners' - inspired comedy opens next week

YOU MAY be aware that a musical stage version of "The Honeymooners" is headed to Broadway. But long before that production sees the light of day, Philly will welcome the world premiere of its own " 'Mooners"-based play.

1812 Productions raises the curtain Thursday on "To The Moon," which is billed as "a contemporary comedy inspired by the life and work of Jackie Gleason." The piece, penned by local comedy doyenne Jen Childs, involves an actor - played by Childs' hubby, Barrymore winner Scott Greer - who decides to model his career after that of Gleason, who died in 1987. But while Gleason's legacy as a comic, actor, composer and show-biz mogul is all over "To The Moon," it is definitely not a biographical program.

"To make it clear, while it's inspired by 'The Honeymooners,' it's not about 'The Honeymooners,' " said Childs, herself a Barrymore honoree. "It's a contemporary comedy. It's sort of our world, but [with] 'The Honeymooners' values. It's about an actor who is obsessed with Jackie Gleason and looks at him and says, 'That's a guy who had the kind of career that I want.'

"We've been saying he's a Ralph Kramden type who dreams of being a Jackie Gleason type," she added, referring to Gleason's signature character, a quick-tempered but big-hearted Brooklyn bus driver whose good intentions usually wind up getting him in trouble.

"We follow him as he tries to pattern his life after Jackie Gleason's, and runs into all kinds of comic 'Honeymooners'-esque adventures with his best friend, who is also an actor."

Of course, admitted Childs, the best-friend character is based on Ralph's bosom buddy and loyal sidekick, sewer worker Ed Norton (indelibly played on TV by the late Art Carney).

Nonetheless, Childs emphasized that "To The Moon" contains all original dialogue, and has nothing cribbed from the iconic series.

"To The Moon" took shape after Childs was approached by an 1812 Productions subscriber, Rabbi Gregory Marx, of Congregation Beth Or in Maple Glen, Montgomery County. Marx's father, Marvin, was one of six writers responsible for what is known to fans of the show as "the classic 39 [episodes]," which aired on CBS between October 1955 and September 1956. Among the scripts that the elder Marx co-wrote was "Better Living Through TV," wherein Ralph and Norton do a live television commercial for the "Handy Housewife Helper" kitchen implement.

"Looking through this archive of 1950s and 1960s writing - not just for Gleason but for a host of other comedians - it was just an astonishing collection," said Childs. "I spent a lot of time thinking . . . what story do I want to tell? I knew I didn't want to do just a biography of Gleason. That's been done and [it belongs] on TV. But what story . . . can be told in the theater?

"That idea of idol worship and iconography was intriguing to me."

But ultimately, she reasoned, at the heart of "The Honeymooners" - and her play - are some very basic human elements.

"At the end of the day," she offered, "what 'The Honeymooners' was about in many ways was loyalty and love, both in friendship and in marriage. There's something sweet and timeless in that."

It's sad that

Jonathan Larson

passed away 10 days short of his 36th birthday. Who knows how many more musicals about self-absorbed young New Yorkers he would have written had he not died of an aortic dissection (tear) in early 1996?

Musical-theater fans are certainly familiar with one he created: "Rent," his update of Puccini's "La Boehme," which stormed Broadway shortly after Larson's death and continues to be box office gold.

But it turns out that he wrote another one, which pre-dated "Rent," a semi-autobiographical tale of his days as a struggling composer.

Titled "tick, tick . . . BOOM!" Larson performed it as a one-man piece. After he died, it was transformed by David Auburn into the musical that runs through April 25 at Hammonton's Eagle Theatre.

There is plenty to like about the Eagle's presentation, beginning with the three actors who comprise the main cast (the members of the onstage rock band are pressed into service at one point). Sal Pavia is excellent as the Larson avatar, Jon - an almost-30, unproduced composer despairing of his show-business future. He is everything the role demands: boyish, energetic, blessed with solid comedic timing and, by turns, witty and dark. His smooth and supple tenor voice easily carries Larson's pop-steeped tunes.

Tara Novie and Tim Rinehart are equally convincing as, respectively, the woman in Jon's life and his best friend, a one-time aspiring actor who has become an AIDS-infected Wall Street yuppie. The two also skillfully handle a variety of other, secondary roles.

And Ed Corsi's direction makes the most of his actors and Chris Miller's sparse, yet functional set.

Instead, it is Larson who is solely responsible for all of the show's failures. His score is, not surprisingly, proto-"Rent" - rock-based and filled with above-average lyrics and music (although the latter is a mite generic). It sometimes impresses (as with the clever "Therapy," a many-a-truth-is-said-in-jest piece about interpersonal communication), but generally fails to stick to the ribs.

But most of all, it is the show's plot and central character that ultimately undermine it. Despite his (self-imposed) reduced circumstances, Jon is obviously a child of white, middle-class privilege. And 95 minutes' worth of what amounts to woe-is-me self-pity is just not worth the effort from either the company or audience.