By Robert Croan
The Symphony of the Americas’ final subscription concert of the 2024-25 season was a program called “Broadway Showstoppers: The Leading Men,” [seen May 11 at Broward Center’s Amaturo Theater] featuring four male singers who have performed leading or supporting roles on Broadway and elsewhere.
It was the end of Luke Frazier’s tenure as the orchestra’s principal pops conductor: the West Virginia native will return in September as SOTA’s artistic and music director, replacing previous music director Pablo Mielgo, who will assume that title next season with Florida Grand Opera.
Judging from his work on this occasion, Frazier is a technically adept conductor with a genial personality, capable of getting excellent sound from his players while simultaneously charming the audience. Twice, during the performance, the conductor included in his between-the-numbers commentaries, an elicitation of applause for the orchestra players — who, indeed, from the tuneful mélange listed as “Leading Men Overture,” played consistently well. The vocal soloists varied in quality from song to song, but were never less than stylish and thoroughly professional.
Frazier also made a point that every musical arrangement on this program was new and written specially for the occasion. These arrangements, in the event, were a double-edged sword. Each number was said to honor a particular interpreter (not necessarily the original performer), so many were not in the style of the original. Nothing wrong with that, if the rearrangement showcases a particular strength of an individual singer, or brings out a new aspect of the song’s message. That was seldom the case.
As belted out by Nic Rouleau, who was Elder Price in Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone’s The Book of Mormon, the opening “Parade Medley” was a perfunctory rehashing of “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” hardly evoking the iconic Streisand, and doing the present interpreter no favors by forcing his sound into an unpleasant harshness. Rouleau more than redeemed himself, however, on the second half, with a splendid rendition of “Corner of the Sky.”
This opening number from Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin is a veritable opera aria, demanding an instant map-out of character and situation in the body of the song, and a climactic high C that many portrayers of the title character fake with a wimpy falsetto whine. Rouleau expressed the sentiments cogently, and nailed the ending with a full-voiced sustained high note that rang true and lingered in the ear. Returning for the last solo piece, “Go the Distance” (from Alan Menken’s score for Disney’s Hercules), he received the afternoon’s biggest ovation. For these ears that song was impressive, in a loud and brash way, and also, well, pretty hokey.
Jacob Gutierrez, best-known in the title part of Aladdin on Broadway, was vocally resonant and brimming with leading man good looks. In an odd, jazzed-up arrangement of “On the Street Where You Live” (from Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s My Fair Lady) — ostensibly inspired by Kay Starr — the familiar tunes were hardly recognizable. But like Rouleau, Gutierrez came into his own later on, highly personal and moving in an unfamiliar gem from Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, “If I Didn’t Believe in You.” This is a dark, thought-provoking piece about a relationship that’s not likely to last, to which this singer lent an estimable amalgam of gravitas and personal charisma. The end result carried a punch that was lacking in much of the show’s generally homogenized emotional content.
The affable and communicative Adam Hyndman has also performed in Broadway’s current Aladdin (though not in the lead role). He was the most consistent and polished among the four soloists: boyishly appealing in “You Gotta Have Heart” ( from Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’s Damn Yankees), authoritative in closing the first half with an inexplicable medley of Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do,” (from Music Box Revue) associated with Bea Arthur, and a Barbara Cook specialty, “Time Heals Everything” (from Jerry Herman’s Mack and Mabel). He got better with each number, culminating with a complex, reflective delivery of “You Will Be Found” (from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Dear Evan Hansen).
The fourth soloist, Sean Bell, has to his credit the lead character in the Barry Manilow-scored Harmony: A New Musical. His forte here was in fast-moving patter songs: “Ya’ Got Trouble” (from Meredith Willson’s The Music Man) on the first half, and a persuasive (and lucid) incarnation of “Everybody Says Don’t” (a little-known Stephen Sondheim gem from Anyone Can Whistle) on the second, evoked the notion of this artist as a potential Gilbert and Sullivan buffo. He showed passable vocal chops in the ballad, “I Won’t Send Roses” (Mack and Mabel), but his real calling seemed to be on the comic side.
Throughout, the highly touted arrangements were more liability than asset, and not tailored to show off the best qualities of these promising and talented soloists. Notably in the finale, a shared vocalization of Mitch Leigh’s “The Impossible Dream,” from Man of La Mancha (might this be Broadway’s answer to The Three Tenors sharing “Nessun dorma”?), the gimmick just didn’t come off.