A Minister's Wife

I feel like my opinions about shows tend to be borne out by critical consensus rather often, but from time to time, I really enjoy something that ends up critically loathed (see The People in the Picture) or revile something that the critics adore (see War Horse, or better yet—don’t). As far as Lincoln Center Theater goes, I feel like I’ve been disagreeing with the critics more often than not for the past year or two. As I said, War Horse wasn’t my cup of tea, and I wasn’t overly fond of Other Desert Cities either, in spite of its wonderful performances. Last year, I adored When the Rain Stops Falling, but critics were largely dismissive. So when I say that I was very charmed by the new musical A Minister’s Wife, I feared that I was damning it to a critical lambasting. Pleasantly enough, it got a few very solid reviews. But I checked some message boards, and people on those HATED it.

The show is a musicalization of Shaw’s play Candida. Did that play call out for a musical treatment? No. Does the musical make the case that it was, in fact, necessary? Well…also no. But while it’s rather slender and slight, the show is also a confectionary delight. Light, sweet, and sure, a little flaky.

A minister’s wife comes home after a few weeks away in the company of a young poet. The minister is terribly upright. The poet is not. Played by Bobby Steggert, young Eugene Marchbanks is hopefully in love with the minister's wife Candida. Steggert is stupidly adorable and enormously convincing as a petulant young romantic. He is endlessly bratty but well-intentioned, happy to call people out on what he sees as their weaknesses, not JUST to be a bitch, but because he believes that honesty and love are sacrosanct. This involves putting the minister's assistant Prossie on the spot about her hidden feelings for her boss and ultimately convincing the minister that they should allow Candida the choice between them. Of course, neither of them ever actually bothers to mention to her that they're fighting for her love.

The five person cast is flawless. Steggert and the incredibly charming Liz Baltes as Prossie are stand-outs. Baltes I've never seen before but would love to see in more. Steggert I've seen three or four times, and I think he's now in the small group of actors that I would go out of my way to see in anything.

For a musical, this isn't so much "song" based as it is a play with music weaving in and out. The characters sing often, but the transitions into and out of song are quite fluid. There are only three musicians (seen through a scrim), but with carefully deployed notes, their impact registers fully. A plucked chord here, a moment of underscoring there, everything contributes to celebrating the lyrical qualities of much of Shaw's original language (I think--it's been awhile since I read the play).

It's a slight show--it hasn't been so thoroughly updated that it has all that much new to say about love than was said just as well by the original play. But that's hardly faint praise given the source. So while I wouldn't call it strictly necessary, it is one of the most charming things I've seen in some time.