IN an $8.5 million musical teeming with leggy dancers, modern choreography and smart design, it’s Billy Joel’s music that shines as the brightest star of “Movin’ Out.”
This is a production that acknowledges the music so powerfully that there is a live, 10-piece band on a floating platform above the stage.
It’s as if the rock orchestra were Greek gods guiding the lives of the foolish mortals who live in Billy Joel’s music.
That isn’t so far-fetched a notion: Since there’s no dialogue, every comic or dramatic interchange is gleaned from Joel’s song lyrics as rendered by ace pianist and vocalist Michael Cavanaugh. (Wade Preston supplies the piano and lead vocals at two matinees.)
While he often captures Joel’s phrasing and tone, Cavanaugh just as often departs far enough to be his own man.
That was clearest on the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which tracks the course of the second half of the 20th century. In the show, that tune is set to a Vietnam jungle fight. Here, Cavanaugh and company take their biggest liberties – and succeed in projecting the chaos, fear and strength woven into the tapestry of war.
Other highlights include the drugged-out “Captain Jack” in the second act and the first act’s dark-grave version of “The Stranger.”
Watching director Twyla Tharp interpret Joel’s songs is like watching a favorite book turned into a movie. Your imagination has had 20 years to picture, say, Brenda and Eddie in “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” This makes the production slightly jarring at first, but as the musical progresses, Tharp’s visions help frame the plot and make characters like Eddie likable.
Whatever flaws “Movin’ Out” may have as dance or theater, there’s no faulting the music.