‘City of Angels’ @ Upright Theatre Company
—Jan Farrington
Cy Coleman’s 1989 musical City of Angels—running at Upright Theatre Company—is a delightful dig at so many movie and musical tropes that it’s hard to keep up with them all: the hard-boiled Bogart-style detectives, lovelorn secretaries, street thugs, wannabee starlets, society dames, vengeful cops, ruthless movie moguls and (lowest on the Hollywood totem pole), the beaten-down writers—bums spewing nothing but “Words, words, words!” according to an impatient, cut-to-the-chase studio head.
The show is brim-full of composer Cy Coleman’s eclectic tunes; he knew every American song style there was, from early days with his own bands in ‘30s nightclubs and jazz/blues/scat/swing hot spots. He wrote Broadway hits for musicals in the 1940s and ‘50s, and in the 1960s partnered with lyricist Dorothy Fields (Sweet Charity was their biggest hit), who had family roots in vaudeville. Her own career began in the 1920s, and included some of Fred Astaire’s best movie numbers.
For City of Angels, Coleman teamed with lyricist David Zippel and comedy writer Larry Gelbart of M*A*S*H fame—and this 1989 show was a huge hit.
City is a good pick for director Natalie Burkhardt, music director Devon Harper, and the Upright company, which has a knack for collecting strong singers and making the most of them—and for using every bit of the smallish theater space to keep things moving. In this show, there’s a fictional plot (the movie detective story) and the “real” story about novelist-turned-screenwriter Stine (Maxwell Skaggs) and his battles with the backstabbing, writers-come-last Hollywood studio system.
Stine has a bullying boss (Tim Bass plays Buddy Fidler), a wife (Samantha Infante) feeling plenty ignored, and a story to save, if he can. Every day he spends hours rewriting, cutting, fixing the scenes Buddy doesn’t buy—and feeling jealous of his own fictrional creation, handsome smoothie Stone (Joshua Wilson), a private eye who keeps his cool, solves the mysteries, and gets the girls.
Cast members play characters in Stine’s real life in Hollywood, plus others in the movie—so there’s a fair amount of fun in trying to remember who’s who at the moment. (Is Bass a dying tycoon on a gurney or—flipping himself over—a mogul getting a massage?) Robbie Fernandez plays the smart and slightly smitten Girl Friday (Donna in one world, Oolie in the other) who’s a helpful sidekick (for Stine and Stone) in both worlds—and has the torch song to prove her devotion. Chelsea Schmidt and Jacy Schoening play a pair of sexy, troublesome ladies in the movie (better roles than they get in the “real” Hollywood scenes), with Adrian Villa as a Stone-hating police detective.
A ridiculously solemn film noir voice-over (not credited) tries to convince us that this goofy stuff is highly dramatic—and stagey bits of movie “business” add fun and energy. When Stine has to change a scene that’s just been performed onstage, the characters rewind themselves—physically rolling the action back to the start, and doing it again with Buddy’s “fixes.”
A close-harmonizing quartet called the Angel City Four lands in all corners of the theater and creates plenty of period atmosphere, and sweet-voiced Jaquailyn Martin plays hot vocalist Jimmy Powers, who chimes in with the quartet and the ensemble. Keep your head on a swivel for City of Angels: there’s a lot going on every minute!
WHEN: August 22 -September 21, 2025
WHERE: 2501 N. Main Street, Euless TX
WEB: uprighttheatre.org
