VANITY WITHOUT SUBSTANCE

Hayley Podschun, Jade Jones, and Amy Keum in Vanities-The Musical (Carol Rosegg)

Do you want to spend two hours watching a show about nothing? No, I'm not talking about binging the fourth season of Seinfeld. I’m talking about watching the Vanities, a musical written by Jack Heifner (which first premiered January 15, 1976), now produced by the Off-Broadway York Theatre.

If you do have a special fetish for plot lines that go nowhere, then it may be perfect for you. Vanities tells the story of three cheerleaders in 1960’s America who spend the majority of their time gossiping about boyfriends, planning for homecoming, and raving about being ‘noble’ sorority girls. And that's pretty much it. Every scene, showing the girls getting progressively older, recycles that tired and overused trope of shallow school girls deciding between a husband and a career, only to mature and realize that they can be strong independent women. Wow, no way! It fails to offer any meaningful commentary on the lives of young women navigating a confusing world with an array of real challenges. After an endless exposition stuffed with meaningless minutiae, the audience is left waiting breathlessly for interesting conflict to emerge, new characters to appear, or for a set change to finally take place. Save your breath.

To add insult to injury, the nonexistent plot is complimented by a static stage design reminiscent of a surgeon's wet dream: antiseptic white walls filled with alabaster white furniture. Is this lack of color an attempt to make some profound conceptual statement? I’ll leave that to the dramaturgs. What’s certain is that a colorless design makes little narrative sense considering the story takes place in the bedroom of teenage girls. As the audience struggles to make sense of the scenery, mannequins roll in and out with new outfits each time to demonstrate the passing of time. How exciting.

(Carol Rosegg)

The score by David Kirshenbaum is described by York as, “infectious…playfully echoing the genres of music from the three decades contained within the play.” Unfortunately, the only thing that the score is infected by is a lack of variation: virtually every song fits the typical pop rock mold. This pop rock pathology is exacerbated by bad vocal sound quality and a band that drowns out the singing (following a strange trend of unreasonably loud musicals). Granted, the actual singing of the actresses is sweet and well-developed. It is clear that they are talented vocalists. But excuse me, whose brilliant idea was it to place the band in a remote location, only to be revealed at the final curtain? Without that reveal, it would have been unclear that a live band is playing at all! Showing the musicians throughout the course of the musical was a missed opportunity to provide some much needed respite for an inevitably bored audience.

York Theatre’s Vanities is a forgettable and mediocre production that offers little in the way of entertainment or substance. Its tired tropes and lackluster execution make it a prime example of everything that is wrong with modern-day musical theater. You will be sitting at the edge of your seat waiting for conflict to emerge, only to be woefully disappointed. Save your money and skip this one.