Empire

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There is probably a story in the building of the Empire State Building but Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull’s confused and confusing new musical Empire is not it. In attempting to recount at least seven different plot strands, this show arriving in New York after a production in Los Angeles in 2016 has too many characters and too many problems to solve. The songs do not forward the story nor do they sound like the 1929-1931 era when most of the story takes place. In Lena Gabrielle’s orchestrations, much of the music sounds like ragtime from an earlier era.

While the Los Angeles production using another director/choreographer (Marcia Milgrom Dodge known for her Broadway revival of Ragtime) was hailed for its lavishness and use of historic photographs by the legendary Louis Hine, the New York production has a dark cluttered set designed by Walt Spangler and lit by Jamie Roderick which has too many beams and set pieces side by side without creating any atmosphere. Don’t blame the large cast of 15 (playing 31 roles) who give the show their all but can’t overcome the show’s deficiencies.

Staged by Tony Award-winning actress Cady Huffman who appears to have switched to directing, the show is hard to follow as it mixes historic characters with fictional ones and time travels from 1976 to the building of the Empire State Building in 1929-1931 and back. Most confusing is that until the last scene the structure being built is referred to as the Alfred E. Smith Building rather than the Empire State Building. We eventually find out why it was renamed but not the reason for the earlier designation.

The story begins in a Brooklyn attic in 1976 where Sylvie Lee and her daughter Lorayne (who wants to be called Rayne) are packing up to move out of the old family home. Rayne wants to be an iron worker like her grandfather Joe and her cousin Jesse, but her mother is against it as her father died helping to build the Empire State Building. Looking at a newspaper clipping takes Sylvie back to October 1929 to the party celebrating when the old Waldorf Astoria on 34^th Street is about to be torn down in order to put up the new building.

Her aunt Frances Belle Wolodsky, known as Wally, the office manager for the project and girlfriend of the fictional architect Charles Kinney, appears and takes over the narration. We also meet former Governor Alfred E. Smith who is overseeing the building and one of the two funders, John J. Raskob, financial executive of both General Motors and DuPont, who is gung-ho about the skyscraper in competition with the Chrysler Building for the title as the world’s tallest building. We next see Wally at her office at the Northeast corner of 34^th Street and Fifth Avenue where with her all-female office team she daily fights the battle for women to be taken seriously in business. On one level, the show is a feminist statement for work equality for women. We quickly learn that the Mohawk contingent from upstate New York who also worked on the Brooklyn Bridge is having trouble being accepted by the Irish and Italian workmen.

Among the stories we hear about are Charles’ fight with the funders to bring the building in on time, Irish couple Ethan and Emily O’Dowd’s fears of his getting hurt on the working site, the lack of acceptance of worker Pakulski and his Mohawk girlfriend, and socialite Mrs. Janet Arthur’s fight to get the construction shut down due to the mess it is making of what she considers her Fifth Avenue. Mayor Jimmy J. Walker insists the 102 story building be finished on May 1, 1930 to help his next campaign which means the workers must build one story a day which is both difficult and dangerous. By the end of the show several secrets have been revealed and Sylvie and Lorayne have a better understanding of their relatives’ work on the beams.

The most complicated part of the story is Sylvie’s family tree. While Wally is her aunt and unmarried she has a different last name from her brother Joe, as does their cousin Jesse, both iron workers on the site. Is Wally still alive in 1976 and known to Sylvie? We never know for certain. We also do not find out which character is Sylvie’s mother until almost the end of the show. Ex-Governor Smith seems to be in charge in name only but also answerable to Mayor Walker. The name (the Alfred E. Smith Building) seems to be a problem as New Yorkers do not see it as having anything to do with them. While the real William F. White designed the plans for the building, there is no clue as to why the fictional Charles Kinney is given credit for it here.

The repetitious song lyrics have mainly rhymes of one syllable (car/far; day/way; me/see, etc.) and sound very unsophisticated. The two clever songs, both specialty numbers, Smith’s “Al’s Moxie” and the Chanteuse’s “When to Say Whoa” are extraneous to the storyline. The Laborers’ two numbers (“Precision and Rhythm” and “We’ll Work”) evolve into two exciting dance numbers choreographed by Lorna Ventura, but in the Bean’s Speakeasy scene, circa 1930, is that the Charleston that the denizens are doing? Sylvie accompanies some of the characters in their adventures although, in fact, she would not have been born yet. With so many characters to follow, from seven laborers, to Wally and her staff of three, to the wives and girlfriends, and politicians, there is not enough time to develop any of them.

While Huffman’s direction does not help sort out the complications in the plot, she does excellent work with the actors. The cast does the best they can with underwritten roles in a plot that tries to cover too many events and too many characters. Central to the story is Kaitlyn Davidson as Frances Belle “Wally” Wolodsky who is feisty and vivacious. As the narrator/protagonist Sylvie Lee, Julia Louise Hosack (subbing for Jessica Ranville) is rather one note, angry all the time at what happened to her father, while she mainly observes the action. Paul Salvatoriello as former Governor Alfred E. Smith is entertaining in a vaudeville style performance.

In smaller roles, Alexandra Frohlinger as snobbish socialite Mrs. Janet Arthur gets her licks in. Notable among the iron workers are Joel Douglas as young, inexperienced and unworldly Billy Betts who has come all the way from Missouri and gets to try spaghetti with tomato sauce for the first time and Robbie Serrano as Mateo Menzo, the pugnacious Italian who takes every innocent remark as an insult. April Ortiz, playing three roles, is show stopping as the Chanteuse in the Bean’s Speakeasy scene. Devin Cortez is a blustery Mayor Jimmy Walker while Albert Guerzon in the fictional role of architect Charles Kinney has little to work with.

In Empire, Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull attempt to tell a very big story but are unable to bring this unwieldy tale into suitable shape. The time traveling framework is both unnecessary and obtrusive. Both the historic characters and the fictional ones are underwritten and there are too many names to keep straight. While the music is catchy, the lyrics are often too unsophisticated and repetitious to make their mark. The cluttered setting and the busy staging don’t help to tell the story. Empire is an ambitious but unsuccessful musical which is defeated by its very form.

Empire (through September 22, 2024)

New World Stages, 340 W. 50th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.telecharge.com

Running time: two hours and 40 minutes including one intermission