In Dream a Little Dream – playing at the Cleveland Play House through April 29 –Doherty narrates the stories of his life and his career, strolling around in front of an on-stage band, which is there to accompany him and the three singers who take the parts of the other members of the Mamas and the Papas – John Phillips, Michelle Phillips and Cass Elliot – in 16 songs. Behind them all is a huge screen, on which archival photos and films of the group and corresponding historical events and other visual elements are projected.
Written by Doherty and Canadian playwright Paul Ledoux, Dream a Little Dream is directed by Randal Myler, who has written and directed other successful shows about significant musical artists and eras, including Lost Highway: The Music and Legend of Hank Williams, It Ain’t Nothing But the Blues, and Love, Janis (about Janis Joplin). The background visual sequences were produced by Gabreal Franklin of the California-based All Planet Studios.
Doherty begins his tale with his birth in 1940 (“I was born in a tuba …”; with projected photos of baby Dennis in a tuba). He recounts his childhood in Halifax, Nova Scotia; his late-1950s folk music groups; landing in New York’s Greenwich Village in the mid-‘60s with other future folk-rock luminaries, like Roger McGuinn, Barry McGuire, David Crosby, John Sebastian and others (including the Beatles’s John Lennon and Paul McCartney, later in the story); and on into the soap-opera epic of the Mamas and the Papas.
Last summer the musical Lennon opened on Broadway. It was the story of John Lennon’s life and career, and it contained nearly 30 songs, but, because it was under the control of Yoko Ono, the production featured not one Beatles song written by Lennon and McCartney, the songs anyone would expect and want to hear in a show about Lennon. (It did include two Beatles songs that were early-‘60s R&B hits that the Beatles covered, but no one cared.) The show closed in three weeks.
Doherty has wisely chosen to feature all of the Mamas and the Papas’ biggest hits, including “California Dreamin’,” “Monday, Monday,” “Go Where You Want To Go,” “I Saw Her Again,” and others; plus a couple of songs that Cass Elliot recorded before and after she was member of the group; one post-M&P song that Doherty wrote recorded (as compared to the 28 post-Beatles Lennon songs in Lennon); and a few other songs representing different eras in Doherty’s career.
Doherty can still sing well, and he still sounds like Papa Denny. Fellow Nova Scotian Doris Mason plays keyboards in the show’s Dream Band, but more importantly, sings the parts of Mama Cass, including three solos. Elliot’s are very large shoes to fill, so to speak, and Mason (who also serves as the show’s vocal arranger) does an admirable job. A large woman – though about half the size of Elliot (well … maybe five-eighths) – Mason also possesses a big voice, but, again, not as big as Elliot’s (maybe six-eighths). That’s not to take anything away from Mason; Elliot had a powerful and unique sound and style – equally adept at rock, blues, folk and pop standards – that few could match.
On the other hand, Canadian Lisa MacIsaac sings Mama Michelle’s parts better than Mama Michelle did – and she’s holding herself back, too. One-half of the Canadian folk-pop duo Madviolet, MacIsaac can actually sing better than she does here, but she’s not required to in this show. In fact, she’s required not to. Michelle Phillips, who worked as a teen fashion model before joining the Mamas and the Papas, had a nice, light, sweet voice, and looked incredible. It doesn’t hurt this production that MacIsaac is also an attractive young woman, who, in fact, bears some resemblance to Michelle. MacIsaac – who happens to be the sister of Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac and the cousin of another great fiddler, Natalie MacMasters – also plays violin in the Dream Band.
Canadian Graham Shaw sings the John Phillips parts and plays 6- and 12-string guitars, banjo, accordion and keyboards in the band. The group is rounded out by the show’s musical director, Canadian David Smyth, who plays acoustic and electric guitars; Clevelander Bill Ransom on drums; and part-time Clevelander Kip Reed on bass.
While this show tells the story of Doherty’s career, it’s also his tribute to Cass Elliot. In a recent interview, Doherty told me, “What I really try to do is show how important Cass was in the overall scheme of things, because she wasn’t given her props – because she was dead and couldn’t speak for herself. Everyone else was blowing their own horn and writing books and doing this and that, but nobody ever spoke about how important she was, how she put the group together and kept it together, in spite of everything.”
Doherty succeeds in doing that, though he gets a bit melodramatic at times. But most of the stories are funny and they’re all fairly fascinating, which tends to balance out the more melodramatic moments. All three of the shows major elements – Doherty’s stories, the songs and the visual images – work together to the point of dependence on each other. Without the stories, this would just be a concert – and a decent one, but not nearly as interesting. Without the songs, it would be an entertaining monologue, but not nearly as exciting. And without the projected images, you wouldn’t have anything to look at except Lisa MacIsaac – and she doesn’t do much but stand in the background, singing and playing – or Doherty, because he’s famous, or a band sitting in chairs. Director Randal Myler has done a good job, though, of keeping Doherty moving and bringing in Doris Mason for a few memorable Mama Cass moments as well as crafting the subtle timing required of a show like this.
If you’re a fan of the Mamas and the Papas, you’ll enjoy Dream a Little Dream for obvious reasons. If you know nothing about the group, you’ll still enjoy it for its humor, and probably for its music, but also for this insider’s peek it provides into a unique time in our history.
From Cool Cleveland reader David Budin (:divend:)