A kinder and gentler epoch of elitism and sexism

JULIA TIERNAN/YH The musical 'Just Call Me Eli' looks back on the past that never was.

Sam Carner's, BR '01, and Isaac Meyers', BR '01, "new 1920s musical comedy" Just Call Me Eli has the prerequisites for a solid high school musical. The boys and girls travel in packs--the boys with threatening gestures and overflowing testosterone and the girls with artificially high-pitched gig-gles and willowy, waving arms. The music is rousing, with sweetly sincere lyrics, and there's a lot of it. The painted backdrop is a little ameteurish, the set changes always take a little longer than the producer wishes they would, and the person on the lightboard doesn't seem to be on quite the same headset wavelength as the people moving the props. There's lots of rousing singing and dancing. It's not giving anything away to say that each person ends up, by the end, in someone else's arms.

Luckily, in several respects Eli transcends high school musical status. First, everyone onstage can not only both act and sing, but can do both simultaneously and quite well. Second, and equally important, Meyers and Carner (who also directed the show) and the actors are all in on the joke. The actors acknowledge the constant implicit irony with overdramatic gestures, grasping each others' hands and raising their hands to their brows in despair or excitement. They also throw themselves into their roles with an effective imitation of naive joy, reveling in the anachronistic ecstasy of simple boy- (of course, a football hero) meets-girl romance. Her qualifications aren't as clear, but she does smile a lot.

Jason DiPinto, TC '01, as senior and football hero Jimmy, seems particularly enthusiastic about life and the 1923 Yale-Vassar Autumn Ball. He should be--his girlfriend and potential fiancée Amanda (Danielle Hartnett, ES '99) is coming.

His sidekicks, awkward Stoddy (played with exaggerated excellence by David Davidson, DC '02) and intellectual alpha male Whit (swaggering Steve Amdur,
PC '00) have less to look forward to. Still, they and the rest of the football team are excited to give the dance their all. Even Roric Tobin, BR '01, removes his earrings, puts on a nice suit, and convinces the audience that nothing could make him happier than Vassar girls and a new ballroom.

Amanda and friends are eager to net the Elis, although their criteria vary from trust funds to football skills to (surprisingly) intellect. Dora (Laura Smolowe, PC '02) shows spunk and frustrated sexuality while Amy (Robyn Scrivener, CC '02) sits aloof, more interested in the requirements of a BA than those of an MRS.

In this genre, the audience isn't surprised that Amy discovers boys (well, one specific boy), that Dora finds her man, and that they settle for less than they should. It's equally predictable that the clash with Harvard ends without serious injury and that all of the Yalies (and even the "damn Harvards") are upstanding young men.

Handsome Dan disappears, but we're never worried that he's been kidnapped by a pharmaceutical testing company. And a few Crimsons of the sort that scare all good Americans may worry that Yale excludes the proletariat, but after all, "We let in that scholarship student just last year!" And class bias (old money vs. new money--are there other classes?) rears its nasty head--but isn't romance more important here?

Love proves more important than class and age. Carner, Meyers, and the actors display admirable restraint, not just playing age for laughs but investing it with dignity, and
also a little humanity.

The older characters may have joint pain, but their libidos are intact and on display in the upbeat number "It's Better When You're Old and Gray." David Slifka,
JE '01, and Erin Tadie, BR '00, both with grey hair dye liberally applied, grab the limelight as professors who annually seize the opportunity of the ball for some fun of their own. Carner and Meyers give them ample room to play with allusions to "tours of the stacks" and "ringing" and "pealing" of the bells, and Slifka and Tadie take advantage of each. Dan Fabulich, CC '01, as Amanda's aristocratic father, uses his expressive face to milk his senility and allegiance to Old Yale, while Linda Rosenbury DC '02 as his wife leaves her white-gloved classism (and prominent libido) more low-key.

It would be mean-spirited to tweak Eli for its stereotypes or pat ending, especially since anyone on or behind the stage could do it for you. But it's well worth taking the musical for what it offers--a fun evening, a return to what wasn't really a simpler time, though we can pretend it was. The audience was constantly in stitches, and more than a few girls put their heads on their boyfriends' shoulders. Even those of us who wish Amy had held out for reading Dante and stargazing instead of writing daily letters to a self-satisfied Yalie can understand why she chose the latter. After all, it was the 1923 Yale-Vassar Ball. And that, as depicted by Carner and Meyers, was a magical place to be.

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