STAGE REVIEW : STRUGGLING TO REACH A ‘HAPPY END’

“Happy End,” Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s curious play with music that served, many years later, as an inspiration for “Guys and Dolls,” is back. This time, the Company of Angels is trying to revive it. (East West Players and Pacific Theatre Ensemble have recently tried as well.)

From the first notes, director Albert Ihde’s ensemble puts its hearts and lungs into the show, letting forth a choral burst that’s meant to carry us through. When the chorus breaks up, however, and the action begins at Bill’s Beer Hall in Chicago’s gangsterland, the burst is more like a detonation than an energizing force.

The thugs around Bill Cracker (Don Oscar Smith) are many things in Michael Feingold’s adaptation, but they are not, as we see them here, imbibing bosom buddies who have nothing better to do than sing “The Bilbao Song.” Nor do Ihde’s crooks cull out the necessary mixture of self-aware waste and cynicism that is the music’s primary link with the characters (and the contrast with the invading Salvation Army).

Smith’s Cracker, a hollow, denuded Chicago soul, and Jim McKeny’s wily Dr. Nakamura seem able, at least, to knock off a foe without much hesitation. Yet they touch you, in adherence with the play’s most interesting paradox, as being not completely pleased with their line of work.

Nothing in this production builds on that potential tension, so we’re treated to a hesitatingly sung run-through of a musical play that’s monumentally difficult to pull off. Weill’s provocative mid-song shifts in key and mood built on the previous experiments in “Threepenny Opera” and Brecht’s concomitant narrative shifts worked in the same vein. A successful “Happy End” demands the utmost discipline of acting and musical support, and a fiery belief in the material.

Anything less results in a highly baroque comic book. Here, the thieves and soldiers for Christ remain rather shallow types who sing very deep songs. Even Kathleen Flynn, who unquestionably puts her all into Sister Lillian (the soldier who, literally, falls for Cracker), can’t put a finger on Lillian’s amusingly strange behavior, other than that the script calls for it. She lets emotions run “Surabaya Johnny” ragged, rather than figuring out what Lillian’s getting emotional about.

The palpable effort put into all this nearly makes you perspire. (The pre-show slides of this production’s rehearsals and set construction incautiously send out the message: Boy, was this show a chore.) The Beer Hall Band, led by pianist Martin Jones, seems to struggle past each note. It leads you to wonder what all the struggle was for. A successful revival of familiar material must be generated by something more compelling than putting obviously dedicated theater people through the wringer.

Performances at 5846 Waring Ave. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $12.50-$15; (213) 466-1767.