Well, at least dinner was good. Last night, Bill-the-Honeybear and I had dinner at Charlie Brown's in Millburn, followed by Harold & Maude: The Musical. It's not that the show was a stinkeroo -- the cast, headed by veteran Estelle Parsons, was fine. It's just that, at almost every turn, the wrong choice was made. The theatre space (Paper Mill Playhouse) was just too damn big, even with a huge chunk of the space hidden behind black drapes. The scenery tried for suggestive and ended up with sparse -- except for Maude's house, which was filled with clutter that was barely used (like the staircase, which nobody went up or down except when Harold hung a banner -- and even then, he only went up 3 steps). There was one interesting video projection on the rear wall depicting a wild car ride, but other than that the projections were ignorable. The costumes were decent enough, but the only flair was shown in Maude's outfits. Don't even ask about the lighting design -- although whether the fault was in the design or in the tech people working lights, I couldn't say. And this was the first time I can remember when I wish the cast, especially Estelle Parsons, was more heavily miked.

Ah, but what about the music? Sorry you asked. Veteran composer Tom Jones (The Fantasticks, I Do! I Do!) teamed up with relative newcomer Joseph Thalken. While a lot of the lyrics were in the serviceable-to-clever range, the music was a letdown. Maude's intro number was a very nice character piece, done to a swirly waltz, where she expounded on her philosophy. Unfortunately, all of Maude's other numbers -- except the second act opener, a jazzy little fox trot called Song in My Pocket -- were swirly waltzes in which Maude expounded on her philosophy. INCLUDING the deathbed scene song. (Why is it that, ever since Mimi in La Boheme, dying people in musicals always manage to last just long enough to hit that last note?) Maude's swirliness was offset -- badly -- by Harold, a character who really shouldn't be able to sing or dance until he finally falls in love with his aged paramour. Yet he has earlier numbers of his own: an alienation number about finding a place in the world; a song about performing a real suicide instead of the fake ones he constantly does to elicit some real emotion from his mother. The best number of the evening belongs neither to Harold nor to Maude. It belongs to the minor character Sunshine, a wannabe singer/actress who appears in one scene in act 2, and it's a wickedly funny parody of modern opera (especially Philip Glass' Ahkenaten) and the works of Stephen Sondheim. You know something's gone dreadfully wrong when a number this funny gets no laughs from the audience; it means that they've given up on the show.

I will mention the names of the cast members -- all five of them -- in hopes that by doing so, the universe will acknowledge their yeoman work in this turkey and reward them with better parts in better shows. In alphabetical order, they are: Danny Burstein (Dr. Sigmoid and all the minor male roles); Donna Lynne Champlin (Sunshine and all the minor female roles); Donna English (Mrs. Chasen, Harold's mother); Eric Millegan (Harold Chasen); and Estelle Parsons (Maude).

The wrap-up: Unless you're a huge fan of Estelle Parsons, save your money and rent the movie.