n a naïve, folk-art style, that helped set the scenes. It was functional and allowed the maximum use of the stage space remaining after the orchestra platform upstage had been installed. (Hand props are kept to a minimum, mostly because actors carrying scripts can’t manipulate objects very well.)
Karen Perry’s costumes were simple, too, for the most part; only the Head Man and the Lord’s General had what you’d call flashy attire. (The General was in a white outfit that looked like a cross between a naval uniform with epaulets and a silver sash, and an Elvis jump suit; the Head Man, wearing the coolest costume on the stage—the Devil, it seems, doesn’t only get the best lines, he gets the best duds—wore red—what else?—trousers and a red sequined jacket that sparkled in the stage lights.) The women’s dresses came in all colors and the skirts swirled out when the actors danced like Marilyn Monroe’s in the famous Seven Year Itch photo. The men’s outfits varied, but were generally less colorful—though the trousers came close to zoot suit pants. The whole look was a kind of romanticized ’40s, like a Hollywood movie set in that era, but made in the ’50s or ’60s.
In the press, the response to the Encores! Cabin in the Sky was pretty even. The Daily News’s Dziemianowicz, calling the show “a tuneful curiosity and a hit-and-miss labor of love,” characterized it this way: “Songs by Vernon Duke and John Latouche are mostly ear-ticklers, wrapped in newly restored arrangements that lend a juicy big-band bounce. Lynn Root’s book is an odd mix of faith, fable and fantasy.” In amNew York, Matt Windman, pronouncing the production not “so much a revival as it is a full-scale resuscitation,” described the plot as a “combination of romance, marital drama and religious trial.” With Santiago-Hudson’s “focused direction” and Berman’s “characteristically excellent music direction,” Windman concluded that Cabin was “an admirable production of a dated, diffuse and difficult work.” Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post asserted that with the “brilliant” score, this Cabin in the Sky is “one of the best-sung, best-danced Encores! ever.”
Newsday’s Linda Winer, dubbing Cabin “a naive period piece,” lamented, “Despite an A-list cast, the elaborate and loving direction and adaptation by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and viscerally original choreography by Camille A. Brown, the production can’t shake off enough dated stereotypes to revitalize history.” She blamed “a hokey old story” and “a jaunty, if hardly revelatory mix of jazz, showbiz and gospel.” Winer praised the “wonderful” dancing, the “textural transparency” of the choral numbers, and Santiago-Hudson’s “elegant musical ear,” but found the acting “comic mugging.” Noting that Vernon Duke founded the Society for Forgotten Music, the Newsday reviewer concluded, “‘Cabin in the Sky’ has been remembered, which, alas, is not the same as being rediscovered.”
In the New York Times, Christopher Isherwood dubbed Cabin in the Sky “musically vibrant, dramatically a dud” and reported, “The first act of Lynn Root’s book . . . contains virtually no action and glides by rather sluggishly, enlivened only by a couple of standout songs.” The Timesman continued, “Things pick up, modestly, in the second act,” but demurs that “little of that life [of the original Broadway production] blooms anew on the City Center stage.” He complained, “If I closed my eyes, I think I might have had a better time at ‘Cabin in the Sky’ . . ., since the singing throughout is so pleasurable.” Despite the “suitably seductive” rendering of the score by the Encores! orchestra, Isherwood ended on a down note: “[B]y the time this sweet fable of a sinner redeemed, and then redeemed again, panted to its conclusion, I had long ceased to care whether the Devil or the Lord took home the big, or rather little, prize.”
Describing the story as “icky” and “very thin” in New York magazine, Jesse Green affirmed it’s “full of faux-naïve folkloric touches that give off a strong odor of condescension today.” In a tone that even sounds a little angry, Green added