110 in the Shade

SAVED BY A RAINY DAY McDonald and Innvar share a wet clinch.

Photograph: Joan Marcus

The 1963 musical 110 in the Shade is a hybrid of Oklahoma! and Jane Austen, and this unusual mix gives it considerable charm. Adapted by N. Richard Nash from his own play The Rainmaker, the show is set in a rural Texas town racked by drought—a dryness that serves as an overarching metaphor for the romantic and erotic frustration of its main character, Lizzie Curry. Kind, shy and too smart for her own good—which is to say, for the men who might otherwise court her—Lizzie is in danger of becoming the maiden aunt at the picnic. Her harrowing Act I finale, “Old Maid,” captures her terror of being forced to wear the scarlet letter of musical theater: A, for alone.

In Lonny Price’s revealing, wholehearted revival for the Roundabout, the supposedly plain Lizzie is played by the radiant Audra McDonald, who offers a first-class star performance. In superb voice, McDonald gives urgent emotional rawness to her key dramatic songs, but also excels—somewhat less expectedly—in a goofily comedic showcase number, “Raunchy.” Beneath the easygoing appeal of Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones’s score, 110 in the Shade has real weight, as Lizzie is bounced among the men in her life, including her loving, protective father (John Cullum) and the sturdy local sheriff (Christopher Innvar). And when she finally acquires self-confidence from, of all people, a confidence man—Starbuck (Steve Kazee), a traveling fabulist who blows into town with grand promises of a cloudburst—the audience is happy to join her in the joyous climax she deserves.—Adam Feldman