Trouble in Tahiti

"Ratty Boo. Sofa so far so. Automobee." Greek to you? Actually, it's a bit of Ella Fitzgerald-like scat, one of the many musical idioms found in Leonard Bernstein's half operetta/half musical 1954 piece Trouble in Tahiti, starring Karl Daymond and Stephanie Novacek as '50s married couple Sam and Dinah--a husband and wife whose relationship is all shiny suburbia on the outside but far from heaven on the inside. Presented on film rather than onstage, the single-day action finds Sam and Dinah fighting in the morning in their "little white house" over Sam's decision to skip their son's school play later that afternoon, before each head off to their respective lonely days--Sam at work and later the gym (in a scene that has brief locker room nudity); Dinah visiting her shrink and then going to see Trouble in Tahiti, a piffle of a flick that nevertheless strikes a resonant chord in Dinah's own turbulence-ridden, somewhat tarnished, American Dream. Nicely underscoring the gap between the plastic smiling superficial nature of life in the '50s and the frustration, repression, and sense of loneliness lying just beneath the surface for many, the film intertwines Technicolor-looking sets in which a choral trio sing semi-nonsense songs (that sound like bouncy advertising jingles), with actual archival commercial clips--a glossy surface that plays ironic counterpoint to Sam and Dinah's insecurity-ridden interior monologues. While not in the same league as Bernstein's later work, including his masterful West Side Story and Candide, this is still an engaging piece sure to appeal to a wide range of musical interests. Disc extras include a 21-minute featurette on Bernstein with his biographer Humphrey Burton; a seven-minute featurette with conductor Paul Daniel on performing the music; and a booklet containing the libretto. Interesting note: one side of the disc is NTSC recorded, while the other is PAL--it might be worth making this clear on a circulating copy, since popping the disc PAL-side-up in a North American player will generate a message that the disc cannot be played. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)