After All These Years—Al Tapper Is Still Writing His Songs -

By Bart Greenberg***Composer Al Tapper has been writing songs for most of his life. Along the way, the septuagenarian has written several Off-Broadway shows, produced a few documentaries (including the indispensable Broadway: The Golden Age), and invented the pull-back tab on cardboard coffee cups. Now he’s created a show, After All These Years, writing the book, music and lyrics, and starring in it on video. His songs are charming and amusing by turn, though hardly rising above the pleasant level for the most part. In dealing mostly with human relationship, he’s rather a minor league Maltby and Shire.

After All These Years has a few things going for it. First is a quartet of young attractive performers who totally dedicate themselves to the material. Charming soprano Lara Allison brought a winsome personality to much of her material, thought she was able to get down and dirty as a teenage nymphet with “Joey Buttafuoco”. Her counterpart, Emily Taylor Kaufman, possesses a big belt, ready for many a classic Broadway role. Together, they had great fun with one of the funniest numbers, “What Did Moses Do Before the Rain?”

On the masculine side of the cast, Nathan Pecchia contributed a sweet tenor and personality to songs that required him to embody a nerd. Daniel Olson was probably the best of all, with a strong baritenor crying out to be invested in a Rodgers and Hammerstein number. He brought great gravity to an alcoholic’s surrender in “The Glass.” Together, they gave “I’m a Union Man” the appropriate machismo.

More kudos go to Mark Childers’ projections, which provided backgrounds to most of the numbers. They were by turn very funny and very romantic, matching the tones of the selections. David Wolfson served as music director and offered arrangements with bland efficiency.

The major problem— and it is a major problem—is that between each song, Tapper popped up on video to introduce the next selection. And the next selection. And the next selection. This repetition became numbing, a problem that director Brian Childers didn’t seem to have the power to fix. And Tapper didn’t have anything all that interesting to say. The songwriter has a personality similar to the late Bronx-born actor (and writer of TV comedies), Garry Marshall’s, but with less humor. Each video could have been trimmed in half. Notably, the best moment in the show was a sequence of five love songs uninterrupted and allowed to build to a natural dramatic climax. More of this dynamic would have been very welcome.