Review: In ‘Only Gold,’ Each Move Is Worth 1,000 Words

The cutesy Frenchness of “Only Gold,” a dance-musical hybrid directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, begins even before the lights go up. (The preshow announcement is winkingly bilingual.) But it really moves into overdrive when Kate Nash, the English singer-songwriter who provided the music and lyrics, arrives onstage and says: “Paris. 1928. A time when rules were ready to be broken.” A show that starts that way should come with a content warning: These clichés may hurt your teeth.

The upside of “Only Gold,” which opened on Monday at MCC Theater, is that it is so pretty to look at, and so musically dreamy, you can mostly tune out the words. Nash’s are hard to decipher anyway; because rhyme and scansion aren’t her thing, the ear gets no help. In the song “Misery,” for instance, the line “I will never leave you behind” is repeatedly misaccented to make the last word sound like a synonym for “derrière.” It’s an odd sentiment that way.

As for the spoken words — the book is by Blankenbuehler and Ted Malawer — they have the skeletal feebleness of a fable, except when occasionally larded with triple-crème tropes like “listening to your heart,” Paris “working her charm” and “magic in the cobblestones.”

Because “Only Gold” is in fact a fable — its title apparently drawn from the Tennyson line “love is the only gold” — you may not mind that. What sort of language would you suggest for a story about the arrival in Paris of the royal family of Cosimo? To that inevitable city King Belenus (Terrence Mann) drags Queen Roksana (Karine Plantadit) to prepare for the wedding of their daughter, Tooba, pronounced like the brass instrument and portrayed by Gaby Diaz. I believe the characters’ names were generated by a malfunctioning anagram app.

In any case, the parents’ marriage has turned cold over the years, and Tooba’s incipient one to a douchey count (Tyler Hanes) might as well come with a sign saying “Not Gonna Happen.” Within minutes of Tooba’s arrival, she’s out on the town in her underwear, buying out Cartier and Chanel and locating a bellhop (Ryan Steele) who will make a suitably inappropriate substitute fiancé.

Tiresomely, each of these characters has a lesson to learn. (Well, not the douche; he’s the disposable kind.) Belenus’s is to stop being such a royal pain, especially to Roksana, whom he has hurt in some way we are not privileged to learn. To rekindle their love, he commissions a humble watchmaker (Ryan VanDenBoom) to create a bejeweled peace necklace; Roksana’s lesson is to accept it. And when the watchmaker’s fame as a royal provisioner drives a wedge between him and his frustrated wife (Hannah Cruz), even they must learn something — I’m not sure what, but it involves a piano.

At least Tooba’s assignment is clear: to stand up for herself as a woman wearing dainties in public. No man will tell her what to do! — except Blankenbuehler, who has given her some terrific dances. In one of them, to the song “Mouthwash” from Nash’s 2007 debut album, she stomps out her feelings of thwarted privilege better than anything the book itself can muster, while the bellhop alternately supports her ferocity and waits out her tantrum. Diaz and Steele are thrilling.

But then all the dancing is thrilling; perhaps it’s the magic in the cobblestones. And if it comes as no surprise that Blankenbuehler, the choreographer of “Hamilton,” can assemble eye-catching sequences into long narrative arcs, it’s nice to see him working with a full cast of dancers, not just an ensemble. Well, maybe not a full cast. Nash mostly just walks around or sits at the piano, singing tartly while others push it around like a tea cart; Mann doesn’t dance much, either, but his posture tells his story.

The sensational Plantadit more than compensates. Showing off her line and power with every move she makes, she reminds you of the shows she did with Twyla Tharp: “Movin’ Out,” in 2002, and “Come Fly Away,” in 2010. “Only Gold” sometimes achieves their kind of thrust and physical splendor.

It’s also splendid to look at, with the Art Nouveau swirls of David Korins’s set lit in rich purples and pinks by Jeff Croiter. Anita Yavich’s costumes, nodding to the period but also shredding it, are spectacular. The cast sings prettily, too.

Whether the prettiness outweighs the silliness will involve a personal calculus. For me, the hybridization of dance and musical theater is problematic, as it all but dares you to find one or the other set of genes defective in the resultant offspring. Had “Only Gold” been merely an evening of choreography set to songs, I would have gotten no less from it, even if Nash’s lyrics kept drawing my attention in the wrong direction. Some of the numbers, especially those from her back catalog, have an entirely mystifying relationship to the story, or to any story.

But her music, with its funky accents and faux baroque curlicues on a girl-pop foundation, was evidently inspirational for Blankenbuehler. As he recently told Elisabeth Vincentelli in The Times, he thrives on syncopation and (in both senses of the word, I think) the offbeat.

It’s a devil’s bargain: If you want the music, you’re pretty much forced to take the words. In “Movin’ Out” (with the words of Billy Joel) and “Come Fly Away” (with the words of Sinatra hits) that isn’t fatally awkward; the shows, essentially dance revues, use the lyrics for mood and just a suggestion of plot. Crucially, neither has much, if any, dialogue, because once you have dialogue you have a fight on your hands, or rather your feet. The two means of delivering information can’t help but squabble for primacy.

When it’s a fair fight, so much the better — see “West Side Story,” or “Hamilton” for that matter. But in “Only Gold” the simplistic story and trite dialogue drag the dancing down. Perhaps the authors spent too much time listening to their hearts and not enough to organs higher and lower.

Only Gold
Through Nov. 27 at MCC Theater, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.