Les Brown (David Beck) accompanies Doris Day (Tiffan Borelli) in Doris Day: My Secret Love.
Paul Adams, the founder and artistic director of The Emerging Artists Theatre, knows a thing or two about digging up dirt. In his 2016 NY Fringe howler, The Cleaning Guy, he recounted his quarter century of maintaining various Manhattan apartments (including Agnes de Mille’s in her last days) to make a buck. Now, as the writer behind the tell-all, Doris Day: My Secret Love, he peels back the movie star’s squeaky-clean image to reveal a rather bleak biography with bullet points that include being married thrice by age 28, suffering a philandering father, crimes against her body and her bank account, panic attacks and the unexpected deaths of those whom she counted on the most. Is it any wonder she would ultimately focus her energies on pet care and animal adoption?
“Though there are portions of 14 songs packed into the production’s 90 minutes, the play is not so much a musical as it is a biographical drama with musical interludes. ”
Under the direction of Melissa Attebery, Tiffan Borelli creates a Day to remember. Her wide smile perfectly captures the actress’s friendly but detached demeanor, and she sings confidently in a similarly unmistakable, silky voice. She looks the part, too, costumed by Nicole Wee in capri pants, bright orange top and trademark neckerchief, and sporting a just-right blonde coif courtesy of Broadway veteran wig master, Tommy Kurzman.
Though there are portions of 14 songs packed into the production’s 90 minutes, the play is not so much a musical as it is a biographical drama with musical interludes. The conceit is that the audience is attending a 1985 retrospective for the Doris Day Animal Foundation, where Day has agreed to make a rare public appearance “to come and sing some songs and tell a few tales.” This allows her to speak and croon directly to the crowd as well as to present a slideshow of images that trace her career from teenage wannabe dancer to co-starring with her greatest friend and largest loss, Rock Hudson, in a trio of romantic comedies in the 1950s and ’60s.
Accompanied by just an upright piano and performed without amplification, Borelli’s interpretations take on an appropriate dreamy, otherworldly quality. Highlights include Day’s first big hit, “Sentimental Journey,” “I’m Not at All in Love,” from Pajama Game, and, of course, “Que Sera, Sera,” with the audience invited to sing along to that favorite oldie.
“The future's not ours to see,” sings Borelli as Day. Photographs by Richard Rivera.
The show-and-tell structure of the production is occasionally broken up with flashbacks to unhappy times with her various hubbies and, in an awkward gambit by the playwright, her presentation includes numerous slides that catch her unawares, allowing entry to parts of her life she would otherwise not want to discuss. Her overreliance on men and her own foolishness in mishandling her career are central motifs. Her trusted lawyer embezzled more than $20 million. Husband No. 1, trombonist Al Jorden, would prove to be abusive and suicidal. No. 2, saxophonist George Weidler, chafed at being called “Mr. Doris Day” and flew the coop. No. 3, Marty Melcher, was also her agent. He was bad at his job, a control freak, and the implied cause of a panic attack that kept Day from performing “Secret Love” at the Oscars, when her 1953 film Calamity Jane was nominated. Day had a fourth husband, but he is dispatched by the playwright in less than two dozen words: “Between his great idea for a dog-food empire and the disasters that followed, marriage No. 4 was short-lived.”
David Beck ably serves as the night’s pianist, beginning with a pleasing overture of the hits to come, then assuming the guise of Day’s longtime pal, bandleader Les Brown. Less successfully, Beck also portrays Day’s husbands, several of her film directors, her doctor, and her drug-addled son. Trying on a variety of accents, none of which seems to fit, Beck’s low point is a half-hearted impression of Alfred Hitchcock—on the set of The Man Who Knew Too Much—that cries out for a dose of camp. Adams does have the good sense to avoid a physical manifestation of Hudson; the late actor’s presence, instead, is displayed in photographs and implied through some disorienting sound effects.
By the end of the evening, Day has discarded her wig in an act of rebellion, and so the play concludes not with her bangs, but with her whimper, as she bemoans the price of fame: “I needed something for myself—private—so I didn’t have to deal with the product that was Doris Day. All I wanted was a simple life, and you just couldn’t let me have it.”
The Emerging Artists Theatre production of Doris Day: My Secret Love plays through Oct. 29 at TADA! / 28th Street Theater (15 West 28th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Monday and Saturday, and at 5 p.m. Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesdays. For tickets and information, call (212) 967-8240 or visit tickettailor.com/events/emergingartiststheatre/983576?.
Playwright: Paul Adams
Direction: Melissa Attebery
Sets: Colleen Shea
Costumes: Nicole Wee
Lighting: G. Ben Swope
Sound: Grady Gund
Projections: Frank Colemen and Darrel Black
