Stage

Tanks for the Memories

A real-life romance with a Syracuse connection blossoms in Appleseed's World War II musical I'll Be Seeing You

They met and immediately fell in love near the beginning of World War II. Don went off to battle in a tank unit, was captured, and spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp. As an Army nurse, Olga "Cassie" Casciolini came ashore at Normandy and served near where bombs were dropping. At the end of conflict, they found each other, were married within days, and lived together happily for 53 years. Seemingly ordinary folks, Don and Cassie Waful lived their adult lives in Syracuse. I'll Be Seeing You, Diane Tauser's new musical based on their dramatic early lives, has just opened here.

Make no mistake, this is an event. Officially under the aegis of Appleseed Productions, I'll Be Seeing You takes place in the intimate space in the basement of Atonement Lutheran Church, 116 W. Glen Ave., where the audience sits at round tables and volunteers deliver treats at intermission. The performance, however, unites the resources of four local companies, starting with masterful music director Lou Lemos and crackerjack comic support player Joe Pierce from Theatre '90. Hunky leading man Casey J. Ryan (as Don Waful) and stellar character supporting player Bill Molesky come from Salt City Center. And gorgeous, Syracuse Area Local Theater Award-winning leading lady Dani Gottuso (as Cassie) and reliable villain David R. Witanowski have left the Wit's End Players for the occasion. The costumes are so good that soldiers in tank units are wearing the right triangular arm patches.

In conversation, Tauser describes herself more as a composer than a wordsmith, and she clearly lies in the melodic grand tradition of Broadway musicals, not with the revisionists who come after Stephen Sondheim. Then again, with the exception of an Andrews Sisters tribute in the first act, "Sweet Swing," neither does she try to emulate specific early 1940s songs, like the novelty "Mairzy Dotes," or wistful, plaintive songs like "I'll Be Seeing You," which does not actually appear in the show.

Tauser favors subtlety and complexity over shout-em-out bombast that sold well in the war years, with the possible exception of "The Streets of Brooklyn," sung by Brooklynite POW Charlie. The first potential showstopper is Cassie's first-act solo "Suddenly," a classic love song that is in no way time-bound. More characteristic of her output is the nurses' quartet, "Love for a While," in which musical lines track one another, more the way one would find in Romantic opera. Also oddly complex are the harmonies in the POWs' second-act song "Simple Things," which is anything but simple. Another allusion to operatic tradition is the abundant use of recitative.

Music will be one of the draws for local audiences, especially those who lament that "they don't write 'em like that anymore." The greatest musical drawback of the show is that many songs go a bit too long, especially the ensemble number before intermission, "I'll Be Right Back," which all but invites the retort, "So go, already."

By her own words, Tauser wrote the book for I'll Be Seeing You after having composed much of the music. Having been inspired by meeting the real-life Wafuls at a bed-and-breakfast, she found that the story did not write itself. For one thing, Don Waful was not exactly ordinary. He was a graduate student at the beginning of the war, and he later became a prominent businessman, among other things heading the Syracuse Chiefs' baseball team for 40 years. He spent much of his three-year incarceration studying with the YMCA, to which he has since been devoted. The shows the prisoners liked to put on were non-musicals, like The Man Who Came to Dinner. The couple is apart for most of the action, at one point losing touch with one another, meeting up again at the conclusion. Some particulars are not grist for the mill.

Tauser's characters, instead, seem drawn from black-and-white movies, especially Stalag 17 (1953) and So Proudly We Hail! (1943). The sequence at the beginning of the second act, where the POWs (called "Kriegies") put on a drag musical, which is interrupted by a radio report, followed by a patriotic song, is a direct quotation from Jean Renoir's classic wartime drama Grand Illusion (1937). Books for musicals do not have to be Arthur Miller dramas, but what Tauser's choices mean here are that we have types instead of individuals, even when the real-life Dan Waful is sitting in the audience. It also means that Kriegie cut-ups like Tom MacDougall (played by Joe Pierce) all but eclipse romantic leading man Don, despite Casey J. Ryan's superb solo, "Time Again."

I'll Be Seeing You opened in Philadelphia in early 2002 and has undergone significant changes since, Tauser reports. Word has it that the show also shrank by an hour during rehearsal, supported by the omission of one musical number cited in the program. If this charming, sometimes compelling, material is going to reach a wider audience, further changes will have to be made. Perhaps 20 to 30 minutes should vanish, and a stronger book must get us more involved with the lovers during their separation.

Meanwhile, director Jon Wilson and choreographer Shannon Tompkins skillfully block the large cast and maximize the dramatic tension of individual scenes. Leads Gottuso and Ryan are charming and compelling, no more so than in their first-act duet, "Let the Future Come." A dozen supporting players, notably Tina Lee Hutchison as the insubordinate nurse and Terence LaCasse as the Brooklynite, as well as the always reliable Bill Molesky, Joe Pierce and Robb Sharpe, give distinction to their roles. Even the sympathetic German guard, Brandon Lipsett, contributes a silvery moment with "Stille Nacht." The legacy of the Waful romance is lovingly served with this heartfelt production.

This production runs through Oct. 2. See Times Table for information.