"The Blue Flower," an ambitious musical by the husband-wife team of Jim Bauer and Ruth Bauer, is visually arresting, making inspired use of video projections of every sort. It has a terrific eight-piece band onstage, and more than a dozen original songs blending cabaret and country.
It also has a talented, hardworking cast, and, for history and culture buffs at least, a truly seductive subject: The first half of the 20th century in Europe, a tumultuous time for art, politics, culture, science and really everything else.
It's a bit of a shame, then, that one leaves the Second Stage Theatre, where "The Blue Flower" opened Wednesday, wondering exactly why one wasn't drawn in more, affected more, inspired more. The parts are superior; it's the sum that's a bit lacking.
Maybe it's that so much energy is spent on the expert production values, so many clever details thrown in, that not enough time is spent on simply fleshing out characters, and a story, that we can relate to.
Did we mention, though, the Bauers' terrific video projections? Combining bits of old films, pieces of text, cartoons, photos and other things, they would be an entertainment (or an education) on their own.
But first, the plot: It centers around four people, three of them artists and one a female, Polish-born scientist, Maria (the appealing Teal Wicks), who arrives in Paris and soon takes academia by storm. If she sounds a lot like Marie Curie, she's not the only character seemingly based on a real-life personage.
Max (an excellent Marc Kudisch) appears loosely based on the German figurative painter Max Beckmann; Franz (a soulful Sebastian Arcelus) on Franz Marc, an Expressionist artist; and Hannah (Meghan McGeary, appealingly in-your-face) on Hannah Hoch, a German Dada artist. By the way: if you happen to particularly like Dadaism and want some in your theater offerings, this is your show.
Max and Franz are colleagues and fast friends, first in Berlin, then in Paris, whose bond is tested but not torn asunder by a mutual love for the brainy Maria. She chooses Franz. World War I breaks out, and Franz is killed (Franz Marc, the real one, was killed in the Battle of Verdun).
Everyone is always pining for someone they don't have at the moment — in Maria's case, we're the lucky ones, because her mournful ballad to Franz, "Eiffel Tower," about a place they never saw together, is absolutely lovely.
"This day is like no other, I climbed the Eiffel Tower," Wicks sings, her voice clear as a bell. "And saw the rooftops from the angel's view."
It's a powerful first-act closer, and an emotional high point of the show. Which is too bad, because there's a whole second act left.
Still, there are many clever moments in "The Blue Flower," ably staged by Will Pomerantz, who also directed an earlier run in Boston, with choreography by Chase Brock ("Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.") Just one tiny example early on: We learn that Max, in his older, sadder years, has decided to speak only his own personal language, Maxperanto. And so, as he sings his first song, the video screen behind translates his words into English.
But, story aside, no one wants to hear an entire song in, er, Maxperanto, and so Kudisch starts singing in English — whereupon the translation behind him turns helpfully to Maxperanto.
If only such clever moments could carry the entire show. They almost do. The creators have created much to admire, if not quite to be passionate about.
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