Bob Dylan. Joni Mitchell. The Beatles. James Taylor. Simon and Garfunkel. What do these artists have in common? Right now it's the Huntington Theatre Company's production "A Long and Winding Road," an autobiographical tribute to Grammy Award-nominated singer and actress Maureen McGovern. McGovern's voice is the strong and stirring vessel through which this captivating performance celebrates and pays respect to the musicians and music that defined a generation.
McGovern and Philip Himberg were the joint conceivers and writers of "A Long and Winding Road," a production that has no ordinary narrative. The play uses popular and well-loved songs to recall important moments, funny memories and traumatic events that occurred throughout McGovern's life. The result is a musical scrapbook that McGovern shares and sings wholeheartedly, and that the audience hears and appreciates.
The music, which McGovern strings together and breaks up with comedic anecdotes and personal short stories, is the attraction for this show. Each song is symbolic, and when McGovern sings, specific memories are effortlessly evoked. The songs and stories distributed throughout the performance are a reminder that the production is not only a memorial to great music, but also a commemoration of a great life — and one that continues with gumption.
Parsing the mixture of songs and memories is like solving a puzzle — one that McGovern helps to solve with her own personal history, but that audience members can solve for themselves on an individual level. From World War II to John F. Kennedy's assassination to the Vietnam War, the decades that make up McGovern's life are momentous historically as well as musically. Broader associations and historical context make the show a shared walk down memory lane for McGovern and the audience, more like a conversation with an old friend than a self-indulgent monologue.
McGovern's voice remains impressive at age 60, as she continues to belt out lyrics from Carole King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and The Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon" with confidence. Also on stage is Jeffrey Harris on piano, whose playing nicely complements McGovern's voice and presence and who provides small moments of comedy. Though he could be easily forgotten on the side of the stage, Harris makes a few jokes to help remind the audience that he is there, and his humor is refreshing in an otherwise McGovern-dominated performance.
The set is the only element lacking in "A Long and Winding Road." While the curtains and tapestry on the piano are appropriately simple and elegant, they are also vaguely reminiscent of a lounge — an environment that doesn't seem to fit revolutionary music from the '60s, '70s and '80s. The curtained background also creates an uneven surface for the photo and video projections displayed throughout the performance, making it difficult to read some of the slides shown.
McGovern is perhaps best known for her Oscar-winning recordings of "The Morning After" and "We May Never Love Like this Again," which garnered fame in the 1970s from their use in the classic disaster films "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and "The Towering Inferno" (1974), respectively — earning her the nickname "Maureen the Disaster Queen." McGovern's diverse career also includes appearances in "Little Women: The Musical" (2005) and "The Pirates of Penzance" (1981), and a cameo as the singing, guitar-playing nun in the film "Airplane!" (1980).
"A Long and Winding Road" is showing Oct. 9 through Nov. 15 at the Virginia Wimberly Theatre, Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. Student rush tickets are $15 and are available two hours before the performance.
