Stereotypes keep ‘Pool Boy’ in shallow end

July 27, 2010|Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff

PITTSFIELD — Composer and lyricist Nikos Tsakalakos has had a couple of unusual jobs: pool boy at California’s ritzy Hotel Bel-Air, and personal assistant to William Finn, artistic producer of Barrington Stage Company’s Musical Theatre Lab. Those worlds collide, with uneven results, in Tsakalakos’s musical “Pool Boy,’’ now making its debut at the Lab.

Certainly there’s fun to be had in satirizing the super-rich, super-spoiled denizens of Bel Air, here represented by just three: a bleached-blond record producer, his randy and jaded wife, and the bratty young sultan of “Nubai,’’ who owns the place. But these caricatures are pretty broad and obvious, and, more problematic, there’s not really a sympathetic character to counterbalance them.

Even Nick, the pool boy and protagonist, is just as blindly willing to do anything in the name of success as the people that he (and his creator) want us to despise. An aspiring musician, he pushes himself on the record producer and then, when the wife makes it clear that the only way to the big guy is through her bed, pushes his scruples aside before you can say “casting couch.’’ Meanwhile his love interest — a personal assistant with acting ambitions — seems poised to run off with the sultan just because he’s rich. Are we supposed to care whether these two young cynics end up happy, together or not?

But let’s not forget Nick’s pal, Jack, who’s passing himself off as an authentic Japanese sushi chef — a bit of deception that leads to dreadful kowtowing routines and flied-lice accent jokes that weren’t funny even when they were new, a century or more ago. Or the tightly wound manager, Mr. Lopes, who has a few ethnic issues of his own. (His name rhymes with “Ropes,’’ he insists; Latino? Don’t be ridiculous.) Given these two, you’ll no doubt be shocked to learn that the sultan has gaudy tastes in knickknacks and wears aviator shades with his black leather jacket.

OK, sure, we’re all just here for a good time, and if you’re stereotyping everybody then nobody should be insulted, right? Whether you buy that argument or not (I don’t), it does depend on one critical element: You need to have a good time. And, too often during “Pool Boy,’’ it just isn’t good enough.