New York’s Classic Stage Company (CSC) kicks off its new season with I Can Get It for You Wholesale, a look at the rise and rise of a conniving Jewish garment businessman during the 1930s. Wholesale, a flop when it appeared on Broadway in 1962, is best remembered for being the Broadway debut of Barbra Streisand in a supporting role.
The show’s score, by composer/lyricist Harold Rome, blends motifs of Jewish music into character-defining, plot-driving songs. The book by Jerome Weidman, who adapted his novel of the same name, has been rewoven by his son John to be apparently more biting than it originally was. Skillfully directed by Trip Cullman and choreographed by Ellenore Scott, the talented cast delivers pull-no-punches performances that, at times, tear at your heart and, at other times, chill your soul.
The story is told by its protagonist, Harry Bogen, a shipping clerk working for the successful Maurice Pulvermacher. Dreaming of leaving the Bronx for Manhattan and success, he starts his career by forming a union-busting delivery service in the middle of a strike in the Garment District. Partnering with a friend by borrowing money from his long-time girlfriend Ruthie Rivkin for his share, he begins to accumulate wealth, and while he showers his mother Ida with gifts, his ambition grows. He creates his own dress company, conning his current partner into buying him out to get his partnership share. Harry steals away Pulvermacher’s top designer, Meyer Bushkin; his top salesman, Teddy Asch; and his efficient secretary, Miss Marmelstein. While Ida and Ruthie try to temper his growing ambitions using the pull of familial bonds and community expectations, Harry falls for the gold-digging nightclub singer Martha Mills, for whom he uses company money to purchase expensive gifts – but doing so arouses the suspicions of Teddy.
Tony winner Santino Fontana is brilliant as Harry, delivering an unflinching performance of a man who, scarred by his rough coming-of-age as a Jew in the garment trade, has learned to base all his decisions on what’s best for himself. He embezzles from, lies to, cheats, and betrays everyone without remorse. He is an ultimate egotist, unblinking in his self-serving approval of his own actions and his callous disregard for everyone else.
Fontana’s performance is enhanced by those of the rest of the cast. The always-amazing Judy Kuhn is Mama Ida Bogen, the quintessential Jewish mother as a force of nature. Her song “Eat a Little Something” shows her two sides: loving and supportive at the start of the first act but something else toward the end of the second act. Rebecca Naomi Jones is Ruthie, achingly in love with Harry even though he can’t give her what she desires most. Joy Woods, as Ruthie’s counter-balance, Martha Mills, gives a slinky and seductive performance. The two women perform the intertwined songs “Love Is Not Enough” and “Grab Them While I Can” as a kind of conversation between two people not in the same place at the same time. Adam Chandler-Berat and Sarah Steele are Meyer and Blanche Bushkin, a loving couple who naively place their trust in Harry’s promises. As their son Sheldon and as the young Harry in the prologue, Victor de Paula Rocha portrays two vastly different boys becoming young Jewish men through hardship. Greg Hildreth’s Teddy Asch is a brick wall acting against Harry’s embezzlement of company funds. Hildreth and Woods show a comedic flair in their duet, “What’s In It for Me?” Adam Grupper bookends the show as Pulvermacher, desperately grabbing at Harry’s strike-busting offer at the start, showing up at Harry’s lowest point at the end. Finally, Julia Lester as the harried secretary to both Harry and Pulvermacher, digs for comedy in her first-act number “Miss Marmelstein” and brings the drama as she leads the full ensemble in “What Are They Doing to Us Now?”
Anne Hould-Ward, the Tony award-winning costume designer, creates a panoply of clothes with the feel of the 1930s in New York, from Ida Bogen and Blanche Bushkin’s housewives’ dresses to haute-couture fashion. Mark Weidland’s imaginative scenic design makes the most out of a bunch of long tables and plain wooden chairs. However, I found that Adam Honoré’s lighting design often put the action in dim or practically no light, making a disturbing distraction during key scenes and numbers.
1961’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying featured an ambitious rogue of a lead character who was broadly comedic and sugar-coated for audience pleasure. I Can Get It for You Wholesale makes little attempt to soften its lead’s backstabbing and betrayals, making it a sourly difficult show to enjoy. However rough it may be to watch, the show provides rich character studies that audiences will find disturbing but satisfying fare. I strongly recommend making the trip down to East 13th Street to catch CSC’s production of I Can Get It for You Wholesale before its limited run is over.
I Can Get It for You Wholesale is presented by the Classic Stage Company at the Lynn F. Angelson Theatre, 136 E. 13th St. in New York City through Dec. 17, 2023. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit classicstage.org or call 212-677-4210.
