Henson-Conant's show mixes new age and 'Idol'

Here's a quote for the ad: Deborah Henson-Conant's one-woman show "What The Hell Are You Doing In The Waiting Room For Heaven??" is a memorable musical-theater experience.

Memorable, but not always for the reasons intended, alas.

Henson-Conant exercises her musical virtuosity, playing everything from dreamy glissandos to gutbucket blues on her electric harp and singing up a storm. At Wednesday's opening, she also showed an old-school Broadway star's intense focus on winning over the audience, even though they already seemed predisposed to laugh and "awww" in all the right places.

And Henson-Conant's flamboyant stage look is just right for the role of Aubrey Giles, a performance coach to recently deceased hopefuls auditioning for the heavenly choir. She wears long braids with shiny ribbons mixed in, a white minidress, golden cowboy boots. She's a little bit pearly gates, a little bit Barbarella. Add in the rock-star-style grappling with her blue electric harp, and she is definitely memorable.

But even if you vibrate in sync with the show's "transformational" message of hope and self-actualization, "What the Hell" is kind of a mess.

Advance descriptions promise "American Idol"-style heavenly auditions, with Aubrey as the casting coach who will help the "remedial group" - that's the audience - learn "the ins and outs of the devilishly difficult competition." And in the first few minutes of the show there are promising satirical gags about a process that is "more diabolical than 'American Idol,' more satanic than 'Miss Universe.' " In this competition, Elvis is one of the judges.

Quickly, though, the show meanders into a series of musical set pieces - some serious, some schticky - that have little to do with that setup. With little transition or explanation, we get a long, poignant number about Aubrey's weird childhood, a who's-on-first bit about "negative space" and the "nothingness of everything else," and a jaunty little ditty that begins, "Why is a dimple good and a pimple bad?" There's a harp instrumental and several audience-participation numbers. The point of it all seems to be that "you have a voice that's yours alone" and you should, um, raise it. Well.

Occasionally there's a big creaking sound effect and a spotlight clicks on from above. Apparently God or Elvis or someone has opened a trapdoor in the floor of heaven and is checking on things in the waiting room. Aubrey looks up tremblingly and promises progress. Then it's back to the new age uplift.

Near the end of the 90 minutes, Aubrey quite rightly decides we need "A Production Number" and delivers just that, with audience members onstage wearing party hats and dancing. The biggest laughs Wednesday night came with an older man's enthusiastic participation, and Henson-Conant was savvy enough to do a little bit with him when he sat down too early.

That was the comedy highlight. There were several musical highlights, most notably "The Nightingale" and "Cindy, Cindy," lovely and heartfelt songs that Henson-Conant has recorded previously. But that's not to say they fit the show any more than the parable about the monkey and the coconut.

In these dark times, it seems curmudgeonly to criticize a little show that only wants us to be better and happier people. And most of Wednesday's audience enjoyed themselves. But Henson-Conant and director-script doctor Wesley Savick have a lot more work to do if they want to present a coherent theatrical experience.

Correction: Because of an editing error, a review of Deborah Henson-Conant's one-woman show in the Aug. 16 Living & Arts section mistakenly attributed a quote to an advertisement. The quote was fictional and was designed to show how an imaginary ad might be written.