Bounce, Goodman Theatre. The first collaboration in more than 20 years between Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince–the composer-director team responsible for Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd–is a major disappointment. This saga of fortune-seeking brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner, whose escapades from the 1890s to the 1930s “bounce” them repeatedly from rags to riches, veers between madcap farce and maudlin melodrama. Sondheim’s peppy, nimbly rhymed songs are pale reworkings of superior material from Follies, Into the Woods, Saturday Night, and the film Dick Tracy. At its best, John Weidman’s script evokes the wisecracking comedies of the 30s, and Prince’s staging offers some delicious sight gags (including an altar that transforms into a marriage bed). But when Bounce focuses on the dark underside of American adventurism and on the Mizners’ sibling rivalry, it turns tedious and preachy.
