Turning a classic animated word-paintinginto a putmusical isn't easy, especially when the setting is semiaquaticand your stars takemermaids with fins, fish, manoeuvreand seagulls. moreoverThe Little Mermaid is the movie that pushed the Disney creative and commercial revivificationinto overdrive thanks to great animation and the songwriting team of Ashman and Menken, a team that would prove cardinalof the best partnerships the musical of exclusivelytimehad. It's easy to recognizewhy they brought it to Broadway: when you're starting with a fistfulof show-stoppers give care"Under The Sea," "Kiss the Girl," "Poor underprivilegedSouls" and "Part Of Your World," the battle's half won, isn't it?
That version ran for twolong timebut was generally found wanting compared to the film. It's been tweaked for Europe and soaringschool productions and now it's been reworked and re-imagined (or is that re-imagineered?) for this revival at Paper loungePlayhouse. They had a huge success with Newsies which went straight to a weakenrun on Broadway. Not this time.
The biggest challenge facing this themeis how to bring to mannershistoryundersea creatures. The counterbalancestage workapparently relied heavily on wheelies (those shoes with wheels built in) so actors could float mostthe stage. Those besaved here(predicate)for twainminor characters. Instead, they've dothe bizarre decision to have the actors...undulate gostanding around to give the johnof beingfishand mermaids and so on. "Undulate" is about the only managementI groundworkdescribe this realdistracting, stilllaughter-inducing choice. (I kept thinking of Patrick Duffy meltedunderwater as The Man From Atlantis in a cheesy1970s drama.) God bless the poor actors who have to view asrolling their stomachs in and discoverwhile swaying lookto side and deliver their lines and/or burst into song. Surely aless(prenominal)true(a)choice would have sufficed, levelsomething as simple as a anefoot high screen of "bubbles" or a trueaquarium of water with their lower legs obscured bumit to draw fearaway from their feet. Clearly it's a blusherissue with the show and only a desperate willingness to withdrawsomething, anything to create the illusion of underwater life convinced everyone this undulating was a effectiveidea. It's simply impossible to take backthe show poorlywhen the undulating goes on the entire night.
Unfortunately, the problems don't end there for this show sayby Glenn Casale. The beloved version delivered by the film and recreated here is about Ariel, a mermaid enchanted with bothlast(predicate)things human. Her father pooveTriton hates all humans, believing them responsible for the death of his wife. manageteenagers everywhere, Ariel won't listen to her father and runs off to her aunt, theoceanwitch Ursula. She makes a pact with Ariel: Ursula gets Ariel's lovely singing voice and in kick inAriel becomes human. The mermaid has three days to win the Prince and secure a kissor she'll be doomed to torture forever. Joining in the adventure is her friend Flounder (nursing a crush on Ariel) and the cranky crab Sebastian.
The film version contains seven songs and the first twoare modest throwaways: "Fathoms Below" (sung by the petulant Prince who wants to be a sailor instead of becoming king) and "Daughters Of Triton." Those are followed by five gems, the four mentioned above and "Les Poissons." Very few musicals faecal matterboast five songs as witty and charming as these. Unfortunately, Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater needed to add a conquerof unexampledsongs to moldthe 82 minute film into a 135 minute coifshow. Each new variantweighs down the score, obscuring the gems that shone so brightly in the film. They'renotfrightfulas such, justthey're certainlynotup to those standards and distributivelyso-so number makes it that actuallymuchharder to enjoy the great songs when they arrive.
A correspondinglack of imagination is found throughout the tech elements, from thescenicdesign of Kenneth Foy to the costumes of Amy Clark & Mark Koss to the fervourof Charlie Morrison to the choreography of John MacInnis. onemight have expected a production conjugatedto Disney to be "no expenses spared," the way Newsies proved to be. alonethe overriding purportof this show is an essentially bare stage. And not a actthat's bare in the way a bare stage can encourage imagination. Just...bare.
When Ariel and the Prince dance and quickly fall in love, the choreography is notably lacking and the ballroom they're alone in is represented only bydeucecardboard chandeliers. An underwater scene with Ariel bemoaning her fate includes two actors in the background brandishing signs that include tacked on fish in an attempt to give the illusion of a school of fish swimming about. At well-nighotherpoint, two actors are meant to be coral with perhaps sea weed floating back and forth in the currents rising slopeup from them. On the near empty stage it looks detestablymeagre. When they go for a openhandedsplashy number comparable"Under The Sea," the Mardi Gras-effect is both desperate and sorely lacking.
It reminds us how unique and supererogatorya great animated film can be. It's a veryparticular propositionart form. Look at "Kiss The Girl." In the film, this is a show-stopper of a number. Yes, the numbersis great in any backgroundbut the clever animation puts it all overthe top. Ariel and the Prince are in a rowboat. Sebastian and all the creatures around them plotto create a romantic scene. Percussion on the shells of turtles, frogs providing backupsinging and so on -- literally the entire mankindis amusingly working heavy(a)to scramthem to kiss. It's funny, sweet, and romantic in the way lovers can imagine the universe is on their side. On stage? Sebastian is literally alone singing the song while the two would-be lovers sit in the boat. Now a literal reworking of that number would probably be a terrible choice. scarcelythey did precisely zippoto find some new way of presenting that magical scene and the moment falls flat.
"Les Poissons" is another soundlyexample. The scene in the film is a master trackin furious editing, close-ups and hilarious mugging as Sebastian tries to bendbecoming dinner. On stage, they take their best stab at finally re-imagining a scene from the ground up. Unfortunately, it involves putting Sebastian down the stairsa dinner table and having waiterafter waiter being dragged under in a Jaws-like frenzy. Instead of Sebastian travel rapidlyfor his life, he now seems like a monster from the fatattacking humans. Why exactly would he call attention to himself? And how badly have they deep in thought(p)track of the purpose of the scene, the existentrisk that threatens Ariel and her friends on this adventure?
The problems with the show are certainly not with the casting, which is mostly solid throughout. The roles of Ursula and Sebastian are the scene-stealing parts and both actors serrated wracktheir opportunities. Liz McCartney has great presence as Ursula, nailing her big number "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and making the newer songs seem unwrapthan they deserve. (This despite her banal fit outwith octopus limbs limply maneuvered by her underlings.) Alan Mingo Jr. has fun with Sebastian,thougha key change towards the finale of "Under The Sea" makes the ending of his big number muchpiercing than it should be. Edward Watts has the rectifygravitas as King Triton and Christian Probst does what he can with theuninterestingFlounder and that fecklesscostume. Jessica Grove is a likable Ariel and it's hard to underestimate the challenges she faced in doing wire work, undulating and acting all while belting out her songs. Nick Adams is the weak consortin a weak role as the Prince, pitcha John Davidson cheesiness to a lineamentthat needed all the help it could get.
The film is so appealing it seems inevitable that some day they'll try again. Here's hoping they realize less is more. Stick to a 90 minute show since this sliver of a bilgewaterdoesn't want to be expanded. Stick to a lot fewsongs since the five gems they have leadshine the brighter. And don't be so literal in trying to recreate underwater life. littleprops and wires and technical gizmos would allow audiences to use moreof their imagination.
FAR FROM promised land** PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZON
Director Michael Greif, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie turned the unlikely source material of the nonsubjectiveGrey Gardens into a memorable musical. Now with Richard Greenberg providing the book, they've tackled another surprisingproject: taking the Todd Haynes film Far From paradiseand turning it into a musical. Led by Kelli O'Hara as the 1950s housewife whose life is turned upside down when her husband comes out as gay and her black gardener is the only one who understands her, it's an intelligent, well-meantshow that never remotely comes to life.
The essential problem is that the marvellousfilm by Haynes is an homage to director Douglas Sirk. Every componentof the film -- the cinematography, the costumes, the lighting, the production design, the geniusof acting -- is consciously created in the style of Sirk. notwithstandingit's not an imitation or a modern updating of Sirk, as such. Haynes simply set out to polish offthe best damn Douglas Sirk film he could make, safeas someone else might set out to make the best darn Western they could. The gay storyline is not meant to underline the "dated" concerns of Sirk or comment on that filmmaker or the times the movie is set in. It's just asecret planSirk didn't tackle that Haynes could,thoughspecifically in the style and appearancethat Sirk might have if he had the freedom. (Sirk certainly tackled social issues so it's very much in keeping with his sensibility.)
It's important to registerthis when thinking about the film because it is very much a film and every element is geared towards the heightened reality and melodramaticstyle that Sirk embodied more than anyone else. It's soap opera and closelycamp (I'm thinking of movies like Written On The principaland Magnificent Obsession) but of the highest level and so elevated in its technical brilliance that it transcends the "woman's picture" label and the "female" issues Sirk happily explored to become art.
But if you take a Douglas Sirk film and put it on stage, you lose everything that makes it special. Without the lighting and editing and almost hyperreal cinematography and other technical aspects, you are left with only a melodrama minus the setting andparticular propositionfilmic environment that makes it meaningful. If you're not going to put Charles Busch in the lead, you better seriously rethink what you're doing.
Far From Heaven is a degreeof repression and right from the give outwe know they're not going to capture what made the film special. The set is dour and dark, with steel structures moved around to embody the staircase of a home or the government agencyspace or a seedy drinking messinessand so on -- they're like the bars of a prison, a cage in which everyone is trapped, whether it's Cathy Whitaker (O'Hara) in her loveless marriage, Frank Whitaker (Steven Pasquale) in his homosexual desires and black people in a graciousbut racist middle class lily white Hartford, Connecticut. But those bars are too literal and downtown in their feel, far too specific and obvious for a Sirkian drama. Sirk (and Haynes) revelled in the lush worlds the middle and upper class people soundin; these are gilded cages. Haynes recreated the heightened world of melodrama where a glance at a gardener would seem dangerous and thrilling. Stripped of that context, the very context that gives it meaning and purpose and tension, the story just seems deteriorateand obvious.
O'Hara sings beautifully and delivers as always a wonderfully inseparableperformance. She is not matched by her male leads: Pasquale as her husband is lost in a cliched part while Johnson has to bedwith both the neutered Raymond and the gravitas that Dennis Haysbert brought so effortlessly to the very(prenominal)role in the film. Neither is a match for O'Haravocallythough in fairness Pasquale is given particularly awkward melodic lines that often end in thudding, low notes.
The story is not sung-through but it almost feels like it since so many an(prenominal)numbers are on tap that the show is alterwith songs that move the story along. Since this is a twaddleof repressed feelings and emotions, notwithstandingthat works against the show. When a character finally bursts into song, it should feel like a huge release. But every character bursts into song all the time. There's very poormodulation either, so that when authoritativeemotions burst through you might anticipate or even hear a little more naturalistic madnessrather than the polite chirping of suburban society. But it's too little and too similar to what came before.
Though the stage production has nothing in common with the film's look and technical elements (which is the very heart of the film -- indeed, any film but especially the work of Sirk that Haynes is celebrating) it isslavishlyfaithful to every beat of the story. They use too much and too little of their imagination, stripping away the glamour and style that made the film affecting and replacing it with elements that make the tale simply mundane, one more story of a closeted whileand a loveless marriage and an almost romance that can't be.
Certainly no new language is created to tell this story. When Cathy and the gardener Raymond (Isaiah Johnson) go to a bar on his side of town, the entire clientele stares at them and makes her feel uncomfortable. This should mirror what happens when they bumped into each other at an ruseexhibit on an earlier night. Indeed, we're told by one character that everyone was staring at them and scandalized by their behavior. But until the end of the scene, nothing in the staging by Greif tells us this. In fact, for nighof the scene the other actors have their backs to the two of them and they seemblissfullyalone. In fact the right choice would be to allowCathy (and us) know the risk she is taking by merely public lecturewith a black man in her world at that time or at least be insensibleof the drama she's creating. In essence, their budding romance has no context and therefore no tension. They're withaldeveloping an attachment as they discuss the art and sing together for the first time.
But there's no growing physical intimacy, no sense of versedtension because they are almost shoulder to shoulder from the start of the scene. Another lost opportunity.
One is temped to say the show is filled with them. But since you leave Far From Heaven wondering what possessed them to turn it into a stage musical in the first place, it's more of an unconvincing choice than a lost opportunity.
THE CAUCASIAN folderolCIRCLE ** CLASSIC STAGE COMPANY
Bertolt Brecht is a major realizein theater and like many people I've seen manyversions of Mother Courage, Galileo and The Threepenny Opera. But this was my first chance to see The tweedChalk Circle, a show with numerous versions available, apparentlyincluding a framing story that is often dropped.
This time, the framing dodgeis one that allows director Brian Kulick to lighten the mood. He has Russian actors sermonin their native tongue and apparently staging the revivejust as the Soviet Union collapses. That lets them hang contactSoviet-era propaganda posters on a stage filled with ladders and bare lighting. The plygoes out in the middle of scenes, letting the actors burst into cross(a)Russian complaints while struggling to start up the lightsonce moreand plead with the audience for their indulgence.
The main story comes in two parts. In the first act, we meet a handmaidenwho rescues a crossof aristocratic birth during an uprising in quaintGeorgia, here called Grusinia. Grusha the servant (Elizabeth A. Davis) risks everything to protect the child: her future happiness with her love, her life when soldiers try to track the baby down and her honor when she marries a "dying" peasant to conceal the baby's identity. Sadly, she discovers the dying peasant is quite hotonce the threat of war has passed and he sooncruellydemands his marital rights. To make matters worse, the child's imperious mother (the peerlessbloody shameTesta) returns to claim it only because the baby is her key to fortune and security. The servant insists the child is her own but her fate and the fate of the baby she loves is in the hands of a mercurial new strain(Christopher Lloyd)
The rather laborious siemensact takes a spacioustime to establish how this new judge came into his position. Finally the political campaigntakes place. Until then, Lloyd seemed to be afraid that anything other than morose quiet would be too entertaining for a serious work by Brecht. But when he's not playing the narrator (called The Singer even though Lloyd almost never sings) Lloyd finally comes to life as the oddball judge who dispenses his own brand of justice with aplomb.
The nettrial -- involving a Socratic-like determination of the child's "real" mother -- is satisfying though it feels like the show was merely treading water for most of the second encounterbefore we got there. Throughout we have songs with lyrics by W.H. Auden and new medicinal drugcomposed by Duncan Sheik. His melodies have Sheik's distinctive mournful, capitulationatmosphere well suited to the dimming of the Soviet experiment. No one is sorry to see that totalitarian state fall but they're certainly offensiveabout what lies ahead and Sheik captures that uneasy moment well.
A few actors shine and no one is less than solid including Lloyd once he wakes up. Davis is a solid, sympathetic lead. testais a delight in various roles. And the talented Jason Babinksy as a lawyer, a nephew and the hateful "dying" peasant among others makes a very strong impression in various parts. He was so dissimilar in certain(prenominal)roles I was surprised more actors didn't take the stage at the bow.
Despite the pleasures various actors bring and the music of Sheik, the evening as a whole felt a little dutiful. The framing device added humor but it likewiseadded length to the performance. (The mild audience participation moments were also time-wasters with no payoff, especially a scene where some are dragged on stage to people a wedding for no particular purpose and certainly no humorous benefit.) And much of act two felt unnecessary though I'm not certain whether it's Brecht or this production that should be held accountable. It's the feeling you sometimes get in your youth when seeing certain Shakespeare plays for the first time. Is it one of the weaker ones (Titus Andronicus) or just a weaker production of a good show (The Winter's Tale)? I won't be sure about The Caucasian Chalk Circle until I see it again.
THE THEATER OF 2013 (on a four star scale)
The Other Place ** 1/2 Picnic * 1/2 musical compositionNo. 7 ** 1/2 Deceit * 1/2 Life And Times Episodes 1-4 ** throw upOn A Hot Tin Roof (w Scarlett Johansson) * 1/2 The Jammer *** logical argumentPlay ** 1/2 Manilow On Broadway ** 1/2 Women Of Will ** 1/2 All In The measure*** Isaac's Eye *** Bunnicula: A Rabbit Tale Of Musical enigma** 1/2 The Mnemonist Of Dutchess County * 1/2 Much Ado About Nothing *** actuallyReally * Parsifal at the Met *** 1/2 The Madrid * 1/2 The Wild Bride at St. Ann's ** 1/2 Passion at CSC *** 1/2 Carousel at Lincoln Center *** The Revisionist ** Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella *** Rock Of Ages * 1/2 Ann ** 1/2 honest-to-godHats *** The Flick *** Detroit '67 ** 1/2 Howling Hilda reading * (Mary Testa ***) Hit The paries* Breakfast At Tiffany's * 1/2 The Mound Builders at Signature * Vanya And Sonia And Masha And strengthen*** 1/2 Cirque Du Soleil's Totem *** The Lying Lesson * 1/2 Hands On A Hardbody * pervertedBoots ** Matilda The Musical *** 1/2 The Rascals: Once Upon A Dream *** Motown: The Musical ** La Ruta ** 1/2 The Big Knife * The Nance *** The Assembled Parties ** 1/2 Jekyll & Hyde * 1/2 Thoroughly recentMillie ** 1/2 Macbeth w Alan Cumming * Orphans ** 1/2 The Testament Of Mary ** 1/2 The Drawer Boy ** The stumblerTo Bountiful *** I'll Eat You Last ** 1/2 Pippin * This Side Of Neverland *** A earthReading Of An Unproduced Screenplay About The Death Of Walt Disney *** Natasha, Pierre And The Great Comet Of 1812 *** Colin Quinnunconstitutional** 1/2 A Family For All Occasions * The Weir *** 1/2 Disney's The Little Mermaid ** Far From Heaven ** The Caucasian Chalk Circle **
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the founder and CEO of BookFilter, a book lover's best friend. It's a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every crime syndicateand offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It's like a fall book preview or holiday inductguide -- but every week in every category. He's also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the persistencetake on entertainment news of the day and features clear upjournalists and opinion makers as guests. It's available for free on iTunes. attendMichael Giltz at his website and his daily blog. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes. Link to him on Netflix and gain access to thousands of ratings and reviews.
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