April 14, 2018
I'm not sure I should go ahead and deconstructively review the stage version of Frozen for a number of reasons that spell conflict of interest (short version: I know composer-lyricists Bobby and Kristen Anderson Lopez very well), but I think I can say, safely that if you're in the market for a live show that does what the animated feature film does, more or less, in the tradition of several other successful Disney shows, you—and perhaps most importantly, your kids—will get exactly what you're in the market for, and probably won't be disappointed at all. Under the direction of Michael Grandage, there is the usual smart showmanship with clever live-action ways to replicate the signature 3-D animation effects. I will add, because I'd feel caddish keeping it to myself, that under idiosyncratic circumstances, I got to see the show twice, and one of those times with understudy Lauren Nicole Chapman going on for Patti Murin as the younger princess, Anna. Both Annas are wicked talented (or maybe I should say frozen talented), but what's notable about Miss Chapman is that, in a production that is already multiethnic, her presence pushes the color envelope a bit further, as she is African-American. I'm pleased to say that the storytelling is so efficient that there's barely a moment of audience adjustment between seeing Young Anna as a Caucasian girl and the appearance of Miss Chapman as the near-adult princess. But I don't bring this up just to mention the visual as a marker of how far we've come in making the poetry of the theater racially inclusive, even to the point of redefining the range of literal representation. That's not news anymore. Rather, I mention it because on the way into that performance, I saw an African American mother escorting her very young daughter; the girl could not have been more than five, and she was in a Frozen princess costume. And I thought it could not be more important that at this performance, on that day, this little girl would get to see what I'll risk calling a version of her little princess self as the perky, feisty romantic lead on stage. I like to think it will stay with her for the rest of her life; and I believe that the further commercial family theater goes in this direction, the better—and not just for the kids.
Another movie-made-musical is Mean Girls. It's a parable about the price of fitting in, and the consequences of doing so at the cost of your integrity. Annnnd of course, it's set in a high school. Its cast of characters contains all the tropes: the gay bff (Grey Henson) of the perpetual outsider (Barrett Wilbert Weed); the naîve, incoming, formerly home-schooled "matriculater" (Erika Hennigson) and the cool, superior blonde (Taylor Louderman) whose clique she wants to join, which includes an airhead (Kate Rockwell) a girl with no self-esteem (Ashley Park)…and that boy (Grey Henson).
I have to admit, I entered Mean Girls reluctant to get on board, for the simple reason that all the things that it's about, its pop culture currency, and its youthie packaging add up to the kind of experience I least look forward to. But with that prejudice stated, Mean Girls—ironically, not the first such show to win me over—won me over, in this case because all the things that it's about, its pop culture currency, and its youthie packaging are delivered with a great deal of wit and craft (book by Tina Fey, based on her own screenplay, music by Jeff Richmond, lyrics by Nell Benjamin), and very smart staging (direction and choreography by the redoubtable Casey Nicholaw) on a pizzazz-filled design that employs day-glo, flash-animation sequences that seem to have exploded out of a high-end flagship smartphone.
Yet another movie-made musical is The Sting, having its world premiere at the Paper Mill Playhouse. With book by Canadian Bob (The Drowsy Chaperone) Martin, it's a very decent and stageworthy adaptation of the brilliant David S. Ward screenplay, which is one helluva trick, since if there's any film that had absolutely no need of becoming a musical, it's The Sting. For indeed, there's nothing the musical does to improve on the story; and thematically…well, it doesn't much resonate more deeply either. Its sensibility has, however, been brought into the new millennium with one stroke that Martin resurrected from Ward's original intention: he has made the character of Hooker (played by Robert Redford in the film), a black guy, which changes just enough to give the protege-mentor relationship between Hooker and Gondorff (the Paul Newman role) an extra layer—less related to ethnicity than to their relative views of experience and trust. And happily this is further made the musical's own by the fact that J. Harrison Ghee, the actor playing Hooker, is several decades younger than Harry Connick, Jr.'s Gondorff. In the film, we're just told that Redford is meaningfully younger than Newman (they had already pop-culturally been established as contemporaries in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and in real life were only 11 years apart), and we make a pact with it because they act it well enough; but a genuine generational gap is a friend to the musical.
You can only make a determination based on the evidence of the creative team with skin in the game, but adding to the notion that The Sting never screamed for musicalization in the first place is the impression that the score never seems entirely necessary, the songs simplistically expounding on things we already know, in ways that don't particularly deepen that knowledge ("The Thrill of the Con" seems almost generic); though on rare occasion, a number that encompasses action ("The Card Game," which actually dramatizes a con) can be fun. The score credit is interesting: Music and Lyrics by Mark Hollman & Greg Kotis (the Urinetown guys); Additional Music & Lyrics by Harry Connick, Jr. I don't know what the truth of the process is, but the impression left is that Connick was the original guy at the core, and that Hollman & Kotis were brought on to put his pop sensibility through a theatrical filter. Compounding this is the fact that the musical includes a number of the Scott Joplin rags that appeared in the film. This is hugely effective in terms of setting tone, era and place, but it also makes the score written for the show suffer by comparison—if you listen with that kind of discernment. But not everybody does, and for some of those who do, it may not matter—
—because under the direction of John Rando, with the choreography of Warren Carlyle, the stunning across-the-board work of the design team, and as acted by an extraordinary cast, the musical of The Sting not being a great musical of The Sting doesn't matter, because it provides a great time. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, the effectiveness of the endgame is all about alchemy.
(A postscript note about the cast: there are some terrific musical comedy pros doing their thing here, among them Kate Shindle, Tom Hewitt, Peter Benson, Kevyn Morrow and Janet Dacal. But just as notable are terrific, veteran character actors who are memorable in non-singing roles; Richard Kline, Robert Wuhl and especially Christopher Gurr. That actors this colorful, playing roles this colorful, have basically nothing to sing, and still come in for a strong landing, does rather support the notion that the original material didn't need musical enhancement. Though I guess you could argue that, like 1776 does, it serves to prove that not every character needs to sing in order to be memorable. Perception of the beholder, to be sure.)
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