I
had to think long and hard about the new musical, Scotland, PA, because while it’s done very well, I
didn’t take to it. And I hasten to add, you may
take to it, there are those who do, and certainly many of them were in the
audience with whom I attended.
I guess you need the premise,
because all this is tied to the
premise. The musical is based on an independent horror flick of the same name,
a modern day retelling of Macbeth in a contemporary American
setting. But instead of the central locale being Inverness Castle, it’s a
wannabe White Castle; a fast-food
hamburger joint in the small town of the title, in 1975. Its likewise
small-minded boss Duncan (Jeb Brown)
is happy to just keep selling the same bunned patties with fries and cokes,
constantly putting down the innovative (and of course winkily prescient)
suggestions of his young employee Mac (Ryan
McCartan); but Mac keeps trying, always urged on to better things by his
subtly ambitious wife Pat (Taylor Iman
Jones). Well, there’s a convenient seeming-accident with the new deep fryer,
Duncan’s no-longer-bullied son Malcolm (Will
Meyers) no longer wants the place and…well, you can see where this is going…the
more successful the burger joint gets, the more ruthlessly and bloodily Mac and
Pat have to cover the tracks of their rise to fame and fortune.
There’s no problem with the libretto
adaptation, by Michael Mitnik, of
the Billy Morrisette screenplay; and
it hits the musical theatre structure template marks cleanly. Adam Gwon‘s lyrics are craftsmanlike
and smart for the most part (though in one crucial spot he runs out of steam,
but that’s germane to my problem and I’ll get to it)…and as for his music…to my
taste, it rocks out too much, even given the tone and era he wishes to evoke,
which makes the musical particularization of different characters sound less
contrasting than it might. That might be a generational quibble. And the
direction of Lonny Price is likewise
adept.
So where’s the problem?
I think it’s the source material.
Once Mac becomes a full-fledged
killer, you stop caring. At least I did.
But why? Musicals, famous and
classic ones I’m quite fond of, have had murderers as central figures: Little Shop has Seymour, and Sweeney Todd has the barber. Why are they more palatable than Scotland PA‘s Mac?
Again, I had to think long and hard.
And I think it’s treatment.
Seymour is a loveable zhlub who gets tricked by a plant—and
his main motivation is his love of the shopgirl Audrey. Sweeney enters after 15
years of brutalization in prison on a trumped up charge, with a lust for
revenge, and it’s an entirely just revenge; plus
he’s a lone wolf in a corrupt world, his goal
to
thereafter reunite with his daughter; and when the opportunity to kill
the judge, the source of his haunted, obsessive misery, is at first
snatched from right under his hands, he snaps. And both Seymour and
Sweeney are musical theatre large,
unlike anyone else and existing within rarefied stylization. And if you
watch either show for the first time,
not knowing the material or their source properties, you don’t know how the stories will
wind up. (What happened then? / Well,
that’s the play. / And he wouldn’t want us to give it away. / Not Sweeney …)
Scotland
PA‘s stylization is of a fairly familiar stripe, despite the skill with
which it’s delivered. And as for Mac and Pat…
They’re ordinary ambitious people.
When they cross the line, they do it with deliberation and without the broad
strokes of equally unique characters and circumstances around them to give
urgency and impulse to their compulsion. And that speaks to why Mac’s 11:00
pre-suicide soliloquy (that’s not a spoiler; you know he’s doomed right from
the opening number—which may be another problem) lacks lyrical teeth: It’s a
declaration of guilt and depression, with no revelation…a moment of suspended
animation that can’t move us, whose outcome is a foregone conclusion.
So…as I say, you may be among the
significant legion of aficionados who find the show a satisfying Whopper.
Me, I saw an Impossible Burger…
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