Notes on Three Recent Musicals
Sherie Rene Scott lifts things up with her late entrance, near the end of the first act, going directly into a pair of fine songs, "Here I Am" and "Nothing Is Too Wonderful to Be True." Playing a seemingly naive American "soap queen," Scott remains an original, with a comic style that's all her own, matched with sensational looks and singing voice.
It's good to see Joanna Gleason in a Broadway musical again 1991's Nick and Nora was the last one, and, as wealthy tourist Muriel, she demonstrates anew the witty spin she's able to put on even the most ordinary lines. Not everyone would be able to keep up with her, but Gregory Jbara, playing police chief Andre, partners Gleason beautifully.
Five years back, David Yazbek contributed an excellent score to The Full Monty. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels seems to indicate that this composer-lyricist is a talent who's here to stay. His Scoundrels songs are for the most part skilled and enjoyable, the lyrics witty and quotable. While I'm not as partial as everyone else seems to be to Butz's rap-style "Great Big Stuff," I particularly like Gleason's "What Was a Woman to Do?" and "Like Zis/Like Zat," and the solid, eleven-o'-clock-number title song.
Taking advantage of a pair of turntables, the show has received a typically classy staging from Jack O'Brien and Jerry Mitchell. Yet with all that it has going for it, why did I fail to fully surrender to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels?
First off, I'm not entirely convinced that the show's source --the film of the same title, itself based on an earlier film called Bedtime Story-- is ideal subject matter for a musical. Nothing about the plot seems to sing, nor does it offer the sort of emotional content on which musicals thrive. This is in marked contrast to O'Brien and Mitchell's The Full Monty and Hairspray, both of which had characters to root for and numerous possibilities for music to enhance the story.
Then too, drawing out the film's thinnish story over a two-hour-and-forty-minute evening is not beneficial. Jeffrey Lane's book is somehow less structurally satisfying than the screenplays on which it's based, seeming not to fully kick in until Scott's entrance an hour into the show.
I'm well aware that Scoundrels isn't meant to be more than good, clean, dirty fun. But if your show has little emotional content, it had better be consistently riotous, like The Producers was with its original cast. Here, the humor is sometimes more strenuous than uproarious. While Scoundrels can be zanily funny, it often misses, with things becoming labored by the second half. Where the film was high, elegant comedy, the musical tends to be cruder. Then too, those like myself who are familiar with the source films may find that previous exposure to the plot's twists is distinctly disadvantageous.
Those involved in Scoundrels made the odd decision to have the characters make self-referential comment on the progress of the plot near the end of the first act, Gleason notes that her character is bound to be of use to someone in the second act, and even on the movement of the scenery. While such breaking of the fourth wall seems to be de rigeur these days, it seems out of place here.
Gleason's character of Muriel is also a problem. In the film, she departed early on. Developing Muriel into a major role and giving her a romance with the police chief doesn't quite come off, leaving Gleason to struggle mostly successfully with a role that can seem peripheral and forced.
For all of the skill involved in the score, Yazbek's songs here are required to be mostly humorous, tongue-in-cheek, pastiche pieces, which can become wearying for a full evening. And for all of Butz's hard work, Steve Martin in the Scoundrels film achieves similar effects with less effort.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels struck me as a lowdown laugh show that's only intermittently amusing. It would probably have been an also-ran in the '60s; these days, it looks distinctly like a hit.
Scoundrels is further demonstration that we're still in a period of pop-opera backlash, where that which is tongue-in-cheek, self-referential, and comically silly is prized. And speaking of comically silly and self-referential naturally brings us to Spamalot.
I was never a fan of the Monty Python television programs, and I had not even seen the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail until it became a Broadway musical. I'm glad I watched the film before seeing the show, though, for otherwise I would have felt distinctly left out when a substantial portion of the audience greets each familiar character or sequence from the film with cheers of recognition.
Spamalot isn't really a musical in any conventional sense of the term. Something of a cross between Hellzapoppin and Forbidden Broadway, Spamalot is a relatively plotless musical, spinning a full evening out of the thinnest of books and scores, and providing two hours of giddy nonsense that's about as silly as a show can ever be.
I must admit that I found myself laughing less than most of those around me. But if I found its comedy of the hit-and-miss variety, I did admire Spamalot's ability to sustain an atmosphere of cheerful lunacy without much resort to conventional plotting or songwriting.
As you are no doubt aware, the show reprises many of the familiar scenes and characters from the film the killer rabbit, the Trojan rabbit, the catapulting cow, the Black Knight, the Knights who say "Ni," the French taunter. All of these things are greeted by delighted whoops from an audience familiar with the film. One wonders how the show will play when it gets down to audiences unfamiliar with the film; surely such audiences must exist somewhere.
The non-film material is mostly made up of musical-theatre spoofs, including jabs at Phantom, West Side Story, Les Miz, Fiddler, La Mancha, and Sondheim. Most of these are more obvious than witty, and, as with the references to the film, the audience congratulates itself for recognizing that which is being sent up.
The pastiche score is sometimes catchy but also on the negligible side, and it's heavily dependent on the musical staging of Casey Nicholaw, who demonstrates that one doesn't need Susan Stroman to supply a Stroman-style staging. Nicholaw's work here is inventive. The musical numbers depend heavily on the visuals; without them, Spamalot may make a rather strange CD.
In addition to the show's ability to sustain itself with the thinnest of texts, I also admired the high-gloss production. Tim Hatley's set and costume designs are superb, and the evening has been staged with supreme confidence by Mike Nichols, directing his first musical in almost forty years.
The principal roles require performing more than acting or singing, and they should be adaptable during the run to a wide variety of comic actors. Obliged to play the straight man for much of the evening, Curry's King Arthur anchors the show and could be the hardest to replace. Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce are skilled, welcome comic presences. And there's especially fine support from Christian Borle, Michael McGrath, and Christopher Sieber. As the Lady of the Lake, Sara Ramirez's performance has been somewhat overpraised, but it does have "featured Tony Award" written all over it.
Like such recent smash hits as The Producers, Hairspray, and Mamma Mia!, Spamalot is yet another nail in the coffin of the serious Broadway musical. It also fits into that category of musicals suitable for those who don't like "real" musicals. If it's not consistently riotous, it ranks as silliness of a fairly high order. But it does leaves one wondering just how many more self-reflexive musicals-about-musicals Broadway can possibly sustain.
Turns out that the chief reason for the existence of the wretched jukebox musical Good Vibrations is to make the latest jukebox musical, All Shook Up, look good. The plot of Good Vibrations seemed to have been dreamed up in about five minutes. All Shook Up starts with the advantage of taking a good deal of its plotting from Twelfth Night, thus following in the footsteps of off-Broadway's Your Own Thing and Love and Let Love and Broadway's Music Is and Play On!, all musicals based on Twelfth Night.
Resetting a Shakespearean romantic roundelay there are also traces of A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It on a single day in a small, midwestern town in 1955 was a clever notion. It's just a pity that Joe DiPietro's book isn't wittier. It tends toward the skeletal, mostly a series of perfunctory plot points and song cues. As in Scoundrels and Spamalot, much of the dialogue is tongue-in-cheek. It may be worth noting that one of the most self-referential lines was cut during previews: Included among the things the town's mayor had outlawed was "putting old songs in new musicals."
Unlike most other jukebox musicals, All Shook Up has songs by a variety of composers. The Elvis-related numbers are enjoyable, and if they haven't been woven into the book in any particularly surprising or amusing fashion, several of them actually manage to fit the moments in the plot in which they're spotted.
All Shook Up offers another high-quality production. It's sharply directed by Christopher Ashley, handsomely designed by David Rockwell making up for his somewhat disappointing Scoundrels sets, and beautifully cast. Cheyenne Jackson will be hard to replace as hero Chad, and there are fine turns from all of the other nine principals.
It must be admitted that All Shook Up is sweet, likable, and mostly painless. But only by comparison to Good Vibrations does it look terrific.