CDs: Dumas Debacle
his fall, Broadway got a memorably ludicrous musical flop called In My Life. But it appears that London had an even bigger one last summer. That would be Behind the Iron Mask, the three-character musical that opened at the West End's intimate 479 seats Duchess Theatre on August 2 and closed there on August 20.
The musical was suggested by the apparently true-life story told in the Alexandre Dumas novel The Man in the Iron Mask and in several film versions, the most recent one starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In the late 17th century, an unknown man was masked and imprisoned for life by King Louis XIV of France. As has sometimes been maintained, the prisoner may have been the king's twin brother.
In the London musical version, the prisoner strikes up a friendship with his jailer. While the incarcerated man is forbidden any other companionship, the jailer picks up a gypsy lady on the road and, against the king's orders, brings her back to the jail, where a romantic triangle ensues.
The book for Behind the Iron Mask was the work of husband-and-wife Colin Scott and Melinda Walker, but the impetus for the production seems to have come from its composer-lyricist, septuagenarian John Robinson, who, in addition to the music and lyrics, was credited with the "original idea." Rumor had it that getting Iron Mask on stage was the dying wish of Robinson's wife. Directed by Tony Craven, Iron Mask had Robert Fardell playing the prisoner, Mark McKerracher as the jailer, and Sheila Ferguson as the gypsy. Ferguson was best known as the former lead singer of the group Three Degrees, and she had also played Muzzy in the West End Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Fardell, who had been one of the many Jean Valjeans of the London Les Miz, had his face completely hidden throughout the evening by an imposing but apparently off-putting mask. As in The Phantom of the Opera, Iron Mask featured a wronged, rejected hero hidden behind a mask and a woman who redeems him.
The Dumas story may sound like vaguely promising material for a romantic musical, but, according to the London critics, the results in this case were deadly. In The Times, Benedict Nightingale compared Behind the Iron Mask to the American musical The Fields of Ambrosia, and said that Mask was "not as gloriously inept" as Ambrosia, that Carrie of West End musical shows. "But Behind the Iron Mask is still the pits," he continued.
In The Daily Express, Sheridan Morley asked, "How did Behind the Iron Mask get as far as a first rehearsal, let alone a first night?" Lyn Gardner of The Guardian called it "not just a vanity project but a calamity project." In The Telegraph, Charles Spencer indicated the show's special niche by saying, "There are those who relish a truly dreadful musical...so bad that it's nearly unendurable...bears all the hallmarks of a vanity project." And Paul Taylor in The Independent offered this vivid comment: "It looked at times as though it was going to close before the interval on press night." More than one critic noted that Behind the Iron Mask was playing across the street from The Producers, and that Mask might have qualified as the perfect show for Bialystock and Bloom's scheme to produce the worst musical of all time.
As was the case when people questioned where the money for In My Life came from, the financing for Mask seems to have been provided by outside investors rather than by its authors. But the show was produced by GMB Productions, Robinson's own company. Because Mask did not close immediately but remained opened for more than two weeks, it attracted the sort of customer likely to view such a show as highly collectible. Indeed, it was reported that the management was forced to eject from the theatre some spectators who came to laugh at Mask and even heckled the poor trio of cast members.
And now we have a Behind the Iron Mask CD, again a GBM Production. Running fifty-four minutes, this appears to be a CD-R, with a plain white label affixed, and could very possibly be a demo made prior to the production. Six musicians play synthesizer-heavy arrangements. And we get only two of the three London cast members. Fardell and McKerracher sing their stage roles on the CD, but the gypsy is performed by Emma Kershaw.
Not much need be said about a recording that seems to bear out all of the abuse hurled at Mask during its brief life. As heard on the CD, the score is utterly dreary. Even with the words for two of the songs taken from the poetry of Lord Byron and Lord Tennyson, the lyrics are empty and awkward. And the music sounds like a failed attempt at doing what Frank Wildhorn does so much better. The three singers do what they can to breathe life into their material.
Incidentally, it was recently announced that Ron Bohmer The Woman in White will participate in a February reading of The Man in the Iron Mask, a new American musical inspired by the same Dumas novel.