Theater Review: The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever!

It has long been my opinion that a critic should strive to be balanced when it comes to the plays he criticizes. After all, even the worst productions tend to be made with good intentions. Even the worst productions tend to be made by people who want to be proud of their participation. And even the worst productions tend to be made with the idea of entertaining or enlightening their audiences in some way. That’s why it is so hard for me to write this review – because, well-intentioned though The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever! may be, it really is one of the worst productions I have ever seen on a New York stage. The play, which was written, produced, and sound designed by Joe Marshall under the banner of the Alternative Theatre Company (which appears to go wherever Marshall goes, having originated in Phoenix, AZ, moved to Tucson, and recently relocated to New York), is a misbegotten effort from beginning to end. Plays can function and generate laughs even when their plots make no sense. They can make a point even when the characters are two-dimensional. They can survive poor direction, poor performances, and the occasional bad joke. But when one play features all of the above, it truly takes a Christmas miracle to turn tinsel into silver and gold, and the only miracle I witnessed at The Actor’s Playhouse was that the audience, by and large, returned to their seats after intermission.

The plot, such as it is, is based on a decent, or at least amusing, premise. In West Hollywood, producers Manny (Adam Weinstock) and Don (Blaine Pennington), founders of a theater company, are desperate to mount a money-making play after presenting a series of flops written and directed by Rod (played as a screeching sack of stereotypes by Jason B. Schmidt), their co-founder and Manny’s lover. Over Rod’s hurt objections, they hire creepy gay playwright M&M (Chris von Hoffman) to replace him as author of their yearly Christmas pageant, but are forced to use Rod’s script when M&M storms out in a rage, for predictably ridiculous reasons. Luckily for them, Rod’s script is not terrible – but, realizing that he will become insufferable if they admit that to him, they change the title and attempt to keep him away from the production.

Complicating their plan is the rest of the theater’s staff, including the "sassy" costume designer, Tarquin (Jonathan Chang); one-man-stage-crew (and perpetually stoned heterosexual) Jim (Ryan Wright); and Janet (Elyse Beyer), their reasonably competent but extremely high-strung stage manager. After Rod is conveniently sidelined by a falling stage light Jim incompetently rigged, they hire Margie (Crystal Cotton), a successful director from New York who knows Manny and Rod from The Old Days.

What follows are a series of excruciatingly tasteless jokes featuring a snow-excreting Santa Claus; a flatulent and deaf accompanist (Ree Davis); and Jim’s narcoleptic, Tourette’s afflicted bigot of a mother (Emily Schramel), whose apparent sole purpose is to give the author the chance to use the expression “darkie” in his script. Later, the cast of characters is joined by Jesus – yes, that Jesus – who, like Harvey the Rabbit, is only seen by Jim, and who proudly proclaims his own homosexuality and Latino pride (because, after all, what’s more of a laugh than the fact that there are Latinos named Jesus?).

Of course, in the tradition of Noises Off, everything that can go wrong with the production does. The cast is terrible. The crew is incompetent. And everyone keeps having to deal with Tyrone, the angry black guy who left his gun at the audition (played by a game Kershel Anthony).

This sounds like it could be a South Park-esque, irreverent, so-offensive-it’s-funny, celebration of poor taste, and at times it seems clear that that is Joe Marshall’s intention. Unfortunately, the jokes are not simply tasteless – they’re also completely unfunny. Jokes that didn’t land the first time are stretched into recurring gags. For example, Marshall tries to generate laughs by revealing the titles of two of Rod’s previous plays, (one being “Oklahomo”) and then, as the show goes on, continues the gag – by referring to the same two plays. Repeatedly. He couldn’t have come up with a few more puns? When things threaten to slow down, Marshall finds an excuse to bring back his unfunny bigot, his flamboyant Jesus, or his thuggish black man to act out some desperate stereotype or another, despite the fact that they don’t ever advance the action in any significant way. And, to further demonstrate his sophistication, the author has no trouble using stoner material that was dated back in the days of Cheech and Chong.

Meanwhile, the plot is not merely convoluted, but incoherent. For one thing, the playwright, for all of his supposed theatrical experience, seems to lack a working knowledge of how the theater business works, or simply thinks the audience won’t notice or care about the glaring incongruities. How has the theater company survived all this time? Do the founders have regular jobs? If they’re a legitimate company, why is the cast and crew made up of amateurs? And if they’re simply a community theater, why are they getting reviewed in major newspapers? If the play moved faster (or had more competent actors), these questions would be irrelevant, but Marshall feels the need to cram in social messages and romantic subplots at random moments, giving the audience just enough time to realize that none of what they’re seeing makes the least bit of sense.

As the second act opens, it seems for a moment that The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever! is finding its purpose. When we see the problematic rehearsal for the play-within-the-play, there are some genuinely funny moments. However, things are quickly derailed again when Marshall insists on generating false tension by revealing Janet’s hitherto-unseen (and quickly handwaved-away) homophobia. After an incredibly out-of-place series of coming-out vignettes and a speech from Jim about tolerance, opening night arrives – and we’re treated to, basically, the same gags from the rehearsal scene, plus the aforementioned “Shitting Santa.” Predictably, the characters are heartbroken by their terrible review – and overjoyed when the terrible review leads to a sold-out run. If Marshall was trying to go for “Springtime For Hitler,” he should have realized that sending up bad plays acted by bad actors only works in a good play featuring good actors. Later, in a truly bizarre postscript, the heterosexual love interests (who, to Marshall’s credit, were developed with more nuance and compassion than any of the stock-stereotype gay male characters), are magically turned into a gay couple. For what purpose? Apparently only Jesus knows – and he doesn’t share.

In fairness, there are at least a few decent actors in the play, who deserved better material to work with. Cotton manages to create a believable character out of her worldly lesbian director, and the romantic leads, Wright and Beyer, are amiable if not particularly three-dimensional. In bit parts, Alexandra Dickson, who plays a butch (and put-upon) angel, and Kymberlie Joseph, channeling Hattie McDaniel as Tyrone’s mother, earn actual laughs during their brief appearances. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast struggles with the material, mugging through lines and situations that are already overly broad. Several of the actors seem to be genuine amateurs – Chang might have been funny, but it was hard to tell, since he had trouble projecting in the small space. Weinstock, whose theatrical credits are largely behind-the-scenes, looks and sounds uncomfortable on stage.

If this review seems unnecessarily harsh, it is only because plays like this are offensive at a deeper level than the jokes in them. Earlier, I wrote that most bad theater is made with good intentions, but my guest and I left The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever! feeling doubtful that this play was mounted for anything other than cynical reasons. Sadly, if the play’s main purpose is to exploit audiences who will be attracted to anything with the word “gay” in the title, it may succeed. In promotional material, the producers quote comedienne Kathy Griffen proclaiming, “The title alone is brilliant!” While Griffin’s quote may be genuine, it’s hard to believe she saw the play before she made that statement. “Brilliant” title or not, the play is as much of a mess as the titular pageant. In a city full of talented playwrights and actors who can’t get a break, it is simply amazing that a show of this caliber can be mounted on an off-Broadway stage. Then again, when the playwright and the producer are one and the same, anything is possible. No matter Marshall’s intentions, he succeeds only in alienating the very audience he is trying to play to.

© 2009, Christopher Stansfield. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed to the public under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License, and may only be distributed according to the terms of said license. To view a copy of this license, please click here.

Book Review: And Another Thing... (Part Six in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series)

And Another Thing…, the continuation of the late Douglas Adams’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, was written in part because Adams didn’t get the chance to “set things right” before his untimely death at the age of 49. Whereas the penultimate Adams “H2G2” book, So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish, ended in a happy place for most of the characters, Adams’s last entry, Mostly Harmless, sneered at the concept of happy endings, leaving many readers rather UNhappy. Not that the series was ever cheery – it does, after all, open with Earth’s destruction. However, while earlier entries balanced cynicism with an affection for humanity’s foibles, Mostly Harmless was practically nihilistic. Adams later admitted that this was a result of his being severely depressed while writing the book, and planned to end the series – again – more positively. Since his death robbed fans of that ending, Adams’s widow asked author Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl) to give it a shot. While many might be happy to see Adams’s characters raised from the dead, they may wonder if it was worth the effort.

It’s important to note that Adams’s stories were, often, barely stories at all. Though there are Protagonists and Events, the “when” and “how” is rarely important, and the “why” tends to stay the same – people are foolish, and life is random. Still, even lacking basic storytelling conventions, the books are genius. For one thing, they’re laugh-out-loud funny. For another, the characters are easily identifiable. And finally, even though the Events aren’t important, the Deep Thoughts that they illustrate often are.

Since four or five different versions of the saga (which originated on BBC radio and was adapted into an LP, novels, a television series, and a film – each time with major plot changes) co-existed, all written or authorized by Adams, it’s clear that he cared less about “canon” than he did about provoking laughs. In that sense, Colfer makes a valiant effort to write a “Douglas Adams book.” Most of the essential elements are there – Colfer tweaks science fiction cliche, and the situations are suitably ironic, as in Adams's books. Of course, all of the major characters are back (as are many of the minor ones). Much of the book is, in fact, quite funny. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t fit with the rest of the series.

Colfer seems to acknowledge this: in a tongue-in-cheek preface he specifies that his book is an “appendix” to the series, rather than a true part of it. Which would all be very modest and self-effacing, if it weren’t for the fact that the cover declares in big, unmistakable letters, that it is “Part Six.”

One reason And Another Thing… doesn’t succeed is that Colfer has affection for the characters, but doesn’t seem to understand them. For example, here is his introduction to Arthur Dent, the main character of the saga (and the one Adams based on himself):

“Arthur’s university yearbook actually referred to him as ‘most likely to end up living in a hole in the Scottish highlands with only the chip on his shoulder for company.’”

It goes on to paint Dent as gloomy, pessimistic, and generally unlikeable.

True, one could get that impression of Arthur from his introduction in the first book – then again, the first time we see the character is while he’s facing the impending destruction of his home. Reading further, we learn that Arthur is a fundamentally decent, if unremarkable, human being. Though he is at times irritating, he is completely understandable. He can be petty, depressed, and self-absorbed, even in the face of the extinction of his species – but he is also one of the few beings that shows humanity, even briefly, to Marvin, the deeply depressed robot he meets on his adventures. He’s never shown to be friendless or unlikeable – clearly there was a reason his alien friend chose to save him in the first place – and as the series progresses, we find that, though he is frequently confused, he is also much deeper than the “evolved” species around him give him credit for being. Neither the best nor the brightest, he represents both what is bumbling and lovable about humanity. Somehow, Colfer misses all of that, and instead focuses on readers' mistaken first impression of the character.

In fact, he does that with all of the main characters. The alien Zaphod Beeblebrox, portrayed by Adams as a genius trying to be an idiot, is simply an idiot in And Another Thing.... Trillian, the second-to-last human, transforms from someone conflicted and competent to someone alternately brittle and insipid. Dent’s rescuer, Ford Prefect, is simply comic relief – when he’s used at all. Oddly enough, the characters Colfer devotes the most time to are Adams’s throwaways. They're all vaguely recognizable, but almost imperceptibly “off.” It left me with a feeling of warped perspective, as though I were reading the book with my glasses on backwards.

Another thing Colfer gets nearly, but not quite, right, is Adams’s narrative voice. That’s forgivable – it's unfair to expect an accomplished author to imitate someone else’s style – but Colfer tries to have it both ways. He doesn’t write like Adams did, but he picks up on the things that people loved about the original books – the endless footnotes and digressions, the recurring jokes – and then repeats them endlessly. Colfer writes like he’s desperate to prove that he’s fan enough to step into Adams’s shoes. Over and over, he sticks in references to Eccentrica Gallumbits, the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast, Gargleblasters, and other Adams in-jokes. At first these references cause warm recognition – then, they become tedious. Whereas Adams sparingly used his digressive “guide entries” to illustrate some of his larger points, Colfer puts one or two on nearly every page. And, while their quantity has increased, their quality is scattershot. The overkill is exhausting and irritating in the same way that amateur fan fiction is. Meanwhile, in place of wordplay, Colfer delivers endless puns, like the names Constant Mown, Carmen Ghettim, and Aseed Preflux – and the book eventually becomes frustrating to read. Colfer tries so hard to ingratiate himself to readers that he forgets to focus on what Adams would have – there are no Deep Thoughts here, just nostalgia and reiteration.

It is obvious that Colfer loves the H2G2 universe, so the book can’t be discounted as a cynical cash-grab. It also does succeed on one level – it wraps things up tidily (well, sort of) and gives the characters a happy ending (well, kind of). If And Another Thing… doesn’t exactly have a happy ending, it still ends on a hopeful and lighthearted enough note to be a step up from the previous book. Douglas Adams was not, himself, a cynical writer, contrary to popular belief. In fact, he was a disappointed idealist – aware that things are bad, but hopeful enough to refuse to give up. If things remain as uncertain at the conclusion of And Another Thing… as they are at the beginning, it’s in keeping with the rest of the series.

Ironically, if all readers wanted was a happy ending, they already had an Adams-approved one. The radio adaptation of Mostly Harmless added a positive epilogue that the novel lacked – and, even though the radio show was made posthumously, it was based on Adams’s own notes. The BBC production (available on CD) has never been promoted to American audiences, and it’s a shame, because – happy ending or not – And Another Thing… lacks purpose. Colfer seems to have made a list of the elements he needed to include, put them together, and then, after realizing he had several parts left over, shrugged his shoulders hoping nobody would notice. Like an Ikea futon with missing screws, the book doesn’t hold up to close inspection. Colfer, who is successful enough in his own right that he didn’t need the paycheck, deserves credit for giving And Another Thing… his best effort. Unfortunately, readers would have been better served if he had just turned down the assignment in the first place.

© 2009, Christopher Stansfield. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed to the public under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License, and may only be distributed according to the terms of said license. To view a copy of this license, please click here.

Theater Review: ROOMS a rock romance

ROOMS a rock romance (sic) tries very hard to give the audience for a “a rock romance,” what it wants – loud, heavy music combined with a love story straight out of The Idiot’s Guide to Romantic Comedy – and in that sense, at least, it does exactly what it needs to. Yes, Boy meets Girl. Boy also loses Girl. Does Boy win Girl back? I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you can watch the opening scene without figuring out exactly what happens in the closing scene, you probably aren’t paying enough attention to care.

If New World Stages is attempting to maintain a precisely-varied roster (it seems like there’s always one show for the kids; one for their grandparents; one that’s “serious”; one that’s titillating; one that “rocks”; and, of course, one that’s Altar Boyz and one that’s Naked Boys Singing), ROOMS is the perfect replacement for Rock of Ages, which has transferred to Broadway. Like that musical, ROOMS demands little of its audience, but provides a solid hour-or-so of diversion. Unfortunately, I found myself wishing that the book’s authors (Paul Scott Goodman and Miriam Gordon) would gather enough courage to take the risk of challenging the audience’s expectations once or twice.

The book’s banality is especially disappointing because the two stars, Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger, are very talented: it is clear that they’ve worked hard to connect with their roles and with the audience. Kreeger, in particular, wrings every bit of emotion possible out of his portrayal of Ian, a depressed, phobic, working-class Glasgow musician with a heavy drinking problem. He combines this emotionality with a strong singing voice, and uses both to powerful effect in numbers like “Fear of Flying” and “Clean.” Kritzer is slightly less successful as Monica P. Miller, a Jewish Scottish Princess whose sheer ambition (her motto: “Whatever It Takes”) leads her to become, consecutively, a Bat Mitzvah entertainer; punk rocker; cabaret singer; and jingle writer. Though Kritzer is a gifted comic, she’s less believable during those moments she’s called upon to show vulnerability. This isn’t entirely her fault – her character largely operates on one unchanging level throughout the show, until a rather forced and perfunctory climax. Kritzer is also a strong singer, but she and Kreeger are both hindered by Scottish accents that too often seem cribbed from tapes of Uncle Scrooge McDuck and Star Trek’s Scotty – their artificiality is frequently distracting and adds little.

There is not much to say about the show’s songs (also written by Goodman). They are rhythmic (and loud) enough to keep things interesting, and they are entertaining. However, many of them lack melody: it’s surprising that a show about aspiring pop stars has so few musical hooks. I enjoyed the music while I was in the theater, but I can’t honestly remember much of it a day later. (It is also clear that Goodman has no real knowledge of punk rock beyond a few surface traits – and someone should inform him and Gordon that punk and New Wave are not the same thing, despite the terms being used interchangeably throughout the show.)

Scott Schwartz, the show’s director, deserves credit for staging the two actors (and one door) cleverly and organically. Under his direction, the first half of the show has several memorable comedic moments, and he directs the more serious portion of the show with sensitivity and honesty.

Ultimately, ROOMS a rock romance succeeds in providing a night’s entertainment, and the actors’ performances, at least, are worth seeing. It’s just a shame that their charisma isn’t being showcased in something a bit more thought-provoking.

ROOMS a rock romance is in an open-ended run at New World Stages, 340
West 50th Street, Clinton; (212) 239-6200, telecharge.com.

© 2009, Christopher Stansfield. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed to the public under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License, and may only be distributed according to the terms of said license. To view a copy of this license, please click here.

Film Review: Watchmen

Watchmen is not a movie about superheroes. For one thing, barely any of the characters in the film do anything heroic. Secondly, none of the people in Watchmen (with one notable exception) has any super-powers to speak of. What Watchmen is about can apparently be debated – Alan Moore, the writer of the comic book that the film is adapted from, thought it was about misplaced hero worship. On the other hand, Watchmen’s director, Zack Snyder, apparently thinks it’s a celebration of bone-crushing, blood-spurting violence. I think it’s about three hours long.

In the year or so that rumors have been spreading through the “fan community” (an expression used earnestly by comic book readers and derisively by everyone else) about the long-awaited adaptation of Watchmen, a great deal of worry has arisen regarding whether Watchmen would be faithful to the comic. Those fears will be put to rest by the film that was released yesterday. With the exception of the infamous “squid monster” and several of the more meta-textual elements of the series, Watchmen, the movie, is faithful to a fault to Watchmen, the comic book. All 300-plus pages of plot, subplot, and back-story have been crammed into a 160-minute film – and it feels like it. By using (Watchmen artist) Dave Gibbons’ original drawings as a strict storyboard and, at times, cribbing whole paragraphs of dialogue from the comic, Snyder and writers David Hayter and Alex Tse can all sincerely claim religious fidelity to the original text. Unfortunately, they get all the details right while somehow missing the point of the book – rather like a Catholic who reads the New Testament and thinks the story is “about” torture. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Gibson.)

Watchmen begins, portentously, with violence. For about five minutes, audience members are treated to the furniture-splintering, tooth-loosening, bone-crushing, window-smashing murder of Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), whom we soon learn was once a costumed vigilante and government operative codenamed “The Comedian.” Then, to get audiences acquainted with the universe this murder mystery is set in, an extended title credits sequence follows. Despite it being (painfully) set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changin,” this sequence is probably the cleverest part of the film. In very little time, the various tableaux depicted (including warped versions of famous scenes like V-E Day in Times Square, the assassination of JFK, and Studio 54) manage to illustrate the differences between our world and the world of the Watchmen; the realities of superhero life; and much of the flashback material from the comic book that could not be included in the actual film.

The credits are handled in such a witty, seamless manner that one can be forgiven for expecting the rest of the film to be as smooth and understandable. Unfortunately, once the “real” movie gets underway, the labyrinthine plot complications and myriad characters that are so enjoyable to read at one’s own pace feel rushed and one-dimensional within the confines of a film (even one as long as this one). In rapid succession, the rest of the cast is introduced: psychotic, Objectivist Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley); Nite Owls I and II (the latter also known as wimpy technogeek Dan Drieberg, played by Patrick Wilson); the first and second Silk Spectres (Carla Gugino and Malin Ackerman, respectively); Ozymandias (“world’s smartest human” Adrian Veidt, played by Matthew Goode); and finally, Dr. Manhattan, a God-like CGI superman with blue skin (and little clothing). Manhattan (played by Billy Crudup in pre-origin flashbacks and voiced by him in present-day sequences) is less a character than he is a catalyst: it is largely his presence during the Vietnam War and other pivotal moments of history that caused Watchmen’s Earth to look so different from our own (one major difference: Richard Nixon is still president in 1985, when the film is set.)

The particulars of the convoluted (even for a comic book movie) plot are largely unimportant. While Rorschach and his somewhat-more-reluctant allies investigate the Comedian’s murder, Ozymandias concerns himself with the rapidly growing threat of nuclear devastation and Dr. Manhattan decides to abandon humanity, since it has already, clearly, abandoned him. In the original comic book, the prosaic details of the interwoven plots and flashbacks served to illuminate a philosophical worldview. In the movie, they serve as a staging ground for ever-escalating scenes of violence and pessimism.

It is true that Watchmen doesn’t contain any scenes of violence that aren’t in the comic. However, the execution of these scenes is radically different. Events such as the Comedian’s murder and an attempted mugging appear in the comic book as series of a few panels each. Much of the actual action is left off the page, and (notably for a comic book) few, if any, sound effects are employed. Compare that to the movie – before the Comedian’s attempted rape of Silk Spectre is averted, Gugino and Morgan have punched, kicked, bitten, and thrown each other through furniture in a sequence that could have been cut from Mr. and Mrs. Smith. An assassination attempt that, in the comic, consists of one secretary getting shot, becomes an orgy of bullets through heads, chests, and abdomens. Rorschach’s murder of a child molester, represented in the comic by a burning building and some chilling dialogue, is replaced by a series of cleaver blows to the molester’s skull. Each of these examples is underscored by the full range of wince-producing Foley sound effects – one can only guess at how many watermelons were slaughtered to produce the cleaver sequence. While Moore and Gibbons, of necessity, depicted violence in order to underscore the neuroses of their characters, Snyder depicts it because he apparently thinks it looks cool (his previous film, 300, is further evidence of this mindset), and ends up demonstrating that he has completely missed the point.

If lack of subtlety is apparent in the action sequences, Snyder can be applauded for the consistency of his approach. Watchmen’s one sex scene is portrayed in three panels of undressing and several more of post-coital pillow talk in the comic book. In the movie, we get several minutes of sweaty humping and thrusting in numerous positions, backed by Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It’s hard to know what’s more laughable – the soft-core Cinemax-style sex or the cliché background music. The soundtrack, in fact, is a glaring example of Snyder’s sledgehammer approach to storytelling. Besides the aforementioned Dylan and Cohen songs, there’s “The Sounds of Silence” at a funeral, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” during a business meeting, and even “Ride of the Valkyries” during the Vietnam War. (Someone should tell Snyder that that particular song didn’t play during the actual war, Coppola aside.)

Of course, there’s also the issue of Dr. Manhattan’s body parts. While male full-frontal nudity is, due to Americans’ (im)maturity, somewhat daring in a mainstream film (and fans would accuse the filmmakers of cowardice if they hadn’t depicted Manhattan as he is in the comic), Snyder and his team are, once again, guilty of a “hey, look at this,” sensibility. The Doctor Manhattan of the comics is discreetly endowed (as one would expect a man unconcerned with appearances to be), but the one in the movie has such a large, constantly-swinging (in that slithery, CGI way) member that it is, predictably, distracting (and does not encourage any sort of mature response on the part of the audience). Aesthetic choices like these make the film seem more like a parody of the book it is based on than the reverent re-imagining it tries to be.

Some of this lack of nuance extends to the dialogue, as well, which features several lines of the “audience-is-too-stupid-to-understand-otherwise” variety. If one has read the comic book, it is jarring to hear the characters referred to repeatedly as “The Watchmen.” That word never appears in the comic except on the cover and in occasional background graffiti, but here it’s used as though the characters are a team of mutants or a doo-wop ensemble. I can picture a studio executive saying, “I like the movie, but people are gonna wonder when the Watchmen show up!” Likewise, the narration, which is essential in a static medium like comic books, is completely redundant in a movie like this – excerpts from Rorschach’s journal are one thing, but Dr. Manhattan soliloquizing about his lack of humanity is completely unnecessary. There is also one thuddingly-obvious line in the picture that rips off the climax of The Empire Strikes Back. I half-expected to see Malin Ackerman get her hand chopped off after it was spoken.

Despite Snyder’s ham-handed rendering of the material, the actors can at least, by and large, be commended for taking their roles seriously and finding emotional touchstones in the material. Wilson is nuanced and even touching as Drieberg (who is depicted as a sort of reverse comic book archetype – in this case, Clark Kent is the real man and Superman the pose.) Morgan is convincing as the amoral Comedian, and, though he can’t do much as Dr. Manhattan other than speak in a detached monotone, Crudup makes the most of his limited role. Unfortunately, both Ackerman and Goode are badly miscast: the former comes off as a one-note bimbo, and Goode plays captain-of-industry Veidt as a peroxided club-kid with an indeterminate accent. However, the truly revelatory performance of the movie belongs to Haley. Though his unyielding, psychotic Rorschach is covered by a mask during the majority of the film, his voice is appropriately chilling – and, when the mask finally comes off, Haley is genuinely frightening and all-too believable.

It would also be unfair of me not to point out that, visually, the film is stunning. Aside from a leopard creature and Dr. Manhattan himself (I still think that CGI-rendered humans and animals are jarring when shown in motion), the effects are beautifully rendered, and the art direction and set design somehow look simultaneously fantastic and realistic. It is clear that, in that respect, Snyder cared about what he was doing. In fact, “lack of care,” is one thing I cannot accuse Snyder of, in general. Every long minute of Watchmen shows that Snyder cares tremendously about both the book he’s adapting and the movie he’s making. I only wish I could believe that his care came with genuine understanding.

WATCHMEN: directed by Zack Snyder; written by David Hayter and Alex Tse, based on the graphic novel illustrated by Dave Gibbons; and released by Warner Brothers
Pictures and Paramount Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.

WITH: Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II), Billy Crudup (Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan), Matthew Goode (Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias), Carla Gugino (Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre), Jackie Earle Haley (Walter Kovacs/Rorschach), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Edward Blake/the Comedian) and Patrick Wilson (Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II).

© 2009, Christopher Stansfield. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed to the public under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License, and may only be distributed according to the terms of said license. To view a copy of this license, please click here.

Theater Review: Guys and Dolls

There are really only two artistic reasons to revive a musical. One is to make a show that is old and familiar into something fresh and newly relevant. The second is to reproduce a classic faithfully in order to present it to audiences who never had a chance to see the original. There is something to be said for the latter reasoning — recent revivals like A Chorus Line and The Fantasticks have succeeded to varying degrees as trapped-in-amber photocopies — and the former method is currently being employed with South Pacific, a show that everybody has seen in one form or another. Unfortunately, the newest revival of Guys and Dolls doesn’t seem to know what sort of revival it’s trying to be, and it fails on both levels. An almost purely mechanical piece of theater, Guys and Dolls somehow manages to be overly familiar and gimmicky at the same time.

Guys and Dolls is considered by many to be the prototypical musical. Nearly every song in Frank Loesser’s still-magnificent score went on to become a standard, and Abe Burrows’s book is a model of comic and dramatic economy, intertwining plots and characters from several of Damon Runyon’s short stories with original material. It has been revived on Broadway about a hundred times (give or take a few), most notably in a critically-adored 1992 production. Combine those productions with the thousands that take place every year in summer stock, bus-and-truck tours, dinner theaters, and high school auditoriums (not to mention frequent television airings of the 1955 film adaptation), and it becomes hard to believe that any lover of musical theater is unfamiliar with the story of Nathan Detroit, Miss Adelaide, Sky Masterson, and Sarah Brown.

When a show is that familiar, it is imperative to infuse any new production with new energy, and director Des McAnuff (late of Jersey Boys) has added a few elements that beg to be regarded as serious “concepts.” A new prologue and epilogue featuring Damon Runyon (Raymond Del Barrio) and his typewriter bookend the show, and a great deal of time and energy is devoted to new, highly acrobatic choreography by Sergio Trujillo: if the idea of breakdancing in a production of Guys and Dolls appalls you, you’ll want to stay home. The set design is also distinctly modern — the orchestra has been moved backstage from its pit in order to extend the stage, and a giant Jumbotron screen serves as a modern (and frankly, tacky) backdrop. Moreover, the numbers featuring Miss Adelaide and her Hot Box Girls are treated somewhat more honestly (that is to say, sexually) than in previous incarnations of the show, and Miss Adelaide herself, as portrayed by Lauren Graham, is a harder character than she has previously been shown to be. She retains few of the squeaky, Betty Boop-esque mannerisms that have become associated with her.

Unfortunately, these changes are purely cosmetic. Rather than revealing anything new about the very familiar characters and situations, the overly long dance breaks and videos of airplanes heading to and arriving from Cuba simply slow down the show. Moreover, they serve as reminders that there really is nothing new going on onstage. For one thing, McAnuff’s staging is rote to the point of being amateurish. It is possible to anticipate every musical solo, because the character delivering it will have invariably made his or her way downstage to sing it directly to the audience. Similarly, romantic duets are presented in strict profile, and dance solos typically end up center stage. This kind of “look-at-me” obviousness gives the production the feel of a high school musical.

The real problem, however, is that Guys and Dolls doesn’t truly work unless the characters are treated as real people with real problems and real emotions. When characters are written as cartoonish stereotypes, as these characters arguably are, the director should be willing and able to bring them down to earth and find ways to make them real. However, McAnuff fails on that level. He seems to see the show as all surface — he apparently made little effort to lead the cast to emotionally-resonant performances. Unfortunately, he has no help from the performers.

Anyone who has attempted to deliver dialogue from Guys and Dolls can be forgiven for thinking that the phrasing is a bit artificial. It is — in fact, the particular patois of Runyon’s New York was largely created by Runyon himself. However, if an actor truly works to understand his character, and speaks Burrows’s words with conviction, it is easy to believe what is happening on stage — this has been proven in numerous productions, most recently in the 1992 revival. How unfortunate, then, that most of the cast recite their lines as though they’re reading them phonetically off a TelePrompTer. It is perhaps for this reason that Kate Jennings Grant, as Salvation Army officer Sarah Brown, fares best of the four leads. As one of the few actors unencumbered with “Runyonese,” Grant evinces more of a connection with her character, and her conflicted feelings for Sky Masterson (Craig Bierko) ring true, as do her solos, which are delivered in a clear and winning voice.

Far less successful are Graham and Oliver Platt, who plays Nathan Detroit. Though both actors (neither of whom is known for musical theater work) have on-key, inoffensive singing voices, neither seem comfortable in their roles. They both do what they’re “supposed to,” (Graham sneezes gamely while Platt’s eyes dart about constantly) but there is nothing in their performances that suggests they believe what they’re saying or that they even know what feelings they’re portraying. As they struggle to define their characters, they also struggle to find any chemistry with each other, making their pairing as unrealistic as their line readings are. Chemistry is also a problem with Grant and Bierko as Sarah and Sky — though both are veteran musical theater performers, they seem more concerned with “doing Guys and Dolls” than they are with making their courtship believable.

The remaining members of the cast similarly struggle to make what they’re doing and saying meaningful. Again, the Salvation Army members come off a bit better than their gangland counterparts do. Jim Ortlieb is surprisingly effective in the unrewarding role of Arvide Abernathy, and comes off as genuinely affectionate toward Sarah. The always-reliable Mary Testa is given little to do as General Cartwright, but does what she can with what she has. Tituss Burgess and Steve Rosen (as Nicely-Nicely and Benny Southstreet), however, are all mannerism and no heart. Burgess’ gospel-ized rendition of “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ The Boat” is loud, but toothless.

Guys and Dolls is durable — if not unkillable. This production will not erase the memory of previous ones, and this surely is not the last time the show will be revived. I only hope that the next group of people to present Guys and Dolls on Broadway has a clear motive in doing so, beyond the promise of reliable box office returns. This production, unfortunately, seems to have no real purpose in mind at all: and it shows.

© 2009, Christopher Stansfield. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed to the public under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License, and may only be distributed according to the terms of said license. To view a copy of this license, please click here.