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.