|
The first rule of theater is to make your
audience care about the story you are telling. In musical theater, all the
lovely melodies, pithy lyrics, talented performances, extravagant sets,
colorful costumes and energetic dances work only if they are in service to a
story the audience wants to watch. That is the failing of this extravaganza, a
mega-musical in the mode of the earlier and far
more successful sung-through, sweeping epics Les Misérables and
Miss Saigon, which came from the pens of the principal creators of this
piece, composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricist Alain Boublil. This is
the second time they have tried to match those successes. Their Martin
Guerre didn't make it to Broadway. This big and very expensive attempt
has landed on a Broadway stage - indeed the same stage that hosted the last
great musical of the twentieth century, Ragtime. It
boasts a number of credits from the Ragtime success: Frank Galati
directed, Graciela Daniele handled musical staging and Eugene Lee designed the
sets. But, under Galati's unfocused direction, the package doesn't come together
like any of its predecessors and that is precisely because it never gets you
involved in the story it is telling. |
|
Storyline: At roughly the time that Queen Elizabeth was watching the plays
of Shakespeare in London, Grace (or Grania) O'Malley was fighting rival
clans and English forces on the seas on the west coast of Ireland. She loved
a young man but was married off to the son of the leader of a rival clan in
an effort to bring unity to the warring Irish people in the face of a common
enemy, the English. She inherited the leadership of a clan that ruled on sea
as well as on land, and she became known as "The Pirate Queen."
Finally, she traveled to England to deal directly with Queen Elizabeth
whose forces under the ruthless Richard Bingham were wreaking havoc over the
land she loved and the people she led.
Schönberg provides some lovely music here and it
is notable that you rarely say to yourself "that sounds a lot like
such-and-such from Les Mis or thus-and-so from Miss Saigon."
The style is similar, but the music is sufficiently distinctive to avoid
distracting the audience with memories of earlier triumphs. The lushness of
the material is given short shrift, however, in Julian Kelly's
orchestrations for a pit band of a nearly string-less eleven players (just
one violin). The lyrics do not sound quite like earlier efforts
either, but the level of
lyricism here is no match for "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" from
Les Mis or "Why, God,
Why" from Miss Saigon. Still, "I'll Be There" is searingly beautiful and the big
meeting between Grace and Elizabeth is preceded by a moving piece of musical
theater, a duet called "She Who Has All" which Galati stages in perhaps the
simplest, least extravagant and most effective manner of the evening.
Stephanie J. Block is not green this
time (as she was in
Wicked at
the Kennedy Center), but she's not real flesh and blood
either. She strides through her scenes posturing with a sense of swagger, and
sings the anthem-like songs written for her as if she's in a staged concert,
not a musical play. She sells her first big number, "Woman," with class and
for a while you expect more than you are going to get. Her love interest, Hadley Fraser, is charming and gets
some very good songs (he gets to sing "I'll Be There"), but there
doesn't seem to be much chemistry between the two of them. Their love only
gels briefly for "Here on this Night" in the first act and "If I Said I
Loved You" in the second. Block does seem to
evidence a soft spot for her father, played with a dignified version of
swashbuckling by Jeff McCarthy, even when he's marrying her off to Marcus Chait as the son of another chieftain for political reasons. The other
principal character is, of course, Queen Elizabeth I. Linda Balgord gets to
strut in those incredible gowns with the kirtle skirts with farthingale
framework that made the women look like walking tables from the waste down.
The music written for her uses an operatic sound to contrast with the more
plebian pop-rock sound for the Block and her cohorts. Balgord has the voice
to make that music soar but the melodies stoutly resist any effort to lift
them above
the boring scenes set in England.
The show has two very different
looks about it. The scenes on the Irish land and seas look a lot like the
covers of bodice-ripping romance novels with colorful sunsets behind ship
rigging or stone castles on craggy hills. A bang-crash-lightning-flash
storm effect joins Tarzan's equally dramatic one as the two biggest
since The Scarlet Pimpernel. The English
scenes are flat surfaces that set off the extravagant court costumes
designed by Martin Pakledinaz in jewel encrusted golden brocade and deep red
velvet. Knowing that the show is a production of Riverdream's Maya Doherty
and John McColgan, who gave us the ever-touring Riverdance, there is a
high expectation for lots of hands at the side, ramrod straight backed
step-dancing. There is some of this but not too much. Maybe not enough.
Music by Claude-Michel
Schönberg. Lyrics by Alain Boublil, Richard Maltby, Jr and John Dempsy. Book
by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Richard Maltby, Jr. Based on
the novel "Grania - She King of the Irish Sea" by Morgan Llywelyn. Directed
by Frank Galati. Musical staging by Graciela Daniele. Fight direction by J.
Steven White. Orchestrations, vocal arrangements and musical direction by
Julian Kelly. Design: Eugene Lee (set) Martin Pakledinaz (costumes) Angelina
Avallone (make-up) Paul Huntley (hair) Gregory Meeh (special effects) Paul
Rubin (aerial sequences) Kenneth Posner (lights) Jonathan Deans (sound).
Principal cast: Stephanie J. Block, Linda Balgord, Marcus Chait, Áine
Uí Cheallaigh, Brook Elliott, Hadley Fraser, Joseph Mahowald, Jeff
McCarthy, William Youmans.
|
