The last time we heard a score by Sklar and
Beguelin it was at Signature Theatre in Arlington with The Rhythm Club,
a 1930s jazz- tinted musical drama set in Nazi Germany. This time it is on
Broadway, with a 1980s rock-tinted musical comedy set in Ridgefield, New
Jersey. Anything in common? Yes: tunefulness, lyric inventiveness and a
certain respect for the function of a show tune. The score of The Rhythm
Club has yet to be recorded for commercial release - more's the pity.
This time, however, we do have a recording of the full score of The
Wedding Singer, and it reveals both the considerable strengths and the
occasional weaknesses of this
frolic through Broadway conventions - an up-tempo, goodtime piece of
escapism that reflects a bit of the sensibilities of the Adam Sandler movie
on which it is based |
Storyline: The lead singer in Simply Wed, a band specializing in playing
wedding receptions in and around Ridgefield New Jersey, is stood up at the
alter for his own wedding. A waitress who also works these gigs tries to
cheer him up. She's engaged to be married and wants him to work her wedding
reception. But they fall for each other and he has to find a way to keep her
from making the mistake of marrying the wrong man so she'll be free to marry
him.
The musical has a book by Beguelin and the
"Saturday Night Live" writer/producer who wrote the script for the movie
original. Despite the inventiveness of Sklar and Beguelin's score, the
"Saturday Night Live" sensibility shows through, especially in the use of
semi-free standing bits like the "Dear John" letter song that the Wedding
Singer's intended bride sings, or the rap that his horny grandmother spouts.
Two numbers written by Sandler and Herlihy for the movie are used in the
show and don't quite match the quality of Sklar and Beguelin's work. One of
those songs by Sandler and Herlihy, "Grow Old With You" fits fairly well in
its incarnation here, but the other, "Somebody Kill Me," with its standup
comic structure and language intended for the movie's expected fans, college
students out on a date night, seems a construction far apart from the rest.
Perhaps the use of "Somebody Kill Me" with its sharp burst of an obscenity
necessitated Beguelin's inclusion of an occasional vulgarity for "shock
value" in his own lyrics, but his work shines with more sophisticated types
of wit. The finest Sklar-Beguelin piece is the one that
opens and closes the show - "It's Your Wedding Day." (Who knows,
however, why there is a twenty-second sound clip after twenty-seconds of
silence at the end of the final track.)
Those who listen to
this recording expecting a musical version of the movie's story should be
aware that the plot is carried farther in the show than in the movie, which
ended on the airplane headed to Las Vegas. Here, the couple-to-be actually
make it to Vegas where the climax takes place in a wedding chapel populated
by impersonators, not of Elvis but of Billy Idol, Tina Turner, Imelda Marcos
and - yes - Ronald Reagan.
Stephen Lynch makes his Broadway
debut as the wedding singer and proves that he's completely up to the challenge. Laura Benanti (Cinderella in Into the Wood's revival)
seemed a bit miscast on stage as
the pert and wholesomely pretty waitress who falls for him. This may be
because her on stage persona is a bit too sophisticated for the role. On the
disc there is no such mismatch and she shines vocally. Both Amy Spangler (Bianca in Kiss Me, Kate's revival)
as her best friend and Felicia Finley (Aida's replacement Amneris) as
the Wedding Singer's fiancé who leaves him alone at the alter, come across
on the recording as well as they do live - which is saying quite a lot since
both light up the house with their smaller but memorable roles.
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