Carrie the Musical at the Azienda Theater
I vividly remember seeing the original production of Carrie the Musical on Broadway. It had opened the night before. The reviews were not kind. It was clear this would be one of the season’s most notorious flops, possibly one for the ages. As Act II began at “The Pig Farm” and the nasty high schoolers sang Out for Blood with its refrain of “Kill the pig, Get its blood”, you could hear virtually the entire theater stifling guffaws and stomping their feet at the unintended campy hilarity of it all. It closed, after 5 performances, two days later.
So when The Company – A St. Bernard Community Theater announced they were doing Carrie the Musical, I couldn’t wait to see it. Was it really as bad as I recalled? Or had time been kind to it?
It’s kinda hard to say as the Carrie presented recently at the Azienda Theater in Chalmette is the revised version, done off-Broadway in 2012. The campy excess is gone as is Out for Blood. Carrie’s mother Margaret’s religious extremism remains, albeit in reduced form; the same goes for Carrie’s telekinetic powers. The musical gives you a fairly straightforward rendering of Stephen King’s gothic tale of high school angst and bullying, but it seemed something was missing.
Ben Brantley’s New York Times review of the 2012 revival pinpoints what that missing thing is: “screams have mostly been replaced by a conversational drone”, “these students feel a trifle too ordinary, too unindividuated”, and “you never get a sense of the raging hormones that can make teenagers feel dangerous, as you did in recent musicals like Spring Awakening”. Yup.
Even all that could’ve been overlooked if the score had yielded a memorable song or two. Yet while composer Michael Gore and lyricist Dean Pitchford have replaced 6 of the original numbers with 9 new ones, none of them, old or new, linger in the mind the way this team’s Oscar-winning Fame did.
Despite all that, The Company’s production was enjoyable precisely because they met Carrie the Musical on its own terms and didn’t try to make more of it than what it is.
Directors John Collins and Mary Collins wisely did away with virtually all the scenery except for a few chairs, a nightstand, and a minimum of decorations for the climatic prom at the high school gym. Not only did this allow for smoother scene changes, of which there are many, but it impelled the audience to use their own imaginations to conjure up the various settings, not a bad thing.
As is often the case with this spunky theater company, its productions benefit by having a cast that believably portrays ordinary people; the actors of this Carrie are echt high school kids, not the overly-polished chorus boys and girls of a Broadway musical.
To give one example of how that works in The Company’s favor, by sheer coincidence, I recently came across the Playbill for Carrie that I had taken notes in many years ago (why I kept it, I have no idea as I usually toss them after my review comes out); one of my notes was “Reebok sneakers at prom?” meaning that, with its million dollar costumes, loafers and high heels would’ve seemed more appropriate. In Chalmette, Johnelle Duncan’s costumes have the lived-in feel of a milieu in which sneakers would not be out of place at a prom.
The Company was fortunate to have Isabella Rodi as Carrie. If I found Linzi Hateley, the original Carrie, to be “abysmal”, Frank Rich, in the NYTimes, described her as having “none of the vulnerability of Sissy Spacek’s film Carrie”; similarly, Brantley wrote that Molly Ranson, 2012’s Carrie, was “a pretty feisty babe.”
Isabella Rodi (center) and the cast of Carrie the Musical (photo by Emma Massengale & Jane D’Antonio)
Rodi properly evoked the sense of that kind of kid that everybody overlooks until something happens, a fart, perhaps, or, in this case, bleeding in the locker room showers from her first (unexpected) period, that brands her by the mean kids in class as a loser. Not only did Rodi project the requisite aching vulnerability but, equally important, when Tommy, urged by his girlfriend Sue who’s feeling guilty about the bullying Carrie’s endured, asks her to the prom, Rodi, without ever overdoing it, blossomed like a plant that has, finally, been given a little water. And as Rodi layered outer meekness with inner strength, it allowed us to comprehend that not only could she stand up to her domineering mother, but explained where her powerful singing voice comes from. Hmmm…maybe Rodi should’ve been onstage in NYC.
Arianna D’Antonio, as Sue, and Harley Crowe, as Chris, the mean girls’ Queen Bee, who also choreographed, both sang excellently and inhabited all the contours of their mirror image characters. Jennifer Landry was also fine as Margaret, her powerful voice aptly tinged with steel, but one wishes Lawrence D. Cohen’s revised book (he also wrote the original screenplay) had amped up her nutsy religious beliefs to explain better why Carrie is the way she is…and why this Mom does what she does at the very end.
If the Carrie in Chalmette didn’t end in the same shriek-inducing way as the cinematic version did, it certainly allowed the audience to leave with a smile on their faces for a job well done.
[The Company will next present David Ives’ All in the Timing, an evening of six, short comic plays, at the Azienda Theater January 21-24. For more information, go to https://www.facebook.com/TheCompanySTB]
Wendy, Darling: An Aquatic Retelling of The Shining at the Midtown Hotel
Carrie wasn’t the only Stephen King-inspired entertainment this fall. The ever-enterprisingAqua Mob, New Orleans’ first and only community-based water ballet ensemble, presented their newest extravaganza Wendy, Darling: An Aquatic Retelling of The Shining at the Midtown Hotel. With perfect timing, a full moon looked down on the SRO crowd the night I saw it.
Lizzy Collins wrote and directed this adaptation of King’s tale of the horrible happenings that occur when aspiring novelist Jack, wife Wendy and their young son Danny move into a large, old Colorado hotel to look after it while it is closed for the winter.
After a great beginning which set the scene, Collins ingeniously blended the story and water ballet sequences. There seemed, however, to be a little more expository dialog than is usual for Aqua Mob and the show didn’t come fully alive until Miss Daisy Konfused, as the hotel’s head chef, led a number which she choreographed to ABBA’s Lay All Your Love On Me.
Miss Daisy Konfused (center) and the cast of Wendy, Darling–An Aquatic Retelling of The Shining
Admittedly, Aqua Mob shows are virtually critic-proof–how can you not love such an only-in-NOLA experience–but Wendy, Darling, while tremendously fun and enjoyable, seemed a bit less lively than such previous efforts as adaptations of Evil Dead 2 and, yes, Carrie, perhaps because the evening’s choreography, done by a flotilla’s worth of dance-makers, while overall very good, could’ve used just a few more “Wowza!” moves. That the intermission went way too long also didn’t help, sapping the show of some of the energy that had been building.
Still, the band The Bomb Pulse lit into such songs as Here Comes the Rain Again and Don’t Go Breaking My Heart with terrific vitality. The production values, including Pandora Gastellum’s puppets (I assume she did the fantastic typewriter prop) and the fun & scary costumes, were very high. Tony the Tiger, Danny’s imaginary friend (played by Stephanie Swanberg), was a wild addition to the plot. And the dual pole dancers, Mary Burns and Collins, choreographed by Burns to Creep, were absolutely fabulous, one of the most stunning acrobatic/balletic routines I’ve ever seen.
Among the huge, bigger than usual cast (it seemed like each number had its own group of performers), Riley Elise brought the right combination of sensitivity and toughness to Danny. Rebecca Poole was a decent-at-heart, grounded Wendy and rivals Jamie Lee Curtis as a scream queen. And Cody Keech not only delivered a knowingly sly take on Jack Nicholson’s Jack, but exhibited true acting chops as well; I hope I might see him in other things such as works by Sam Shepard. In fact, I suspect he could make a magnificent Stanley Kowalski.
The performance I attended was delayed by about a half hour courtesy of a neighborhood-wide power outage (thanks Entergy!). While a few audience members departed, not knowing when the electricity would be coming back on, those who stayed were rewarded with a shining example of NOLA’s unique creative sensibility. I’m already looking forward to what Aqua Mob will do next year.
[For more information about Aqua Mob, go to https://aquamobnola.com/main/]
The Case of the Bitchin’ Queen Belles–A Golden Girls Drag Musical at The AllWays Lounge’s Twilight Room
Those looking for campy frivolity in October were treated not only to Wendy, Darling, but to The Case of the Bitchin’ Queen Belles at The AllWays Lounge’s Twilight Room. Trey Bien brought back his “Golden Girls Drag Musical” that assured all of a gay ol’ time.
Bien might’ve subtitled his show “A Golden Girls Drag Murder Mystery Musical” as the gals put their wits together to solve a murder that occurs at a nightclub which allows them, and others, to break into song. Bien employs vintage songs–Chicago’s Cell Block Tango was a highlight—to fine effect, but don’t expect me to explain the mishigas of the plot. That said, it’s all well-written, filled with playful, bitchy humor.
All the Girls (Lola Van Ella as Blanche, Laveau Contraire as Rose, and Bien as Dorothy) were good, but the standout was the Sophia of Virginia Slim Jim, a performer new to me. Granted, Sophia did get the best lines, but VSJ’s Betty Boop-ish demeanor and naughty innocence (or was it innocent naughtiness?) made for a perfect fit for Sophia and her tales of Sicily. Her and Dorothy’s rendition of I Got You Babe marvelously evoked fond memories of Sonny & Cher. Yet another highlight–Prince Octavian, as the nightclub’s maître d’, who performed Funiculì, Funiculà with an impressively operatic voice.
The cast of The Case of the Bitchin’ Queen Belles–A Golden Girls Drag Musical
I would just suggest that if Bien brings these Queen Belles back again–and I hope he does–that Ms. Contraire, whose great talent as an actress and comedienne I admired last year in Bien’s The Night Fiona Flawless Went Mad, should take on the role of Blanche which, with her strong stage presence, she seems better suited for.
But overall, there was no mystery about The Case of the Bitchin’ Queen Belles. It was silly fun, well done, leaving nothing to bitch about.
