Cabin in the Sky

In 2016 Encores produced a concert of Cabin in the Sky. Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Jack Viertel tried to cut the condescending material from Root's original book. Critics remained unimpressed with the "religious fable" despite the jazzy score. The show is best remembered for the starry 1943 film. The film is enjoyable but only kept three songs from the stage show.

Clips:
Ethel Waters singing the hit song "Taking a Chance on Love."
Lena Horne singing "Ain't It The Truth" in a bath tub. The scene was cut by the censors.
Highlights from the Encores concert starring LaChanze, Chuck Cooper and Norm Lewis.

Little Shop of Horrors

I've touched on Little Shop twice before, but wanted to give it a full post.

Reviews of the recent American Psycho musical have said there's no way to make the murderous protagonist sympathetic. This got me thinking about Seymour Krelborn. I mock (and lust after) Patrick Bateman. I pity Sweeney Todd. I genuinely like Seymour. From the moment I hear the song "Skid Row" I'm on his side. How does he do it?

Well, like Sweeney, he has a loathsome antagonist and a seductive accomplice. Like Sweeney he also does some truly awful things in Act Two. Unlike Sweeney he holds on to the possibility of redemption. *** spoiler? *** The movie gave him a happy ending, but it left a sour aftertaste. We may want him to get away with it but understand when he doesn't. ***

So why did this popular show flop when it opened on Broadway in 2003? Some said the stage was too big, the performances too arch, the material too dated. An Encores concert in 2015 showed that the show still works if the larger-than-life characters are played with honesty.

*** EDIT: Seeing the show again I realize that Seymour and Audrey's fatal flaw is their crippling self-loathing. It's not greed as they don't really take advantage of their new found income. They're given several opportunities to escape their fate but keep making poor choices from a place of low self-worth.

Heathers

More murder this week as we look at Heathers the musical. This vicious teen "comedy" set the template for softer films like Mean Girls, but also shares DNA with the horror of Carrie. Westerberg High School is a battlefield filled with violent bullies and clueless teachers, honing students for the cruel world of the late 1980's.

Veronica, the anti-hero protagonist, dances on a knife edge. The film never quite tells us how aware she is of J.D's schemes and the musical pushes her further into ignorance. By the end of the story she's seen and done too much to be truly innocent but the right actress can still maintain audience sympathy.

 Much ink has been spilt about the escalation in high school violence in the past decade. High schools may perform West Side Story but it will be some time before they feel comfortable producing Heathers. Neither the 1988 film, nor the 2014Off-Broadway production had commercial success but both have established loyal cult followings who remember the world it portrays.

The Apple

Part Rocky Horror, part biblical allegory and part acid trip. The Apple gets weird fast. Legends say that the premiere audience was given free copies of the soundtrack. Shortly into the film the audience began to boo furiously and throw the records at the screen. Few walked away from this with careers intact. 

As TV Guide wrote: "Making a cult hit is harder than it looks."

Shock Treatment

In 1981 the team behind the cult smash The Rocky Horror Show gathered as much of the original cast as they could for a sequel. Tim Curry was unwilling or unavailable to reprise Dr. Frank-N-Furter so a new set of villains were invented to torment Brad and Janet in Shock Treatment. A Screen Actors Guild Strike, limited distribution and mixed reviews plagued the film and it disappeared from memory.

In 2015 Richard O'Brien finally allowed a stage adaptation which premiered at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington, London. This version kept the songs, cut some of the extraneous characters and added more nudity. Reviews were enthusiastic.

Damn Yankees

I love Damn Yankees but I’ll admit it’s oddly structured. Who is it about? Joe and Meg are technically the protagonists as their marriage is at stake, but Applegate (The Devil) and Lola drive the plot and get the best songs.  The baseball team gets the dances while their quest to beat the Yankees and win the pennant is kept offstage. The 1994 revisal adjusted this by focusing on “the big game” in the finale.

Gwen Verdon’s Lola was unquestionably the heart and… soul… of the original production. You can play Lola as a comical vamp and get laughs but Verdon did more.  She’d grown tired of the vamp act. Joe’s initial resistance made it fun for her again but his sincerity made her drop the mask. She never forgot that she  was “the ugliest woman in Providence, Rhode Island” wearing a supernatural disguise. It gave the breezy musical comedy some pathos.

Of course modern directors can also play up the homoeroticism. That’s okay too.