Ripley and the production got bad reviews in Florida, so the producers fired her and the director and most of the cast other than Hunter -- Hunter was the only member of that cast to make it to Broadway.
Jerry Zaks came in and hastily put together a new production, so that they could keep the Virginia and bring the show in last season.
I love the show, but this production of it was a misfire IMO. I saw the original off-Broadway and in addition to the intimacy, Ellen Greene, Lee Wilkoff and the rest of the cast understood how to play the style of the show, which Zaks and his cast didn't. In addition to being too broad comedically (an effort, I suppose to "fill the space"), too often the actors were cartoonish and over-the-top, which served to undercut the show's humor. With this kind of show, less is more and nothing kills the laughs like "winking" and "indicating" the jokes to the audience -- it works for the first ten minutes, but then the jokes start falling flat becuase you're overplaying them. The cast was working way too hard to "sell" the jokes, when actually the show is much funnier when it's played realistically with a touch of earnestness. The book is constructed well-enough that if the actors focus on playing each scene naturalistically and with energy, the laughs come automatically from the sheer absurdity and outrageousness of the situations -- the more real it's played, the funnier it ends up being to the audience.
That was what was so amazing about Ellen Greene's performance -- she never played anything for laughs, yet everything she said and did was hysterically funny. She trusted the material and played it straight with such a heartbreaking earnestness and vulnerability, she made audiences laugh and cry at the same time. Kerry Butler might have been capable of that, but she was misdirected and her Audrey wasn't half as effective as it could have been.
Zaks has proven himself a very capable director of comedy over the years, but I don't think he had enough time in this instance to figure out how best to stage this show (and probably wasted too much time getting the damn giant plant to work at the end). At it's best, LSOH is both funnier and more emotionally affecting than this last Broadway production -- perhaps if Zaks had had a few more weeks of rehearsal he'd have realized his mistakes.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 8/23/04 at 05:43 PM
