David Rooney didn't like the show.
"Any child who saw Disney’s 1961 “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” remembers Cruella De Vil. “I worship furs!” this PETA Enemy No. 1 cried, scheming to skin those spotted whelps for coats and accessories. The terrifying image of her behind the wheel of her speeding roadster, red eyes blazing and skunk-striped hair flying, was imprinted on countless impressionable minds.
Judging by the young audience’s fidgetiness at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, where “The 101 Dalmatians Musical” recently began its New York engagement, no similar grip on the imagination is taking hold.
That diluted energy doesn’t fill the vast Garden auditorium. While this Jerry Zaks production is not short on garishly colorful design elements, the show thinks small, starting with the dogs.
It makes none of us feel younger when hair-metal relics start writing children’s musicals. Mr. DeYoung, a founding member of Styx, doesn’t let the fact that this audience wasn’t around in his heyday deter him from cranking up late-’70s-style power ballads. Mostly, though, the innocuous songs veer from TV theme tune to Lerner and Loewe-lite. They rarely advance the narrative, instead marking time between plot points or belaboring the key theme of family bliss.
Ultimately nothing onstage rivals the magic of a disarming moment one recent evening, when a trained dog slid on some snowflakes and botched its trick, then bounded back to get it right the second time. For the creators of this charm-challenged mutt of a musical, it’s too late for a redo.
Roll Over and Beg, Cruella, and Let the Fur Fly
Updated On: 4/16/10 at 04:19 PM
