I saw the ninth performance Tuesday, 14 August in Seattle and thought I would add some notes. It's been interesting to see what other people think.
The show's strengths are its cast and production design. Roger Bart and Andrea Martin, in particular, are just wonderful. They are laboring in the shadows of icons (Wilder, Leachman, Kahn, Feldman) and for the most part they make you quit comparing. Bart's and Sutton Foster's effortless dancing and comic timing are astonishments. Bart, especially, has a moment where he appears to be picking up the "Transylvania Mania" dance steps on the fly that is just transcendent. You can't believe what you're seeing this man do.
Mullally is less of a home run. With cuts made quickly since the premiere, she's now in only one scene (of eleven!) in Act 1, in which she straight-up channels Madeleine Kahn. In Act II she's pretty much delivering her standard-brand helium-voiced self-obsessed "Will and Grace" persona. If you think that's great (I don't, particularly), you'll think she is as well. She can knock the house down with a song, too, and the Paramount in Seattle is a big honkin' house.
The sets and staging got repeated applause, deservedly so. In fact, the Seattle crowd, which is not know for theatergoing politesse (I've seen 'em stand up and walk up the aisle, turning their backs on casts taking bows), was really into the whole show and gave up a standing O at the finish.
The show's problems fall into two categories: bloat and prisoner-of-the-movie issues. The bloat they are clearly working on. The Act I I saw was still more than 90 minutes, and they'd already cut a Mullally number ("Alone"). They need to cut one or two more altogether, and shorten others. There are three huge, extended song-and-dance showstoppers: "Join the Family Business," "Transylvania Mania" in Act I and "Puttin' On the Ritz" in Act II. It's the latter that everyone will look forward to because the movie scene is so beloved. But it comes so late in the game, and the first two are such marathons, that "Puttin' On The Ritz" makes you think, "Omigod, here we go AGAIN," which is not how you really hoped to react to it. The show plays really, really long at this early point, but of course tweaks are what Seattle is for.
The prisoner-of-the-movie problem is a lot more difficult to tackle. Numerous set pieces are lifted from the movie whole and without embellishment. If they don't do it, audiences will miss them. When they do it, the effect is like what you get with English pantomine: you know exactly what's going to happen, no surprises, so actually seeing the movie gag, no more, no less, onstage is anticlimatic. When Monty Python went on tour and the crowds knew the sketches by heart and kept shouting the punch lines before the cast could utter them, I bet it felt about the same.
For this reason the hermit's cabin scene -- which is as familiar and surprise-free a reenactment as a Nativity play -- did nothing for me. There are lines that worked on film, like a Marty Feldman aside to the lens as Gene Wilder rants in the background, that are reproduced verbatim onstage but die without the cinematic intimacy. The "What knockers!" "Zank you, Doctor!" movie gag is inappropriate and, um, flat here -- Sutton Foster is lithe and lanky, not exactly a St. Pauli Girl -- but they reproduce it anyway.
There are gratuitous vulgarities, also, in the woodwork that feel out of phase with the overall tone of the piece. And i don't mean just the odd "f*ck" tossed out for effect. When Mullally gets a lyric in "Please Don't Touch Me" to the effect of "All the local boys know / Elizabeth comes first"... and when she ends up singing about her "tits, tits, tits"... it's not really funny, it's not really racy, it just feels low. There's no need for it. And I don't much like the mental image I have of old Mel Brooks spouting this stuff at the writer's table.
Still -- the positives outweigh the difficulties, and I know they'll tighten the show up. Andrea Martin steals every scene she's in. Bart as I said proves an incredible, energetic leading man. Christopher Fitzgerald is great too. (Fred Applegate as Kemp and the Hermit slows things down, though. I think the numerous Kemp / villagers scenes, which don't advance the story, are prime candidates for cutting.) If they can make Act 1 come in around 1:10 or 1:15 it'll leave the audience wanting more... and run for years.
I'll come see it again in NY next year and wish the cast the best... they're working their tails off in Seattle, that's for sure.
Updated On: 8/17/07 at 02:25 AM
