[NEohioPAL] Review of "Carrie: The Musical" at Beck Center for the Arts

[Bob Abelman]

Beck Center's 'Carrie' offers the walking dead

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the Cleveland Jewish News on 2/14/14

 

 

The closing scene in "Carrie," the 1976 horror film directed by Brian De Palma, is arguably its scariest.
 
The cult classic features a misfit high school girl who lashes out at the bullies that abused her after she discovers and then releases her otherworldly telekinetic powers.  In the final scene, Carrie's bloody hand juts out from the ground to grab the arm of an unsuspecting high school girl laying flowers on her grave.  Carrie is dead.  Or is she?

 

Twelve years later, "Carrie" was resurrected as a musical that became the most expensive flop in Broadway history, lasting five performances and losing $8 million for its investors.  Though a highly successful Stephen King novel, "Carrie" could not translate to the stage.  At least, not in the hands of playwright Lawrence D. Cohen, lyricist Dean Pitchford, and composer Michael Gore.

 

Not dead yet, "Carrie" spawned a 1999 feature film sequel, a 2002 made-for-TV movie and, in 2012, a revised revival (a "revisal"?) of the musical that opened off-Broadway, flopped, and then closed a month later.

 

It is no surprise that Lakewood's Beck Center for the Arts - the same professional theater company that dared to bring us the delightfully irreverent "Jerry Springer: The Opera" - thought to take a stab at the definitive failure that is "Carrie: The Musical."  

 

What is surprising is that not even the exceptionally gifted director Vicky Bussert can find a steady pulse in this stillborn show.

 

Sure, there are signs of life.  As she did in recent Beck Center productions of "Spring Awakening" and "Next to Normal," and in musical productions throughout the city, Bussert stocked this show with the top-notch musical theater majors she instructs at Baldwin Wallace University.  Featured among them are the very talented Sara Masterson, Colton Ryan, Genna-Paige Kanago and Sam Wolf.

 

The 20 young performers from BW storm the stage with raw energy, exposed abs and raging hormones, chopping at the bit to kick-start Gregory Daniels' overtly expressive, teen-angst-driven choreography and give voice to the abusive mean-girl and self-absorbed popular-boy stereotypes that populate this play.  They own the proscenium arch and are a pleasure to watch, but at the core of their performance is a very bad script that makes it all for naught.

 

The script reflects the concerted effort of its creators to turn the campy horror story spectacle that was the original Broadway production into a modern-day cautionary tale about bullying.  

 

They minimized the Wagnerian staging choices in favor of a more abstract presentation, which is nicely reflected at the Beck Center in Jordan Janota's scenic design and Russ Borski's lighting, and which incorporates Richard Ingraham's excellent sound design.  

 

They eliminated the over-the-top special effects in favor of the story's human dimensions and psychological drama, and they kept the psychological drama from going off the deep end.  

 

But the end result is a script that too frequently flat-lines.  Much of the original musical's interesting elements, as outlandish as they were, have been exorcized in favor of something significantly duller.  Most of the scenes involving teens have a one-note blandness to them, despite the best efforts of the actors.

 

The most effective script revisions concern the sadomasochistic relationship between Carrie and her fanatically religious single mother, Margaret.  Bussert wisely cast two superb performers in these lead roles.  Caitlin Houlahan's painfully timid Carrie is as immediately appealing as Katherine DeBoer's demented mother is straight away appalling.   Both portrayals showcase the characters' emotional delicacy and the actors' remarkable ability to deliver it.

 

Sadly, all the anticlimactic script changes put the emphasis on the songs and nearly every song by Carrie and her mother are unmemorable, redundant arrangements with plodding lyrics.   They are beautifully sung by Houlahan and DeBoer, and are nicely accompanied by conductor Nancy Maier and her small orchestra, but interest fades before the music does, which is never a good thing in a musical.  

 

The same can be said for the song "Unsuspecting Hearts" and its reprisal as performed by Jodi Dominick, who does a fine job playing the sympathetic high school gym teacher.  

 

It does not bode well for a play when its least insurmountable problem is that nearly every character is dead at the end.  But then, this musical was pretty much dead before the Beck Center production of it even began.  

 

What:              "Carrie: The Musical"

Where:            Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Avenue, Lakewood

When:             Through Sunday, March 9

Tickets:           $15 - 29, call 216-521-2540 or go to www.beckcenter.org

 
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