Bigger Shop

It works like this: If you saw Little Shop of Horrors during its Off-Broadway run in the early 1980s, you’re going to be disappointed in the new Broadway revival. If you didn’t see that first production, you’re going to think this new one is just swell. Theatrical snobbery is not the cause for this critical schism; it’s something much simpler. The show’s producers have taken a great little musical and turned it into a pleasant big musical. Anyone who saw the original will sense the difference but, if you never saw it before — well, it’ll be the best version you’ve seen so far.

The show’s chief pleasures are its infectious music by Alan Menken and its biting (you’ll excuse the expression), clever lyrics by Howard Ashman. Ashman’s book always had a gleefully subversive quality that made it both sarcastically hip and innocently charming. In its present incarnation, however, Little Shop‘s sarcasm has turned to camp. It’s still dark fun as Seymour goes on a murder spree and we find ourselves rooting for him, but the edge is gone. Director Jerry Zaks has given us a bloodless show — and if you know Little Shop, you know that can’t be good.

Part of the problem is simply the size of the theater. When Little Shop played at the Orpheum downtown, the audience was surrounded at the end of the show by the man-eating plant Audrey II, its leaves descending upon everyone. Here, the plant looms large over the first several rows of the orchestra but most of the patrons just look at it from afar. You might call this a metaphor for the entire experience.

The production remains distant, somewhat impersonal. It’s readily apparent in the casting. Hunter Foster as Seymour plays the Clark Kent trick of wearing glasses. That’s supposed to make us think he’s a nerd, but we know he’s not, so we don’t really take the character seriously. As for poor Kerry Butler, she seems to have been directed to recreate Ellen Greene’s career-making performance as Audrey. Butler is very talented but she should be creating her own version of the role, not mimicking someone else’s. On the other hand, Douglas Sills plays a variety of roles with gusto; it sometimes looks as if he’s the only one of those three on stage who’s actually having a good time. And that tells you something.

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Marianne Challis: Party On!

Sex, Lies, and Vocalise: The Confessions of a Middle-Aged Party Girl was the intriguing title of Marianne Challis’s recent cabaret act at Danny’s Skylight Room. Challis might not possess a household name but she’s very well known in many a Broadway star’s home as one of the Great White Way’s most renowned vocal coaches. Of course, one need not be a great singer to effectively teach voice, but it just so happens that Challis has a lovely, full-bodied sound. Better still, she has a winning stage presence.

Her show was a tart reminiscence of her life, loves, and career with a particular focus on her fun-loving ways. The tone of the show was brilliantly established with a piece of special material titled “Sex, Lies and Vocalises” (Kornfield/Gallagher) that ought to have the inside corner on a MAC Award for its sharply focused wit. The rest of the show displayed a playful (former?) sex kitten who tossed off patter with a Cheshire cat grin and a purr. She pulled the audience in with “How’d Ya Like to Love Me?” (Loesser/Lane) and built to the first of several highlights with her dramatic performance of Amanda McBroom’s “Dance.”

Working with musical director Christopher Marlowe, Challis had the benefit of some exquisite arrangements. For instance, Marlowe’s combination of “Autumn Leaves” with “When October Goes” (Mercer/Manilow) was dazzling, and Challis had the emotional depth to go there with him.

The show had its pitfalls. Challis’s rendition of “If” (Comden/Green) was, at best, iffy. But Challis recovered smartly with a soulful rendition of a new, winsome number called “This Time I’ll Blame It On Love” (Gifford/Pomerantz). Scott Barnes directed the show with stylish good humor, and it’s a show that’s too good to languish after only four performances. We hope Challis will bring it back soon.

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Any Film With Olympia Dukakis and Brent Carver is an Event

It’s not uncommon in a movie to come across the occasional stage actor, but it’s quite an event when the cast is loaded with them from top to bottom. The Event is, in fact, the title of a new film that stars (among others) Olympia Dukakis, Brent Carver, Parker Posey, and Dick Latessa. But that title refers to a somber ritual: the farewell parties thrown by AIDS sufferers before they commit suicide.

The Event tells the intimate and deeply moving story of a young New Yorker with AIDS named Matt (Don McKellar) and his circle of family and friends. Their human drama is overlaid with an ersatz police story as an Assistant D.A. (Parker Posey) investigates Matt’s death as a murder. This is really nothing more than an all-too-obvious device to frame the story; still, it gets the story told. No matter how many tissues you think you’ll need for this cry-fest, bring more. One of us hasn’t cried this much at a movie since Schindler’s List — and it wasn’t Barbara.

If this were a big, Hollywood movie, Olympia Dukakis’s performance as Matt’s mother would guarantee her an Oscar nomination. She has not one, not two, but three scenes that will leave you in a puddle. Tony Award-winner Brent Carver as the stoic best friend is a mountain of empathy in his riveting, understated performance. Dick Latessa, whose Wilbur Turnblad is married to Harvey Fierstein’s Edna in Hairspray, shows his range here as a homophobic uncle. Parker Posey is saddled with the less-than-credible police angle in the film, so give her a pass. The rest of the cast, including the incandescent Sarah Polley as Matt’s sister and the multi-talented Don McKellar as Matt, are superb. This is a beautifully acted movie, as one would expect with so many theater people captured on celluloid.

Despite being a Canadian production, The Event is very much a New York movie. In fact, most of the film’s action takes place in TriBeCa. It was shot on location during one of New York’s most trying times, as Olympia Dukakis told us in a recent interview. “You know, it was right after 9/11,” she explained, “and it was the first film shot there. So New Yorkers were fabulous. People were very glad to see us.”

Dukakis’s career was jump-started by her appearance on Broadway in Social Security, and therein hangs a tale: She didn’t want to audition for the play, which was being directed by Mike Nichols, because the role in question was that of an 80-year-old Yiddish woman. “I was too young, I didn’t have a Yiddish accent,” Dukakis said. “That morning, I told my husband, ‘I’m not going to the audition. I’m just going to humiliate myself.’ He asked to see the script. He read it and said, “Well, go in and do your mother.'” Dukakis did just that at the audition and, “by the time I got home, they had called and given me the part. Then I had to figure out how to play it and not imitate my mother!” Director Norman Jewison saw Dukakis in Social Security and subsequently cast her in Moonstruck, for which performance she won her Academy Award. “Actually,” Dukakis told us with a wry smile, “I think Norman came to see Ron Silver for the Nicolas Cage part.”

She works in movies constantly but returns regularly to the stage. Last seen on Broadway in Martin Sherman’s Rose, Dukakis will be back in New York in February, starring in the Aquila company’s production of Agamemnon. In the spring, you’ll find her in San Francisco in the A.C.T. production of Gorky’s The Mother. And after that, who knows? She noted that John Patrick Shanley is currently adapting Moonstruck for the musical stage. “I think it’s a natural for a musical,” she commented, but noted that she hasn’t yet been approached to participate in the project. When we asked her the obvious question, her face lit up and she replied, “Sure, I sing!”