Broadway Watch - Lestat

Lestat Music by Elton John; Lyrics by Bernie Taupin; Book by Linda Woolverton; Based on “The Vampire Chronicles” by Anne Rice Directed by Robert Jess Roth Palace Theatre Opened 25th April 2006 Extracts from various reviewers: “Let us only pray that the "three strikes and you're out" rule, applicable in baseball and in some states' law enforcement practices, also applies to musical theatre genres. That would mean that the woeful Lestat, which just opened at the Palace, is truly the silver nail in the coffin of vampire musicals that it deserves to be. “The first, Dance of the Vampires, arrived in 2002, in its sheer audacious idiocy all but openly campaigning to be the next Carrie. In 2004, Broadway briefly succumbed to Frank Wildhorn's Dracula, an hilariously abortive attempt to cash in on the Bram Stoker classic. “But without the former's excess or the latter's inexhaustible energy… Lestat is the least distinctive entry yet.” “…with a horror of a book by Linda Woolverton and in a raging howler of a production helmed by Robert Jess Roth… Lestat is a walloping reminder that life is far too short to sit through illiterate garbage passing itself off as Art at sky-high ticket prices.” “Not that this will matter for its target audience of theatre neophytes… if all they're interested in is power singing and hot performers, they'll get both here…” “This plot, though, is barely discernible through the lyrics, among the feeblest ever written for a Broadway musical…” “…While rotten theatre music, never soaring or evoking time, place, or character, as flavorless pop from the King of Flavorless Pop, and as sung by fine singers like Sarich, Stanek, Fischer, they're easy on the ear.” “Only Carmello makes them easy on the heart, as well.” “Panaro's voice is equally sturdy, his manner gutsier. But he's dwarfed by his surroundings, frequently lost amid random plot developments and Derek McLane's opulently ugly, haphazardly lumbering scenery. Worse, he has merely an ephemeral gasp of who or why Lestat is: Before his transformation or after it, at the height of joy or the depth of despair, Panaro wanders about the stage with a bemused look suggesting even he can barely follow what's happening.” “…Roth and Woolverton have ensured that making any sense of the story is impossible for anyone who hasn't memorized Rice” Talkin’ Broadway – Matthew Murray “It's the best damned vampire musical Broadway has seen in years.” “Granted, that's not saying much for Lestat, considering that Broadway's most recent vampire musicals -- Dance of the Vampires (2002) and Dracula: The Musical (2004) -- were atrocities… certainly not a great show, but it's occasionally a good one.” “There are a few intriguing ideas and ingredients, two wonderful lead performances, and plenty of good supporting turns in Lestat.” “Perhaps a healthy laugh here and there was the intention of director Robert Jess Roth and the rest of the creative team… Whatever the case, humor does crop up in the show; but many theatergoers will laugh in a superior way, assuming the staff was too stupid to notice that certain moments are unintentionally funny.” “The story takes a few odd turns. Some of the vampires start a theater troupe (no kidding). In a welcoming speech, the playgoers are told that if they are too unnerved by the show within the show, they are free to leave. Is this warning also meant for those in the Palace? Perhaps, for the Vampire Theatre Company presents what can be best described as a choreopoem with dancers in masks cavorting between brightly colored sheets that span the stage horizontally. (Very artsy!) Woolverton's writing is sometimes pedestrian. For example, when Lestat and mom enter a church, he says, "I wonder if we'll be struck down?" But sometimes her work is arresting. When Mom says that she wants to see the world and Lestat discourages her, her rebuttal is that, as a mother, she always accepted the fact that he'd leave her -- so why, she wonders, can't he give her the same consideration?” “Is it too late for Elton John and Bernie Taupin to join the BMI-Lehman Engel workshop? They didn't know that, for the moments when the action of their musical shifts to Paris or New Orleans, they needn't have written songs that list the charms of those cities.” “If Lestat is a flop, no one has told Panaro and Carmello. They throw themselves -- okay, sink their teeth -- into their roles. When each takes center stage and sings, it's galvanizing. Tony nominations for both, please, and maybe one for Allison Fischer as well. Her Claudia is so good, we don't mind that her character's language and demeanor seem far too modern for 1828. Similarly, the anachronism of her country song is ameliorated by her doing it so well.” “By the way, after 30 years in the show's action have passed, we return to the Vampire Theatre Company and see that it's still going strong. Lestat won't do as well, but if we must have a vampire musical, this one might as well be it.” Theater Mania – David Finkle “The season's most hilarious musical, it turns out, is not a comedy. It is Lestat, an adaptation of the Anne Rice vampire novels so laughable, and so sumptuously designed, that it makes for a surprisingly good time at the theater. No, musical-theater-train-wreck aficionados, it's not quite another Carrie, or even another Dance of the Vampires. Instead it comes off more like an unholy blend of the Disney musical Beauty and the Beast and the cult TV series Beauty and the Beast.” “…Lestat will deliver a parade of characters killing, singing and painfully parting ways under the overwhelming power of inner directives that make sense only to them.” “…The queasy, faintly erotic, mostly mussy bite-and-suck ritual of vampire's feasting becomes the show's most persistent refrain: The sound goes all schwingy and woozy, while a disturbing projection of boiling orange juice is projected on the moveable bandage-flats of Derek McLane's set. As Lestat later succinctly tells Mom, who follows him to Paris after all, "He drank my blood, and I drank his blood." If only coming out were that easy.” “…10-year-old bad seed named Claudia (Allison Fischer)… knocks her big numbers—"I Want More" and "I'll Never Have That Chance"—out of the park.” “Sir Elton recently boasted to The New York Times that he wrote it in two weeks, and it sounds like it. And no matter how pop-operatically ponderous or horror-movie creepy the music tries to be, it cannot be accused of over-seriousness… And in a show studded with some of the worst lyrics you'll find in any Broadway show, John and Taupin's greatest crime must be the inelegant group chant, "No greater crime than to kill your kind."” “To their credit, the cast delivers all this with unshakeably straight faces. Particularly impressive in this regard are Carmello… hunky Panaro doesn't embarrass himself, though if this role nets him offers from daytime TV, that would only be fair.” “Even if you feel early on a bit like the character who sings, "My need to go is hard to fight," you won't want to miss Lestat's final epiphany. "I accept what I am," he tells the man upstairs. "I am evil and I'm so sorry." We're so not.” Broadway.Com – Rob Kendt Next Broadway Musical opening – The Wedding Singer – 27th April