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| Entertainment News - updated 1:51 PM ET Nov 3 | |
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Thoroughly Modern Millie (La Jolla Playhouse; 492 seats; $47.50 top; 2:10) By Steven Oxman HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - ``Thoroughly Modern Millie'' is a thoroughly old-fashioned musical comedy, the kind that's become oh-so-passe since ``Les Miz,'' ``Phantom'' and even ``Rent'' turned the Broadway idiom into essentially earnest, and very filling Opera Lite. Breezy, frothy and unapologetically joyful, ``Millie'' is a daiquiri to those heavy ales and a tonic for whatever ails you. Receiving its world premiere under the auspices of La Jolla Playhouse, the show represents a significant improvement on its source, the 1967 movie musical of the same name, and this spirited ``Millie'' will soon pack her bags to follow in the footsteps of ``The Full Monty,'' from celluloid to Southern California and on to stardom on the Great White Way. Director Michael Mayer has guided the production through a late cast change -- Sutton Foster took over the role of Millie shortly before previews began -- and some technical difficulties that delayed the opening by a week. The superbly slick result displays no signs of trauma: Only a week into its official run, the show is remarkably tight, and moves so briskly that it accomplishes what few musicals can brag about these days: It leaves the audience wanting more. Foster was a vocal standout as Eponine in the most recent L.A. mounting of ``Les Miz.'' Her only fault: She seemed a bit smiley for such a weepy tale. For Millie, she's ideal, and she demonstrates some serious triple-threat potential, acting, singing and dancing the role with a confident ease. She brings to Millie a brassy American boldness -- a more appropriate piece of casting than the English-accented Julie Andrews, who in the film assayed the Kansas-bred girl who arrives in 1922 New York to explore everything ``modern.'' To Millie, being ``a modern'' means bobbing her hair, exposing her ankles and marrying the boss rather than the boy next door. She reveals this last, most important part of her plan to anyone who will listen -- especially to her neighbor at the Priscilla Hotel for single women, the even newer-to-New York blue blood, Miss Dorothy Brown. Miss Dorothy dreams of taking to the stage and, in a nicely stylized performance from Sarah Uriarte Berry, turns everyone around her into the subject of a character study. Equipped with the skills of a spectacular ``stenog,'' Millie sets about choosing just the right boss and husband-to-be, and finds her catch in Trevor Graydon, the very model of a modern male employer, played by the spot-on Marc Kudisch. But Millie's plans get confused when she begins falling for Jimmy Smith (a versatile and likable Jim Stanek), a young man who's got the New York lingo, and checkered fashion style, down cold. If only he needed a stenog, he'd be what Millie was looking for, but, alas, he doesn't even have a job. It's left to high-society chanteuse Muzzy (Tonya Pinkins) to set Millie on the path to happiness. ``Modern to modern,'' Millie asks Muzzy, ``Don't you find love at first sight a bit old-fashioned?'' Muzzy's response sums up the retro theme of the show: ``As long as you find it, who cares?'' Book writer Dick Scanlan, who conceived of this adaptation and worked on it with the original screenwriter Richard Morris until the latter passed away, has eliminated the many excesses of the George Roy Hill film. It could be argued that he's trimmed some wheat along with the chaff -- particularly in regard to Muzzy -- but on the whole he's done a terrific job keeping only the fundamentals. This is especially true with the subplot involving a white slavery ring run by hotel proprietor Mrs. Meers (Pat Carroll, strong but a bit under-used) and her Chinese laundrymen assistants. The last third of the film was a laborious rescue attempt, which Scanlan cleverly reduces to just a few beats, truer in many ways to the screwball sensibility the movie was trying to send up. Scanlan also does what he can to temper the racism of the movie, significantly altering the roles of the Chinese characters and even changing the ending. He keeps it light, having the two Chinese brothers sing in their native language with a screen brought down from the flies for subtitles. When they sing a tribute to their ``Mammy'' back in Hong Kong and the subtitles come up in Chinese, Scanlan and Mayer achieve a very layered, if still potentially controversial, form of satire. The Sammy Cahn-James Van Heusen title song is one of three that's been kept from the original, and the tune has a hummable, bouncy cheeriness that sets the tone for the rest of the evening. Several oldies have been given new lyrics by Scanlan, such as ``The Speed Test,'' a Gilbert & Sullivan patter song (when was the last time we had one of those?) That number is followed by a Scanlan-Jeanine Tesori original, ``One Manhattan, Straight Up.'' Those two songs follow closely on one another, marking the moment when the show demonstrates that the steam it created with its opening number is going to last. ``Forget About the Boy,'' which opens the second act, and Foster's late solo ``Gimme Gimme'' represent a couple of highlights in Tesori's energetic, purposefully derivative score and Scanlan's impressively smooth and sophisticated lyrics. This is certainly a show where everyone is on the same page. Rob Ashford's tap-happy choreography has a constant vitality and a clear expressiveness. It's used as much to create the overall world of the Roaring '20s as the designs. The production feels always on the move. Set designer David Gallo layers the stage with angular steel designed in an art deco style, capable of fluid movement on wheels. From a speakeasy to a posh penthouse to the outside of a high-rise, the settings are captured with just enough detail to make them convincing. Donald Holder's lighting delivers boldly colored hues to bring warmth to the set. Robert Perdziola's costumes, like the other design elements, retain a faithfulness to the period and, at the same time, a sense of silliness. Whether it's good for the theater to be borrowing so incessantly from Hollywood seems a moot point. This is not a new phenomenon. If there's a show that ``Thoroughly Modern Millie'' most directly recalls, it's the late-'70s musical ``On the Twentieth Century,'' which was based on a screwball comedy film, which itself was based on a play. What matters most is a true spark of creative inspiration. ``Thoroughly Modern Millie'' has that quality, and it's thoroughly delightful. Millie Dillmount ........ Sutton Foster Miss Dorothy Brown ...... Sarah Uriarte Berry Ching Ho ................ Stephen Sable Bun Foo ................. Francis Jue Mrs. Meers .............. Pat Carroll Jimmy Smith ............. Jim Stanek Miss Flannery ........... Anne L. Nathan Trevor Graydon .......... Marc Kudisch Muzzy ................... Tonya Pinkins With: Randl Ask, Kate Baldwin, Joshua Bergasse, Zina Camblin, Julie Connors, David Eggers, Nicole Foret, Matthew Gasper, Gregg Goodbrod, Chane't Johnson, Joe Langworth, Matt Lashey, Michael Malone, Yusef Miller, Tina Ou, Noah Racey, Megan Sikora, Leigh-Anne Wencker. A La Jolla Playhouse presentation of a musical in two acts with book by Richard Morris and Dick Scanlan, music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics by Scanlan; inspired by Morris' original story and screenplay. Directed by Michael Mayer. Choreography, Rob Ashford. Musical direction, Michael Rafter. Sets, David Gallo; costumes, Robert Perdziola; lighting, Donald Holder; sound, Otts Munderloh; orchestrations, Ralph Burns; vocal arrangements, Tesori; dance music arrangements, David Krane; production stage manager, Bonnie Becker. Opened Oct. 22, 2000. Reviewed Oct. 29. Reuters/Variety REUTERS
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