Star power keeps 'Millie' moving
REVIEW: A zesty lead performance by
Sutton Foster turns a
frothy, flawed show into a winner.
October 27, 2000
By PAUL HODGINS
The Orange County Register
In theater, as in presidential politics,
personality can outshine even the
most egregious flaws.
A few weeks ago, I saw a mediocre,
overinflated musical on
Broadway, Disney's "Aida,"
saved by an incandescent performer in
the lead role (the Tony-winning Heather
Headley). She
single-handedly turned the evening from
a yawn into something
memorable.
"Thoroughly Modern Millie,"
making its world premiere at the La Jolla
Playhouse, is several notches above
Disney's muddled Egypto-kitschy
extravaganza.
Still, this clever adaptation of the
uneven 1967 film is about as
substantial as angel food cake without
the icing. What transforms it
from fluff into something more genuinely
entertaining is the actress
who plays the eponymous flapper: Sutton
Foster as Millie Dillmount.
Foster is no stranger to frothy Broadway
musicals. Her New York
resume favors the sillier end of the
spectrum, including major parts in
"Grease," the recent revival
of "Annie" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel."
It's easy to see why casting directors
love Foster in these roles. She's
got a face made for playing comic
heroines: pretty but not threatening,
with an alluring goofiness and mile-wide
smile that make you think of
the girl next door - the funny one who
could make you laugh so hard
you'd lose your lunch.
Those looks are complemented by an
attractive but naturalistic singing
voice, a spritely physicality that
belies her lankiness and just the right
comic timing for the role. Altogether,
it's an irresistible package.
That's crucial, because Millie is one of
the plot's problems. As
imagined by screenwriter Richard Morris,
she's a shallow, callow girl
with materialistic, big-city dreams and
a rather frightening
single-mindedness in her determination
to achieve them. Those
qualities have been tempered somewhat by
Dick Scanlan, who enlisted
Morris' help to rewrite the story for
the musical version (Morris died in
1996 after finishing work on the stage
adaptation). Still, in the wrong
hands, Millie could come off as a
questionable heroine - imagine Sally
Bowles 10 years before her Berlin
period. Foster somehow manages to
bridge those gaping flaws, or at least
make them seem endearing.
The story is essentially the same.
Millie travels from Selma, Kan., to
1922 Manhattan, a dewy, dreamy young
woman intent on shedding her
farm-girl past and becoming
"thoroughly modern." That means
shedding her Midwestern duds, getting a
"short" (knee-length) skirt
and cutting her hair, a metamorphosis
that's handled with craft and zest
in the show's first production number,
"Thoroughly Modern Millie."
Millie lands at the Hotel Priscilla, a
supposedly safe place for young
single women. There she meets Miss
Dorothy Brown (Sarah Uriarte
Berry), a dippy Californian (is there
any other kind, as far as New York
is concerned?) with a Sarah Bernhardt
fixation and a burning desire to
act.
The hotel is run by the shady Mrs.
Meers, a bohemian but menacing
presence with two Chinese bumpkin
sidekicks and an unusual interest
in guests who are orphans. Meers runs a
secret white-slave trade,
kidnapping young women who won't be
missed and bundling them off
to Hong Kong, where they are forced into
"degrading" activities.
Blissfully unaware, Millie takes
Manhattan. She lands a job as the
personal secretary to Trevor Graydon
(the terrific Marc Kudisch), a
businessman whose gung-ho optimism seems
ready to turn him into a
human fireball at any moment. Trevor
puts the auditioning Millie
through her paces in "The Speed
Test," a brilliant patter song by
Gilbert and Sullivan (the score is an
undistinguished pastiche of music
from many sources and eras, with six new
works by composer Jeanine
Tesori and lyricist Scanlan).
Millie also swallows Manhattan's wild
social scene in a single gulp. She
befriends Jimmy Smith (Jim Stanek), a
fast-dressing party boy who
falls for her immediately. But Millie
isn't sure about him. She prefers
Trevor, mainly because he's a good bet
as husband material:
foursquare, responsible, rich.
Complications, as they say, ensue.
Trevor goes gooey for the giddy
Miss Brown; so, apparently, does Jimmy.
Mrs. Meers, too, has an
interest in Brown: She's pretty, young
and an orphan - a veritable
white-slavery gold mine.
But these whirling subplots come
together tidily, if a bit perfunctorily.
Scanlan has managed to streamline the
film's woolly tangents and
focus the plot, and he brings everything
home in a bit over two hours.
Still, there are some dead spots. The
suave party scenes drag. They're
set up primarily to give Tonya Pinkins'
Muzzy the limelight. She's an
elegant widow and torch singer whose
penthouse soirees are the kind
of events where luminaries such as
Dorothy Parker get merrily pickled.
Somehow, these scenes don't have the pop
they should. Muzzy isn't
effectively knitted into the story, and
she needs to be; she's part of a
crucial 11th-hour plot twist. There's a
lingering sense that this show is
one rewrite from completion.
David Gallo's set, too, isn't there yet.
Some turntable scenes are
awkwardly staged and others give little
sense of place, as if director
Michael Mayer is struggling with a
scenic concept that doesn't quite
serve the story at certain points.
There's an unfinished quality to
certain set elements: exposed wires and
seams that shouldn't be
popping up in a production of this
magnitude.
Any musical is only as good as its
stars, and this "Millie" is strong
where it needs to be. Berry's Dorothy is
a wonderful society-girl
parody, full of breathless line readings
and well-chosen comic pauses.
Stanek's Jimmy Smith, too, captures a
certain period stereotype - he's
like a bad-boy Jimmy Olsen.
Kudisch gets some of the biggest laughs
as Trevor, especially in the
scene where he's suddenly smitten by
Dorothy. Stephen Sable and
Francis Jue get unexpected laughs as
Miss Meers' unwilling Chinese
assistants, and Scanlan has a lot of fun
with the roles' comic
possibilities. Everybody looks sharp
dancing choreographer Rob
Ashford's big, dynamic musical numbers,
which perfectly capture jazz
age New York's hyperkinetic vibe.
Still, everything comes down to Millie,
and Foster is the overwhelming
reason to go. It's a thoroughly
marvelous performance, and if the
theater gods take kindly to this
imperfect show, Foster has the goods to
impress those that matter in New York:
fickle musical-theater fans
and the Tony committee.