Sills Provides Substantial Force in 'Pimpernel'
LA Daily News
There may be a precedent for the feat accomplished on the Ahmanson Theatre stage, but it's rarer than a two-headed lizard. Welcome, if you please, the big-budgeted, one-man musical in which a single performer -- Douglas Sills -- is called upon to be the chief source of energy, vocal prowess, romance and comic relief. They say Robert Preston pulled off a similar feat in "The Music Man." Ditto the "Gypsy" of Ethel Merman. But those folks had substantial stories to bolster, not the swashbuckling Saturday afternoon matinee that is Frank Wildhorn's "The Scarlet Pimpernel."
Inspired though it is by Baroness Orczy's French Revolution-set romance, this "Pimpernel" is basically a theatrical comic book. Composer Wildhorn and author/lyricist Nan Knighton are its creators, but during its Broadway run, the musical was given a substantial reworking by its current director/choreographer, Robert Longbottom. Now rendered in the broadest of strokes, the show seems to have one goal on its mind: lusty, no-holds-barred entertainment. You want nuance? Look elsewhere.
What Longbottom, et al., have done, however, is structured their tale so completely around a star turn (or, in this case, a star burst) that the show develops a slow leak whenever we're thrust into the company of co-stars. When Sills is on stage, he tends to overwhelm everything and everyone around him. While our hero is having a blast, he's the only person on stage allowed to give a conspiratorial nudge nudge, wink wink. Everybody else is too busy being the Pimpernel's straight man.
For the uninitiated, the S.P. is actually Percy Blakeney, an 18th-century British aristocrat who, outraged by the atrocities being perpetuated across the Channel by Robespierre, rounds up his chums and forms the league of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Their mission: Save as many French as possible from Mme. La Guillotine. To protect their identities, they publicly pretend to be frivolous dandies.
But Percy has a problem: his wife, Marguerite (Amy Bodnar), a French actress who, he learns, has been a spy for Robespierre's regime. Her former lover -- and current blackmailer -- is the dastardly Chauvelin (William Paul Michals), a man determined to bathe the streets of France in blood. Until he can be convinced of Marguerite's fidelity, poor Percy has to hide his alter ego from his justifiably confused new bride. Nor will he consummate the marriage.
Although it's window dressing to the plot, Longbottom gets a lot of mileage out of Percy's fop ruse. Sills is a splendid peacock, dipping into his larder for every gasp, primp and purr he can muster. Consequently, the song "The Creation of Man," in which Percy schools the league members in the art of foppery, is a show-stopper. It's also one of the few moments where members of the ensemble get to actually cut loose.
Bodnar and Michals never get that luxury. Saddled with largely unmemorable ballads and earnest "I'll track him down"-type anthems, both performers possess remarkable voices and little sense of character. Of course, they're not entirely to blame. Look at the material they have to work with, and with whom they have to share the stage.
Sills has been with the show since its origin, and whoever took the Tony Award away from him in 1999 committed grand larceny. In a performance that starts low-key and climbs toward the stratosphere of parody, this man can make you believe love, anguish and, best of all, self mockery. Without Sills, this production is unthinkable.
Yet for all of his talent, Sills is "The Scarlet Pimpernel's" albatross as much as its triumph. As the production tries to balance between romance and bubble gum, Sills is the only one permitted to play both extremes. Accordingly, his comfort in the role manifests itself in the kind of showy antics that pad rather than enhance an already thin product. "The Scarlet Pimpernel" may be a blast, but it's a also a three-hour show, including a derriere-numbing, 100-minute first act. No Saturday matinee in history has made that kind of demand of an audience, at least not without providing a steady supply of popcorn.
-Evan Henerson, Los Angeles Daily News
May 5, 2000
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