Mabel Syrup
News Times Los Angeles
Silent movies, in case you haven't noticed, have come and gone. The time of flickering black-and-white reels packed with antics and epics faded fast, and it's no wonder. Sound came in. And color. Words, booming effects, and even music. A new wave of motion pictures, some call them "talkies," has swept the nation! And, despite a well-intentioned production of the mothballed Broadway musical Mack & Mabel, the story of silent superstars Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand, the art form remains just as dead.
There's a reason why nobody makes silent movies anymore, and there's a reason why Mack & Mabel, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!, Mame, La Cage aux Folles) has lain mostly dormant since its premiere in 1974. The medium, the musical, and the world have moved on. It's fitting that a dead art form here is celebrated by a dying one, but the lack of irony and self-reflection is only the beginning of the show's problems. Mack Sennett might as well be onstage griping about the bygone days of great musical theater rather than silent movies. And this revival by Reprise! at UCLA's Freud Playhouse tries to celebrate the art of the musical, as a concept, to its willing audience, who might be better off heading to the megaplex, trying on Dancer in the Dark or the upcoming O Brother Where Art Thou? Instead they get a lively, passionate production of a bad play.
The story tells of Mack Sennett (played by Douglas Sills), the driven director with an eye for talent (he's credited with discovering Charlie Chaplin, Frank Capra, and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle) and a nose for the popular, the vulgar, and the funny. His hundreds and hundreds of two-reelers celebrated easy physical humor, exploited racial stereotypes, and moved too fast for audiences to notice. He falls for one of his stars/creations/finds, the dexterous and lovely Mabel Normand (Jane Krakowski, best known as Elaine Vassal on Ally McBeal), and their love affair survives the coming of talkies, the changing of the world. Throw in drugs, scandal, and Hollywood power grubbing, and you've got the raw stuff of a great musical. Right? Right?
The heart of this material somehow escapes both Herman's occasionally clever and catchy lyrics and the show's book, originally written by Michael Stewart and revised for this production by his sister Francine Pascal. These medieval times of Hollywood history receive little of the richness and bombast that the medium -- the fabulous, the loud, the musical! -- could provide. We're dealing with the architects of the studios, a hardworking hack backed by two New York bookies, murder and love, death at a young age, the whole thing. Hell, this was when Hollywood invented the movie star, and Mabel Normand was one of the first. But loose ends, undeveloped characters, misguided musical numbers, and a general lack of awe leave you wondering what all the singing and dancing is about.
Sills, who has Broadway star written all over him, dives right in with the wistful song "Movies Were Movies," which should define the battle lines, the show's boundaries of passion and intellect. But it's only the beginning of a long, frustrating tour of the surface streets of a bygone world. Sills' Sennett gets to explain what he does so well, making six movies a week with cream pies and bathing suits: "Speed," he says. "That's what it's all about." Yet Herman's often delightful and funny lyrics never clearly define why Sennett loves the kind of movies he so fiercely defends, nor, even more unforgivable, why he loves Mabel.
A few exciting moments of Sennett at work capture the mood of making these early motion pictures. But several seconds of flashing bulbs and a fat guy tripping don't do Sennett, Chaplin, DeMille, Griffith, or anyone else justice. Robert Machray as Arbuckle is given so little to do he's practically a prop, and a subplot involving the murder of director William Desmond Taylor, Mabel's lover at the time, goes nowhere fast (the famous Arbuckle rape-and-murder scandal is left out altogether).
A song-and-dance number celebrating Sennett's most lasting comic character creations, the Keystone Kops, is performed by Mack and two suited movie executives, spinning arm in arm. Where's the brutality and satire of the actual characters, the cops with their oversize hats and billy clubs, who caught on as a national comic and social statement? There they are! For maybe two seconds. But Sennett's Bathing Beauties, his live-action pinup girls, get the full treatment, strutting around the stage like a synchronized swimming team, and it's a great number.
Because of the strength of the music, lyrics, and Reprise!'s production, the show is a series of showstoppers with nothing to stop. One number, "Tap Your Troubles Away," stands out despite ending the arc of a character we hardly know, being awkwardly interrupted by a major plot point, and accompanying a forgettable song. The tap-dancing extravaganza packed with stomping, smiling showgirls has the wattage the rest of the show lacks, and it feels like an intermission.
That said, again, the performances outshine the material. Krakowski has the same beaming, funny, sexy star power as does Mabel, and she carries much of this show with her voice and presence, creating a few moving moments, especially her rendition of "Wherever He Ain't." The coming-and-going Brooklyn accent aside, she's the strongest thing onstage, and it's clear why her Ally McBeal character spends so much time down at the bar singing. And Sills' performance deserves a better play, though he brings as much complexity and fun to the role of Sennett as he can, freezing the onstage action to wax coarsely here and there about how he really feels.
Backed by an orchestra and staged with elegant sets and props, it's a classy production. After the opening night performance, composer Herman, who lives in L.A., stepped onstage, and there was much talk about musical theater and how the world needs more of it. This played well to the crowd of West Side fiftysomething patron-of-the-arts types who love the simple idea of big musicals. But perhaps they can learn something from the triumph of the talkies and the evidence, in every direction, that the time for Mack & Mabel has come and gone.
-Glenn Gaslin, News Time Los Angeles
November 16, 2000
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