'Scarlet' Wrapped in Purple Prose
'Pimpernel' is a Rescue Story
Populated by Nuts and Flakes
What can you say about a swashbuckling superhero who likes to disguise himself as a dandy?
That rather strange foible works both for and against "The Scarlet Pimpernel," Frank Wildhorn's much- tweaked and very silly musical, which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre for a six-week run.
The show, like Wildhorn musicals such as "Jekyll & Hyde," has endured a checkered history and countless revisions large and small.
Its Broadway reception was bumpy, to say the least. Thankfully, none of that baggage is visible in this sleek, assured national touring production.
Technically, the show runs like a well-maintained, high-speed locomotive, though some may question where that speeding train is headed, exactly, and wonder what to make of the colorful characters waving from its windows.
Douglas Sills plays the Scarlet Pimpernel (the 18th-century savior of innocent victims of France's post-revolutionary Reign of Terror) and his alter-ego, Sir Percy Blakeney, like a man possessed.
Sills doesn't so much act the role as toss it at us, huckster style, at a pitch that's guaranteed to hit the back wall with a splat.
The rationale for Sir Percy's foppish, preening behavior is that nobody would suspect such a nincompoop to be the man who almost singlehandedly has made a mockery of France's revolutionary government.
Author-lyricist Nan Knighton takes that premise and runs with it - all the way to cartoonland.
Sir Percy is a lover of haberdashery, and we're not talking here about well-cut waistcoats and nicely creased trousers. Percy never met a frill he wouldn't kill for, a fabric too hideous to drape himself in, a cravat too crazy to decorate his neck.
Somehow, he persuades his band of indolent aristocratic pals to join his cause, and that means dressing like Percy in a riot of peacockery.
These dress-up scenes, in fact, are the evening's high points. Jane Greenwood's costumes are a triumphant explosion of excess.
A word here about historical vs. modern perceptions.
Male foppishness is a time-honored English tradition dating at least to the mid-18th century, when the wide boulevards of resort towns such as Bath were showplaces for the tastes and dress of the idle rich.
It was an acceptable, if vainglorious, pursuit for an English gentleman, and not associated with a gay subculture (though some may argue that point).
Those who don't bear that historical nicety in mind could, um, misinterpret the behavior of Sir Percy and his band. They're just a bunch of guys who dress like sissies to hide their true identities.
Really.
(Actually, the double entendres created by all that frou-frou make for some of the evening's funniest moments.)
The problem with this foolishness is it undermines the story's more serious elements. Sir Percy matches wits with the evil Chauvelin, a representative of France's revolutionary government. William Paul Michals plays Chauvelin seriously and without cartoonish affectation, and the role doesn't square with the prevailing looniness of the story. He seems like someone from the cast of "Les Miserables" who somehow ended up in the wrong theater.
The plot, based on Baroness Orczy's popular 1905 novel, doesn't help matters. Sir Percy keeps his exploits hidden from his new bride, Marguerite, a French actress who he wrongly suspects is collaborating with the enemy. This incorrect assumption is the result of an intercepted letter - a creaky plot twist at least as old as Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" - and its perpetuation is crucial to keeping the story in motion. Your willing suspension of disbelief must shift into overdrive to accommodate such shenanigans.
Still, when "Pimpernel" reaches rescue mode, it sweeps up even the cynics. Sir Percy sneaks into France with his cadre to rescue Marguerite's brother, and it's a sequence worthy of Erroll Flynn, full of swordplay (much of it, alas, clumsy and unconvincing), trickery and counter-trickery, disguises and the constant threat of the guillotine (the show's hardest working, though unbilled, star). The struggle is set in the abandoned theater of the Comedie-Francaise - the best part of Andrew Jackness' uneven and sometimes sketchy scenic design. You know it will all end happily, of course, but there are some surprising moments of suspense on the way to Percy and Marguerite's final kiss.
The cast, by and large, acquit themselves well. Amy Bodnar has perfected the look of pained silence so crucial for Marguerite, a distressingly reactive character. She owns a powerful voice that's well suited to emotional torch songs (a Wildhorn specialty) such as "You Are My Home."
With his flowing black hair and perpetually glowering expression, Michals makes Chauvelin seem like a malevolent force of nature, and he gives the production some sorely needed gravitas.
Sills, though, is the reason to see this show, and he's undoubtedly a major talent.
His Sir Percy revels in his foppishness like a pig in mud. He projects the sleek, self-satisfied confidence of a man to whom power is a birthright, and his stage presence is powerful and engaging - imagine a young Robert Preston trapped in the wardrobe of Liberace.
Sills' voice is sometimes weirdly schizophrenic: It's rough and stentorian in songs such as "The Creation of Man," but in his upper register (the ballad "She Was There," for instance), Sills is a impressive lyric baritone.
All in all, it's a star-making performance.
If only "The Scarlet Pimpernel's" creators had given Sills better material.
Knighton's story is strangled by a surfeit of silliness, and Wildhorn's songs, as usual, betray him as a middling talent - better with soul-baring showstoppers, less dexterous with anthems and period styles, and bereft of the Lloyd Webber knack for crafting memorable melodies.
"Pimpernel" is a mixed bag with a lot of nuts - but if you don't expect too much of your musicals beyond sheer entertainment, you'll gobble it down with gusto, nuts and all.
-Paul Hodgins, Orange County Register
May 4, 2000
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