'The Scarlet Pimpernel'
Swashbuckles to the Paramount
"They seek him here, they seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere
Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?
That damned, elusive Pimpernel."
From the time he sashayed and swashbuckled his way onto a London stage in 1903, Sir Percy Blakeney (aka The Scarlet Pimpernel) has been a dandy crowd-pleaser.
A master of disguise as well as a daring spy, sensitive lover and quintessential fop, the heroic 18th-century British aristocrat was the creation of a novice writer, the Baronness Emmuska Orczy - who swore Percy's story came to her via a divine apparition.
Despite that, Orczy couldn't find a taker for her potboiler novel about Percy's covert adventures rescuing doomed aristocrats during the French Revolution. So she concocted a play on the subject, which proved a great hit.
Sir Percy went on to star in more than a dozen sequel novels, other plays and various films. And he's inspired a genre of split-personality action heroes - from Zorro and Superman, to Spawn.
There's still some swash and buckle left in the old Pimpernel (or Pumpernickel, as he's known in the classic Daffy Duck cartoon).
A new BBC film of the tale, starring Richard Grant as Percy, aired on cable in 1998. And the touring Broadway show "The Scarlet Pimpernel," opens a run at the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday.
Created by prolific theater-pops composer Frank Wildhorn and writer Nan Knighton, the musical bowed on Broadway in 1997 but has since undergone an expensive revamp.
Actually, the show began as a concept album in 1992. And full Broadway treatment five years later was an overstuffed and dreary affair, full of flouncy camp but not enough cleverly wrought laughs to royally spoof itself. Critics carped, and the show failed to inspire the kind of cult following Wildhorn's previous literature-lite tuner, "Jekyll & Hyde" had gathered.
But out of the wreckage a true hero emerged: Douglas Sills, a strapping charmer whose agile, witty take on Sir Percy earned him a Tony Award nomination, Theatre World and Drama League honors, gushing fan Web sites and high praise from reviewers.
Paramount patrons can be grateful that Sills stars in the Seattle leg of the musical's first national tour. And that "The Scarlet Pimpernel" he's fronting is, by all reports, much improved.
Catch Sills in action and you'll see a classically trained actor with Shakespearean credits, a flair for period style and arch comedy, and a big, attractive singing voice.
The genial and articulate American Conservatory Theatre grad says doing the Pimpernel "has been very heady stuff really, Cloud Nine time. It's a killer part. Our fight choreographer called it 'Hamlet, With Music.'
"On top of that, there was the whole Tony thing - meeting people I've admired for years, having my whole family see me perform on TV . . . It's the stuff of dreams for any kid who ever wanted to act."
Though Sills, a Detroit native, was one such kid, he's also been ambivalent about his calling. He confides that at age 35, after a decade of regional-theater gigs and second-string TV jobs, he was up for "more intellectual challenge." So he re-took the law-school aptitude test and flirted with his old plan of becoming an attorney.
Then came "Pimpernel." Sills admits he wasn't the first, or fifth, choice of the producers. They wanted Kevin Kline, Robert Lindsay or another proven Broadway leading man - but none signed on.
"I did six or seven auditions, and it was very intense," Sills recalls. "I didn't think I had a prayer. To put a $10 million musical on the shoulders of a guy nobody's heard of? That's really risky."
The risk was taken, and Sills did not let the show's backers down.
It turns out the actor has been a "Pimpernel" fan since, as a boy, he saw the popular 1934 film with Leslie Howard as a peerlessly languid Percy, and Merle Oberon as Percy's conflicted French wife, Marguerite. Sills is also well aware of other matinee idols who toiled as Orczy's caped crusader - David Niven, Anthony Andrews.
Like them, he's relished the challenge of portraying a man who is almost always masquerading as someone he's not. "I actually feel like I'm doing four characters. There's Percy before the story's crisis, Percy the fop, the Scarlet Pimpernel who appears to Marguerite as a voice only, the spy Percy pretends to be in France."
Advises Sills, "I loved creating all these different personas, each with its own dialect and physicalization. To go from Percy Fop to Percy Hero, then back and forth . . . it's what Danny Kaye got to do in `The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.' "
After the critical drubbing it took in 1997, in 1998 "Pimpernel" switched to a smaller Broadway venue, got a new producer (Radio City Entertainment) and director (Robert Longbottom), and received an extensive makeover.
New York Times critic Vincent Canby praised the result "as virtually a different show . . . a light-hearted, prettily appointed entertainment" which Sills still dominated, "though now (it) is working with him, instead of ignoring him."
Sills defends the musical as an old-fashioned good vs. evil, heroes vs. villains yarn. "There's nothing antiquated about the story. It provides clarity in an all-too-gray world. Wildhorn isn't inclined to write over the heads of his audience. His take is completely visceral and melodious."
"I expect some early criticisms of the show had validity," Sills observes. "But doing a new Broadway musical, especially one with no out-of-town tryouts, is a little like doing a NASA shuttle launch. The scope and scale are beyond what you'd ever imagine."
As "Pimpernel" has changed, so has Percy. Initial director Peter Hunt "wanted me to make the audience like him all the time," Sills says. "But Longbottom encouraged me to explore Percy's darker side, too."
Sills left the Broadway "Pimpernel" last June; the run closed months later. He agreed to help launch the tour because "it's like 'Pimpernel 3.0,' with new choreography and costumes, and a more clarified and magnified romantic triangle between Percy, Marguerite (Amy Bodnar) and the French spy Chauvelin Chamblin (William P. Michals)."
After he ends his reign as the Pimpernel in June, what's on the Los Angeles-based actor's agenda?
"I have embarrassing desires to play Hamlet before I get too old. And there's some talk of new pieces being written with me in mind, which would be lovely. I'd like to move fluidly between plays and musicals and movies, like Kevin Kline and Glenn Close do."
But has he had fun as the bewigged, sword-brandishing, macho-effete Percy? "Oh, yeah!" Sills answers readily. "How can you not have fun doing this? If you don't have fun with this, you're definitely in the wrong business."
-Misha Berson, Seattle Times
March 19, 2000
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