"Pimpernel" Offers Little to Cheer About
San Francisco Examiner
They seek him here. They seek him there. Those playwrights seek him everywhere. They sought him on Broadway and now on the road. But that demmed elusive Pimpernel continues to slip through the grasp of writer Nan Knighton and composer Frank Wildhorn.
Not as badly as before, though. The touring production of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" that opened a two-week Best of Broadway run at the Orpheum Theatre Wednesday is considerably more entertaining than the dismal version that made its debut at Broadway's Minskoff Theatre 2 1/2 years ago.
It isn't a great musical, or even a good one. It fails to generate any of the emotional tension or sense of adventure it posits -- there's no swash to its buckle, if you will. But it's often a pretty good swish-buckler, milking the Pimpernel's foppish disguise for generous amounts of campy comedy. And it's a pretty good showcase for local-boy-made-good Douglas Sills in the title role.
Sills, who studied at ACT and turned in some strong performances at the old Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, was one of the few elements -- along with the costumes and scenery -- of the original Broadway version to escape the execrations of most critics. Except for his engagingly energized performance (for which he was nominated for a Tony), the show was so flat, listless and doggedly banal that even Wildhorn's loyal legions of "Jekyll & Hyde" faithful weren't coming.
Then began one of the strangest resuscitation efforts in Broadway history. Cablevision and investor Ted Forstmann bought the show from its original producers and brought in director-choreographer Robert Longbottom to reshape it. Longbottom -- longtime director and choreographer of the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show, who'd only recently made his Broadway debut with "Side Show" -- threw out Peter Hunt's original staging and Adam Pelty's lackluster choreography.
He replaced two of the three leads, keeping Sills. He, Knighton and Wildhorn completely revamped the show, throwing out characters, subplots and scenes, changing the order of the songs, dropping several of them, and reshaping its whole aesthetic. He put the revised version into rehearsal during the day while the old show ran at night, closing down for only a week before opening the new "Pimpernel" to mixed but generally impressed reviews a year after the original had made its unprepossessing bow.
That's essentially the version, produced by Radio City Entertainment and Ted Forstmann, that's now at the Orpheum, revised some by Longbottom (mostly cutting back the scenery and size of the supporting cast) for its national tour. Surprisingly, it's the same length as the original -- two hours and 40 minutes -- which is surprising because, though the time doesn't exactly fly, it isn't nearly the excruciating plod it once was.
Wildhorn's songs are just as generically pop-bland as ever, and just as repetitive in format. He seems never to have conceived a melody, however potentially beguiling, he didn't think would work better if he stated it quietly and reflectively, and then turned up the volume -- and turned it up some more -- as a substitute for lyric or emotional intensity.
Knighton's lyrics are hopelessly uninteresting, and her script isn't much better (she also adapted the almost equally reviled "Saturday Night Fever" stage musical). Working from the once popular novel by Baroness Orczy (pen name for Hungarian born Emmuska Orczy Barstow), she's succeeded in the formidable task of dumbing down an already not very bright book.
The basic story is still there: English gentleman Percy (Sills) acts the fop to disguise his undercover work as the Scarlet Pimpernel (his family crest -- some disguise), leading his band of aristocratics on forays to Paris to rescue innocent victims of the French Revolution. Stalked by the tenacious Chauvelin (William Paul Michals), he keeps his identity secret even from his French actress wife, Marguerite (Amy Bodnar).
Chauvelin blackmails Marguerite. Percy suspects her of spying, and avoids consummating their marriage. She heads for Paris to rescue her brother (Billy Sharpe) and falls into Chauvelin's clutches. Big showdown. Happy ending.
Knighton doesn't bother to provide much motivation for the emotional shifts and plot twists. Nobody's changes of mind, plans or schemes make any sense. Marguerite's love and her dilemma are stated rather than dramatized, and her appearance in Paris is so abrupt that her plan has been foiled before it's been set up (it doesn't help that Bodnar, though fetching and a dynamic singer, conveys little emotion or sense of purpose in her line readings).
Michals' Chauvelin, though just as powerfully sung, never amounts to more than a third-rate copy of "Les Mis�rables"' Inspector Javert. The scheme he hatches that sets up the final showdown is so improbably inane and unworkable that you don't want to give it a moment's serious thought.
But that's the big advantage of Longbottom's production. It never stops to take itself seriously. He gives the big emotion-laden ballads their due -- as Andrew Wilder's orchestra swells to the predictable crescendos under the full, resonant voices of Sills, Bodnar and Michals -- but even then he keeps the action going.
As the principals sing, the painted flats and versatile units of Andrew Jackness' attractive sets are moving us to the next scene, from the guillotine-dominated square in Paris to a pastoral Georgian estate. In one impressive shift, held over from the first Broadway version, Percy and his crew are transported from his book-filled library to a boat under sail as they sing of their decision to take action.
Sills can be as boyish or manly a hero as you please, and he is, when necessary. But suspense, romance and action all take a very far backseat here to the camp possibilities inherent in the men's disguise and Jane Greenwood's wondrous costumes, delightful period confections of French Empire gowns and outrageously fey English cutaways. And Sills has a field day with his foppery, reveling in a rising inflection, a limp wrist, a girlish squeal or a squeamish swoon to confound his enemies.
David Cromwell, one of few holdovers from the original Broadway cast (with a plaintive Elizabeth Ward Land as one of the rescued), provides bright support as a drily sardonic Robespierre and a closeted-fop Prince of Wales. Percy's crew, though not well individualized -- except for Russell Garrett as the one who needs no disguise -- help make the ensemble camp-fop scenes the heart of the show. It's not much, especially if you were hoping for some romance and adventure. But it helps you get through the night.
-Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Examiner
April 6, 2000
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