| My review of "ROCKY" -- Turning a boxing movie into a Broadway musical | |
| Posted by: | jesse21 02:40 pm EDT 03/12/14 |
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| - Now that Spider-Man is no longer leaping off a Broadway stage, lovers of stagecraft might find solace in Rocky, the movie-to-stage musical adaptation opening Thursday at the Winter Garden. Trouble is that once again in commercial theater script and song are incidental to scenery. In this tuner, there are massive amounts of set pieces designed by Chris Barreca, aided by Christopher Akerlind’s lighting and Jeremy Chernick’s special effects, that come at you from all directions in what seems to be an intent to expensively replicate the movie, scene by scene, before your very eyes. The amount of detail can be staggering, as during a couple of brief scenes inside a pet shop where the fish in aquarium tanks appear to be alive and swimming. All this builds to a spectacular final twenty minutes: the boxing match between heavyweight champion Apollo Creed and challenger Rocky Balboa in which a regulation-sized boxing ring slides over the orchestra pit and first eight rows of the auditorium (the occupants of those rows are re-seated on stage in bleachers behind the ring), a Jumbotron descends from above and all sorts of busy hoopla goes on before and during the big fight. Talk about walking out humming the scenery. Well, there’s not much else to cheer. The musical is closely based on the first movie in the franchise. Rocky Balboa is an amateur boxer who earns a makeshift living as a goon to a loan shark. He tries to court the shy Adrian, a sales clerk in the aforementioned pet shop. He's known her and her brother Paulie since they were school kids in a tough Southside Philadelphia neighborhood. Then an improbable once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presents itself. Heavyweight champ Apollo Creed has scheduled a New Year's title fight in Philly. His opponent pulls out. Nobody wants to cancel and lose the revenue. So a scheme is hatched where Apollo will make an entertainment of fighting a stooge for a couple of rounds. Looking at a list of local boxers, he and his managers choose Rocky for his salable ring name, "The Italian Stallion." Meanwhile, mousy Adrian finally goes on a date with Rocky. He inspires her to come out of her shell and she in turn encourages him to gain some self-respect by training hard to give Apollo a genuine fight for the crown. Sylvester Stallone penned the screenplay which earned the modestly-budgeted, underdog feature a best picture Oscar in 1977. He also co-authored the musical's book. Did he change anything? Yes. Now instead of Rocky cracking five raw eggs into a glass for his morning energy drink like he did in the movie, it's just three eggs in the musical. I attribute this to a decline in the audience’s attention span over 38 years. The other book writer is Thomas Meehan, the Tony winner of hits like Annie and Hairspray. I concluded that he was brought in mainly to ease the transitions in-and-out of songs. To evaluate the score by Lynn Ahrens (lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty (music) as serviceable would be an act of kindness. The songs are duds. He, the better half of this longtime team, does get one catchy melody going in Rocky's opening number, “My Nose Ain’t Broken,” but his music is undermined by her dreadful lyrics. The audience responds, however, to the songs they didn’t write: Bill Conti’s theme music (“Gonna Fly Now”) and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” which was introduced later in the movie franchise. Both are heard a few times in this musical. The enterprise is under the direction of hotshot Alex Timbers, known for helming imaginative smaller works, like Here Lies Love and Peter and the Starcatcher. This time around, he’s in downmarket mode. Mr. Timbers ought to win a medal just for negotiating the twenty-four member cast around the scenery without injury. But, besides those responsible for the production design (and that includes the not yet mentioned video designs by Dan Scully and Pablo A. Molina), I was impressed by the work of only two other participants: the choreographer Steven Hoggett who stages all the boxing scenes most convincingly. He’s on a roll, having created movement in The Glass Menagerie last fall on Broadway, and he’ll be back in New York in September with his work for the London smash hit, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. And the other is actor Andy Karl who delivers the goods in his first starring role after playing supporting parts in various musicals, such as the UPS man in Legally Blonde and Neville Landless in last season’s Edwin Drood revival. He manages to find a good balance between channeling Mr. Stallone’s original performance (an audience expectation) and putting his own stamp on Rocky Balboa. The rest of the main supporting cast is disappointing. Margo Seibert, making a Broadway debut, is not interesting or entirely convincing as both the repressed Adrian and a newly blossomed Adrian. The movie can boast of three memorable performances by distinctive male character actors: Burgess Meredith as the codger Mickey, Rocky’s trainer; Burt Young as Adrian’s domineering brother, Paulie; and Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed. With the wealth of acting talent around, you’d think they could have done better than settling for the colorless performances being turned in by Dakin Matthews (Mickey), Danny Mastrogiorgio (Paulie) and Terence Archie (Apollo). You have to wonder if adapting Rocky into a Broadway musical was a good idea for starters because this material fails to ‘sing.’ It is also a rather dated ‘little guy versus the big guy’ yarn that doesn’t sit quite right with sensibilities in the second decade of the twenty-first century. A friend at Rocky the evening I caught it opined that he wished there was far less elaborate scenery throughout so that the big boxing match at the end would register as a genuinely surprising coup de théâtre. He has a good point, but then you wonder how much of the audience would still be around for the finale if they didn’t have all that set design to divert their attention for the first two hours. ★ ★½ ☆ ☆ ☆ - Jesse MUSICAL NUMBERS: Act One “Ain’t Down Yet” - Company, Fight Promoter (Wallace Smith), Gazzo (Eric Anderson), Buddy (John Schiappa) “My Nose Ain’t Broken” - Rocky Balboa (Andy Karl) “Raining” - Adrian (Margo Seibert) “Patriotic” - Apollo Creed (Terence Archie), Apollo’s Manager (Wallace Smith), Miles Jergens (David Andrew MacDonald), Apollo Girls (Sasha Hutchings, Vasthy Mompoint, Kristin Piro), Ensemble “My Nose Ain’t Broken” (Reprise) - Rocky “The Flip Side” - Rocky, Adrian “Adrian” - Rocky “Wanna Know Why” - Gazzo, Buddy, Rocky, Mickey (Dakin Matthews) “Fight From the Heart” - Rocky “One of Us” - Company Act Two “Training Montage 1” - Orchestra “In the Ring” - Mickey “Training Montage 2” - Orchestra “Happiness” - Rocky, Adrian “I’m Done” - Adrian “Southside Celebrity” - Company, Rocky, Apollo “Adrian” (Reprise) - Adrian “Keep on Standing” - Rocky “Undefeated Man” - Apollo, Entourage “The Fight” - Company SIDEBAR: In ‘Rocky,’ Andy Karl Trained Hard for the Title Role” by Sarah Lyall, The New York Times, 2-13-2014. “ROCKY” opens Thursday, March 13, 2014, at the Winter Garden Theatre, 1634 Broadway (between 50th & 51st Streets), New York City. Seen at a preview on March 3 (started 8:05pm; ended 10:26pm). Running time: about 2 hours, 20 minutes including a 20-minute intermission. Act One: 1 hour, 2 minutes. Act Two: 1 hour. Open-ended engagement. Tickets currently on sale through November 23, 2014. Link to website. Note: The world premiere production was mounted in Hamburg, Germany as “Rocky Das Musical” by the same creative staff in November 2012 with text and songs translated from the English into German. Drew Sarich played Rocky Balboa. - | |
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