By Peter Thomas Ricci<\/p>\n
Porchlight Theatre is among the finest interpreters of musical theater in all of Chicagoland, and those traits are in abundance in the company\u2019s staging of the Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black, and Christopher Hampton musical \u201cSunset Boulevard.\u201d The cast \u2013 headlined by Hollis Resnik, Billy Rude, Larry Adams, and Michelle Lauto \u2013 is superb, with clear voices and wonderful range; the chorus, with Marcellus Burt, Ambria Sylvain, and Ronald Keaton, is similarly strong; and the technical feats of Jeff Kmiec\u2019s sets, Bill Morey\u2019s costumes, and Aaron Benham\u2019s music direction, are first rate.<\/p>\n
There is a gnawing problem with this production, however, one that rendered me quite sad as I sat in the Ruth Page Center for the Arts \u2013 for all the talent behind the material, this is ultimately an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, and the man\u2019s busy, melodramatic compositions could not be more inappropriate for the \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d source material.<\/p>\n
Based on the classic Billy Wilder film, the musical\u2019s plot will be familiar to anyone aware of the Hollywood zeitgeist: down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (Rude) falls in with Norma Desmond (Resnik), a popular actress during Hollywood\u2019s silent film era who has, by 1950, been completely forgotten among the intelligentsia (especially the famous Cecil B. DeMille, played by the talented David Girolmo). Now a recluse, Desmond lives in the past, watching her old films on repeat and descending into madness while her butler, Max von Mayerling (Adams), tries to hold things together. A script \u2013 one she has been working on for years and will, in her mind, catapult her back into the spotlight \u2013 is her last chance, and she hires Gillis to help her finish it.<\/p>\n
Clearly, this is a compelling narrative, and the Wilder film is a masterpiece of cynicism and satire. The lead performances from William Holden and Gloria Swanson are among the most iconic in the history of celluloid, and the Wilder\/Charles Brackett\/D.M. Marshman Jr. script is one of the greatest ever written, closing with the famously haunting line of \u201cAlright Mr. DeMille, I\u2019m read for my closeup\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
None of those qualities are apparent in Porchlight\u2019s production, but again, that is not due in any part to the efforts of the show\u2019s cast and crew; rather, this is entirely on the creative team behind the material. For starters, the Don Black\/Christopher Hampton book makes perplexing changes to the film\u2019s characters and narrative style. When one is working on a stage adaptation of a perfect screenplay, it would make sense to retain the aspects of that perfection, notably Joe Gilles\u2019 famously macabre narration (the film opens with his corpse floating in a pool, and Gilles promising he\u2019ll explain how he ended up there); the wit and observation of that narration, though, are completely absent, and are replaced with a naive, aw-shucks tone that reveals little of 1950s Hollywood. Not only is this bad for the themes, but the characters suffer as well \u2013 the smooth sliminess of Gilles is absent, as is the terrifying madness of Desmond and the aching devotion of Mayerling.<\/p>\n
But worst of all is Webber\u2019s melodramatic \u2013 dare I say, over the top \u2013 style, which is a terrible match for the source material\u2019s satiric tone. For \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d to succeed on the stage, the music needs vibrancy, whimsy, life<\/i> \u2013 all qualities that are inherently absent from Webber\u2019s work. Instead, we get bombastic, even perfunctory histrionics that suffocate the themes and characters, allowing little space for development. As my wife and I exited the theater, I mentioned that Webber was behind the music, and her response captured the dynamic perfectly: \u201cThat makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, it is all very unfortunate, because Porchlight has assembled a typically fantastic group to stage this very flawed musical. Here is hoping that the next show in their 2019-2020 season, \u201cSophisticated Ladies,\u201d is more deserving of such talent.<\/p>\n
Not Recommended<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Playing through December 8 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N Dearborn St, Chicago IL 60610<\/span><\/p>\n Tickets can be purchased at porchlightmusictheatre.org, or by calling 773-777-9884<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Peter Thomas Ricci Porchlight Theatre is among the finest interpreters of musical theater in all of Chicagoland, and those traits are in abundance in the company\u2019s staging of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,41,245,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-news","category-features","category-musical-theatre","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}