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I Got Merman
*I GOT MERMAN Book by Michael Wolk. Music and Lyrics by various composers. Dallas Summer Musicals Directed & Choreographed by Jamie Rocco
CAST: Yolanda……..………………Becca Ayers Maryanne…….....…………..Cindy Marchionda Eleanor………….…………..Carol Swarfbrick Mr. Fisk…………....………..Jeffrey Biering
*REVIEWED 10-28-03 Performance.
I GOT MERMAN
Maybe it looked like a great idea on paper. You know when your creative juices start to bubble and explode with fantastic images and thoughts of how something you wrote might develop into something incredible.
But once you have it on its feet and now it's become a full, fleshed out, physical thing. You look at it from every angle, and you know it, you just do. It ain't working.
Sadly that is the case with I GOT MERMAN. While the original concept is quite interesting, the overall result becomes a major disappointment.
The fault here lies at the pen of Michael Wolk's god-awful book and the ridiculous direction/choreography by Jamie Rocco. If Merman was alive today, and she saw what they did to her life story? I bet she would be wearing these two men's" twig and berries" like earrings! Wolk's book has us watching a final tech rehearsal of a show about Merman, but this rehearsal is going down the drain (insert your own joke there).
We then meet our four characters: we have "Eleanor", a drunk lush of a Grande dame (Carol Swarbrick) who is dressed like Bea Arthur's "Maude" character. But with Swarbrick's deep, raspy voice and blonde hair, I thought she was trying to act too much like Elaine Stritch.
Then we have a pint size doll who is the stage manager (Cindy Marchionda), a Russian girl who is the understudy we call "Yolanda" (Becca Ayers), and the pianist, Mr. Fisk (Jeffrey Biering).
It is at this tech rehearsal that somehow Merman's ghost enters into each of our performer's bodies. Here Merman relays her life story through them with songs from her impeccable long stage career. We learn about her marriages , children, and career.
But Wolk's book only gives us a few minutes on Merman's personal life. The marriages and their failures are done in such a haphazard method that we don't feel a thing for Merman's broken heart. The book just hauls a** with no conception of bringing in human emotion or meaning. Songs for this wretched book come from Merman's stage hits. Such as ANYTHING GOES, ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, CALL ME MADAM, and others.
But they just don't work at all in this unorganized book. One perfect example is the death of Merman's daughter by a drug overdose. After Swarbrick's "Eleanor" tells the audience about her daughter's death, she goes into a few measures of " Rose's Turn". Even from my seat in the Majestic Theater I could hear Merman rolling over in her grave on that one.
Wolk's humdrum book tries to conjure up a love interest plot with Mr. Fisk and the stage manager that is as believable as David Gest's wedding kiss to Liza Minnelli. This subplot was not needed at all, period. To add insult to injury, Wolk has Mr. Fisk defending his sexuality as a straight man in musical theater. Mind you, Mr. Fisk is dressed like a butch lesbian about to go hit the bars. So go figure.
Jamie Rocco's direction is a disaster from beginning to end. The blocking is just so basic, static, and lifeless, you wonder if it was done after five bottles of vodka. There is not one ounce of originality or creativity in Rocco's direction. The choreography is laughable at best. All we see is the four performers stand in a single line and do umpteen jazz squares.
Randel Wright's set is workable, Graham Kindred's lighting is decent, but David Gillam's costumes are mediocre. Although the flashy gowns for the "mini revue" are nice.
While all the performers do sing with lovely pipes, none of them truly sound like la Merman. There is no true "belt to the back of the balcony" in the cast. Which confuses the audience even more. These characters have Merman's ghost in their own bodies, yet not one of them come even close like sounding like the woman was "born with a trumpet in her throat". They instead come off like karaoke singers at a Merman singing contest.
Becca Ayers does though do a fantastic job with the torch ballad, "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries". She sings from the heart and truly gets under the skin of those lyrics.
I really went into seeing this show with high expectations. It was a new musical, and it was focused on one of the greatest female performers who ever graced the great white way.
Thus I felt so crestfallen by the time we reached the curtain call. You so badly wanted this to be a new, exciting, and fresh musical that you were thrilled to have watched.
Instead it was a blend of some talented performers who got saddled with a show that lacked any direction and a book that brought grave injustice to those glorious Cole Porter tunes.
The original concept still is fascinating, but it requires some major re-tooling and re- working.
RATING: C- |
