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Leader of the Pack Also see John's recent review of The five nominated musicals for this year's Tony Award for Best Musical include two musicals whose books are celebrated and praised for finally bringing back the craft of creating a solid book. I'm speaking, of course, of The Full Monty & The Producers. In fact, quite a few of the reviews for The Producers praised the book more than the actual musical score, which is rare in today's theatre. A musical's book is as important as the score, plain and simple. It brings the characters on the stage boards to life and gives them purpose and meaning. It gives us, the audience, a reason to care, to feel, and to want to go on the journey the characters are about to take within the confines of the story. A book for a musical is not created just to "connect the dots" between songs. A lot of musical books do this; instead of caring deeply for the characters on stage, you tap your toes waiting for the next song. So, imagine my horror as I sat in the dark at the Music Hall at Fair Park waiting for the story in Leader of the Pack (LOTP) to take its course. Much to my shock, it never came! I had only seen a production of LOTP once before, in college. I remember the book being a tad cheesy and slightly dull, but still somewhat enjoyable, and the "journey" with Ellen Greenwich (whose life the musical is based on) was actually quite pleasing to go through. Thus, I was extremely excited about a new and fresh mounting of this '80s musical based on a composer who wrote music that became pop gems of the '50s and '60s. Last night at the Music Hall, that did not happen. For, you see, the production team completely took out the book. Not one word was left at all. So LOTP became a musical rock doo wop bubblegum revue of Greenwich's music. They even added more songs to fill in the gaps where the book was to take place. Thus, you didn't feel or even care for the "characters", or the cast on stage. The production just became one '50s doo-wop song after another, to the point that many songs so much alike, you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. The cast is also problematic. The male portion of the cast, for the most part, is made up of way over pumped muscle men with no stage presence, charisma, or the true ability to "act" a song. Instead they relied on their looks and bumping and grinding. Add to that lifeless vocals and you have, simply put, a bland performance from most of the men in the company. Thankfully, Ric Ryder's rendition of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" was a wonderful highlight of the evening with his soaring tenor vocals riding on the crest of that song's score. Jewel Tompkins has the strongest vocals on stage. I can easily see her as Effie in Dreamgirls. But sadly, director Kurt Stamm and choreographer Scott Wise have Ms. Tompkins most often coming from center stage, walking to the apron, and belting a song, only moving her arms for action. Once done, she walks offstage. I did not understand this concept at all. But Tompkins was dressed to the nines in gorgeous beaded gowns, and her forceful diva sounds struck gold in my personal favorite song in the show, "River Deep, Mountain High". Brenda Braxton, who was amazing in Smokey Joe's Cafe, is simply wasted here in LOTP. She has solos sprinkled throughout the evening, but none of them fully explore her vocal strengths and power. Braxton does provide nice moments in her songs, especially "Rock of Rages", but she was not used to her full potential here. Miss Shoshana Bean was the scene stealer of the evening. This woman truly knows how to "act" a song, to sell it with honest emotion to back up the sounds coming from her throat. I just adored her performance on the song "Keep it Confidential", her soprano vocals easily switched to hard edge pop, working beautifully. She was the best thing in the show! Choreographer Scott Wise has a Tony win for Jerome Robbins Broadway as well as nominations for Fosse and State Fair. I saw Mr. Wise in Fosse on Broadway and he is just a joy to watch on stage. But as a choreographer, he has a long way to go. The choreography for LOTP is very "paint by numbers"; nothing advanced the songs, some dance even caused problems within the songs instead of telling the story of the song, the dancing became its own performance, and that's wrong. Dance should reflect the actions, words, themes, etc. of the story, not become something totally different, away from what is being sung or said. I did see the influence of Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins scattered throughout Wise's choreography, and some dance sequences did show promise, but here it just didn't gel with the music's lyrics. In the original production of LOTP, "River Deep, Mountain High" ends the show, but I was shocked and dismayed to see a disco-style megamix end the show here. Dallas Summer Musicals brings to the metroplex audiences some of the finest offerings of theatre that is available. I will be forever grateful to them for bringing Parade to Dallas, a masterpiece of a production. Just recently, DSM brought this critic to tears in their production of Fiddler On The Roof, it was that moving. I also loved dearly Copacabana, which I saw 3 times! But sadly, once in a while they will bring a show that is just lukewarm at best, and Leader of the Pack is one of them. With the book ripped away from this current production, what you see before you at the Music Hall is a glorified Six Flags/Busch Gardens "cheesed to the max" salute to the '50s and '60s musical glory, complete with bland, lifeless pretty boys and beautiful girls with no energy in their eyes or in their performances (with the exception of Ryder, Tompkins, Braxton, and Bean). And that's too bad, because had they kept the book or at least tried to fix its problems, the show might have been a total different experience. Leader of the Pack Directed by Kurt Stamm CAST Shoshana Bean, Brenda Braxton, Dianna Bush, Todd DuBail, Duane Martin Foster, Angela Garrison, Amy Goldberger, David Josefsberg, Joe Machota, Ric Ryder, Denise Summerford, Jewel Tompkins, Ashley Howard Wilkinson. |
