Stephen King’s
“Carrie” is a coming of age story, complete with growing pains, lessons learned
and exceptionally horrific melodrama.
It’s interesting and sweetly fitting that the musical “Carrie” has had its
own coming of age story.
The first
production of the musical “Carrie” was a bona fide mess. The book and score weren’t half bad, mind
you, but RSC director Terry Hands made such surreal and expressionistic artistic
choices that the show became a stark, non-cohesive mish-mash; what was good was
often clouded and confusing and what was weak was
amplified to the point of incredulity. As a result, despite a stellar cast, the show
was a thunderous flop and Michael Gore (score) and Dean Pitchford (lyrics)
removed it from the public, allowing no other professional productions…for
over twenty years.
Fortunately, for
those of us who knew there was a genuinely moving musical lost amidst Hand’s
preposterous smoke and laser beam show, Gore and Pitchford re-worked the entire
opus, learning from what must have been as horrifying an experience as the
titular character’s first period in the high school gym showers. With great tenacity, faith, and judicial
editing, they kept the good stuff, rewrote the weaker sections and the result
is a show that is clear and a score that is solid; one they have unleashed at last
for productions be mounted.
The La Mirada
Theatre grabbed that chance and, thankfully, director Brady Schwind is not only
up to the challenge, he makes one wish he’d been around twenty years ago. Everything the RSC version got wrong, Schwind
and his team get right: not only does the
score pop, soar and haunt, but Schwind’s staging makes that energy manifest in
fitting choreography (via Lee Martino), effective lighting (Brian Gale) and
some spectacularly clever, but
appropriate, stage effects (Jim Steinmeyer and Paul Rubin). The orchestra makes the score sound glorious
as does the very able cast, led by waif-like lovey Emily Lopez as Carrie and a fiery
Misty Cotton as her codependent, crazy mother.
The themes of bullying, poor parenting and religion gone wrong have only become more
prescient in today’s world and so, rather than feel dated, the show proves very
much a cautionary tale for today.
In short, the
musical “Carrie”, much misaligned in her early years, has at last come of age. And it’s about bloody time.
