In 1927
Show Boat ushered in a new age for
the American musical, in which songs became integral to narrative and
character development rather than gratuitous routines. The other night,
I found myself wondering when that age had ended.
Of course
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
is a romp. Based on the 1988 movie starring Michael Caine and Steve
Martin (which is in turn based on the 1964 movie
Bedtime Story starring David Niven
and Marlon Brando), it tells of two confidence tricksters competing to
extract €50,000 from a young American woman visiting their French
Riviera base of operations. Young, brash Yank Freddy reinvents himself
as a war hero who needs psychotherapy to get him out of his wheelchair;
urbane, mature Englishman Lawrence tries to thwart him by in turn
posing as a heartless headshrinker. Each attempts to romance the
visiting “Soap Queen” and to prise her purse open. Clearly silly, in
other words. And yet Jeffrey Lane’s book is so much sillier than either
film version, and David Yazbek’s songs sillier even than that, and
neither in a good way.
Jerry Mitchell also directed
Legally
Blonde at this address in 2010, another movie-to-musical that
determinedly eradicated every atom other than the feelgood. Any
instance of underplaying may conceivably result in wage fines. Basic
theatrical continuity goes out the window, as characters sing in verbal
idioms and even in accents entirely alien to their spoken lines; but
hey, as long as it raises a smile... The principal direction given to
Robert Lindsay as Lawrence seems to have been to take every opportunity
to indulge himself, which he does with everything from a brief vocal
reference to Terry Scott’s 1962 novelty song “My Brother” to an
ill-concealed spot of competitive corpsing during an over-the-top mock
snog with Rufus Hound as Freddy. (And is that wildly inappropriate
portrait in Lawrence’s mansion really from Lindsay’s 2010 West End
appearance as
Onassis?)
Hound made the transition from stand-up to comic actor in
One Man, Two Guvnors, and he shows
the same exuberance here, but that and a basic ability to carry a tune
are all that are asked of him. Samantha Bond and John Marquez are
comparative pillars of dignity in a romantic subplot. This is like a
Muppet rendition of the comparatively mature, subtle film version…
which was er, directed by Frank Oz.
Written for the Financial
Times.