So I'm in New York on another of my periodic theater binges, although there's no way I'm going to approach my record of eight shows in four days this time. (For one thing, I'm going to have to go into our office for a while at least one day.) The specific inspiration for this trip, the event that set the timing, is BC/EFA's 22nd annual Easter Bonnet Competition. The Easter Bonnet in the spring and the Gypsy of the Year in the fall are two of my favorite things to do. Radio Girl introduced me to BC/EFA a few years ago and I've been a major contributor to their campaigns since then, which gets me free tickets to those events.
My first show this time around was Cry-Baby the Musical. As you might guess, it's another translation of a John Waters film into a musical, following in the footsteps of the overwhelmingly successful Hairspray phenomenon. The same guys who wrote the book for Hairspray did so for Cry-Baby. The songs are by one of the members of Fountains of Wayne (Adam Schlesinger, the guy who wrote Stacy's Mom) and the executive producer of The Daily Show. That last credit may seem strange, but David Javerbaum comes to musical theater legitimately, having co-written a couple of Hasty Pudding shows at Harvard and then coming out of NYU's Graduate School of Musical Theater Composition.
Cry-Baby was a blast. Complete and utter camp, of course, but what do you expect with Waters and the others involved? It's the Romeo and Juliet-style love story of "Cry-Baby" Walker, the Elvis-like leader of the Drapes greasers gang, and Allison, a wealthy, baton-twirling "square" in Baltimore in the 50s. They meet and fall in love instantly when the Drapes crash an anti-polio picnic hosted by Allison's grandmother, with whom she lives. Among the things they have in common is that they're both orphans. His parents were executed as communists (falsely accused, it turns out - they were pacifists, not communists) and her parents died in a tragic croquet accident.
Cry-Baby is played by James Snyder, making his first Broadway appearance but known widely to geeks as Luke Skywalker in Stars Wars Trilogy in 30 Minutes. Elizabeth Stanley is Allison. If you saw the PBS broadcast of the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company a little while back (or were lucky enough to see the production on Broadway as I did) you'd recognize her as April, the flight attendant who knows she's dumb. I loved her in that role. Her grandmother is played by Harriet Harris, who Guthrie theater fans will know from last year's production of The Glass Menagerie, not to mention roles in Frasier and Desperate Housewives. Oh, and not to mention her Tony for Thoroughly Modern Millie...
The show is just totally over-the-top camp from the turn-off-your-cellphone song beforehand to the one that plays the audience out afterwards with admonitions to watch their cholesterol. The polio hook allows for a couple appearances by a guy singing in an iron lung. The choreography and dancing are phenomenal - this company is tight. It reminds me of a Broadway-quality version of another movie conversion I loved for its spirit, style, and energy - Evil Dead the Musical. It's totally entertaining, and doesn't pretend to have any higher aspirations than that.
Which leads to the title of this post Unfortunately Cry-Baby may not have a long life ahead of it. Ben Brantley, one of the critics at the NYT, thoroughly trashed it Friday after it opened Thursday night. He's been turning into quite the prissy little bully lately, and this is his latest victim. I saw a Saturday matinee, two days after it opened in the Marquis Theater (at the Marriott) and the orchestra section was at least a third empty. There were entire rows at the back that were empty. Hell, I had a second row center seat at a discount. It should have been packed. He may very well kill it, as he did with another musical I loved, the adaptation of High Fidelity a couple years ago. It would be a shame to see this one die too. It does what it set out to do, does it very well, and it could entertain a lot of people a long time if it gets a shot. It certainly deserves one a heck of a lot more than certain saccharine Disney productions we could all name.
Brantley is becoming thoroughly unreliable as a critic to me, particularly compared to his colleague at the Times, Charles Isherwood. Thank goodness Isherwood drew the review for Passing Strange, not Brantley. It's a brilliant piece of work that I expect Brantley would have trashed, but Isherwood gave it a rave. I saw it on one of my previous trips and seriously thought about seeing it again this time. It's that good. I'm awaiting the release of the cast recording breathlessly. I heard today that they recorded one last week, so hopefully it's coming soon.
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