Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

This got off to a painfully slow start, and in full character redeemed itself completely by the end of the first act. It opens with a song by Lawrence Jameson (Tom Hewitt), about his mascherade as a destitute prince trying to save his kingdom from civil war in order to beguile women of their money and jewelry; he dances a slew of girls off the stage, spins over to a roulette table, offers up his royal ring to his assistant Andre (Drew McVety) within audible distance of the brilliant Muriel Eubanks (Hollis Resnik), and woos all the jewelry right off her within the first 5 minutes. The song isn't terribly catchy, and the choreography isn't spectacular - for the most part it's just all sadly average and unenthralling.

But then, the moment we'd all been waiting for.... the entrance of the dearly beloved (hallowed be thy name) Norbert Leo Butz, playing Freddy Benson the cheap, corrupt greedy version of Lawrence, interested in money and women and nothing more (for the record, Lawrence is interested in culture and art and classy things like that). A mediocre entrance, I've gotta say, and believe me that I say it with regret. Of course the audience gave him a huge ovation, and I thought he did an excellent job of accepting it, but then his first scene simply isn't too catchy. When he comes to Lawrence asking for lessons, so that he can be as rich and skilled as Lawrence at swindling wealthy women, his first song is awfully crude - definitely catchier than Lawrence's, but full of overplayed sexual innuendos. In fact, a major flaw in the play's first half was undue attention to sexual references - I think more subtle references would have been funnier; it was kind of awkward watching Norbert Leo Butz gyrating all over the stage and humping Lawrence and various inanimate objects...

And then suddenly, it got really, really good. Not that it wasn't good before, but it suddenly got wonderful. There was much more much funnier and less crude humor (a great deal of French jokes, and then at the entrance of Dr. Emil Shuffhausen a lot of Austrian jokes). A romance develops between Muriel and Lawrence's assistant (and chief of police), Andre, and their love song is one of the highlights of the play - it starts with Andre attempting to light two cigarettes in his mouth at once, and retreating, discouraged, when his lighter won't light. Muriel says, "Well don't give up that quickly," and gives him some pointers on how to woo her, including some mood music. An accordionist slinks out of the shadows, and Muriel snaps up his instrument to give him a few pointers on how to put more "oomph" into it. And the more she speaks to Andre, the worse her French accent becomes, until by the end of the song and their kiss, their accents are identical.

Meanwhile Lawrence and Freddy have decided to make a bet to see which of them is the better swindler, and the loser has to leave town, limited only to Greenland, Antarctica, and Anaheim. The bet is to extract $50,000 from the American Soup Queen, a young woman named Christine Colgate (Laura Marie Duncan); Lawrence is planning to use the "destitute prince with a country sunk in civil war" ploy on her when Freddy rolls onstage in a wheelchair and a uniform, claims that his paralysis is totally emotional, and can be solved with a $50,000 doctor's bill for one Dr. Emil Shuffhausen of Austria. And so concludes the first act, when Lawrence overhears this plot and presents himself to Miss Colgate as the Dr. himself. By this point in the play, I would definitely have rated it at an 8 or so, after the 6 I'd have given a play entirely of the caliber of the first few scenes.

I won't go into much detail about the second act; again, the highlight was Muriel and Andre's love affair, which is rather tumultuous and drunken, and comes precariously close to ending ("I'll miss you." "Will you?" "Not if you don't leave..."); as for the drama with Lawrence and Freddy and Christine, I'm going to leave you with the assignment to watch the movie if you haven't already, because the musical is a pretty fair reproduction, with a couple big changes (like Muriel and Andre, which once again was totally essential), but no added or changed plot twists, so watching the movie will tell the story just as well. Plus, if I say too much, I'll reveal THE HUGE PLOT TWIST AT THE END (have I said too much?). But if you do have the chance to see the musical, you absolutely must. For all that I was not turned on to the first half of the first act, it was great. Kudos to all the actors and actresses (I was going to say especially so-and-so but then I realized that I'd just name them all, because each and every one of them was so spectacular in her or his role). And the music was great. Especially all of Muriel's songs.

Labels: entertainment

posted by Holly @ 10:04 PM