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A CurtainUp New Jersey Review
Sleeping Beauty Awakes
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You can't save me from this world I am not your baby girl And that's good for me Good for me You know I will not be denied I am the one who will decide — sung by Beauty in the song "Good For Me" |
Aspen Vincent with (clockwise)Adina Alexander, Donna Vivino, Steve Judkins and Jimmy Ray Bennett in
(Photo: T. Charles Erickson)
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Collaboratively revisited, recycled and rejuvenated in contemporary musical and narrative terms by Rachel Sheinkin (book), Brendan Milburn (music), Valerie Vigoda (lyrics) and Rebecca Taichman (direction), the fairy tale resurfaces with naturalistic whimsy in a present day sleep disorder clinic. Under an aura of psychoneurotic disenchantment, Sleeping Beauty Awakes, but without enough get-up-and-go. Those who have seen and can recall the beguiling 2006 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, as co-produced by the McCarter Theater and Paper Mill Playhouse, may recognize the fancifully articulated style of rock that defines the music of Milburn and Vigoda, members of the band Groovelily, the ensemble that was delightfully integrated into Midsummer (as directed by Tina Landau.)
Taichman has not yet gotten to the place in Sleeping Beauty Awakes where this musical's flights of fantasy are either gainfully or excitingly entwined with the show's contrasting digressions into reality. The sense of the unexpected is missing in the staging as is an element of surprise in Sheinkin's book. I kept wishing that Taichman could take every aspect and element of the production just one step farther into the surreal. There seems to be a directorial initiative to keep the performances low-key to the extreme, a decision that keeps the essentially one-dimensional characters rooted in abstraction.
Decidedly an allegory, the story is simple and clever enough. King (Bob Stillman), although distraught and weary, has not given up hope that his daughter Rose, also called Beauty (Aspen Vincent), may some day awaken. King admits to the dismayingly disinterested Doctor in charge of the clinic (Kecia Lewis-Evans) that Rose has been asleep for nine hundred years. The Doctor is skeptical:" I analyze sleep disorders." When King insists that she has one, the Doctor, who is inclined to have them thrown out insists " Not if you can't wake her."
When the Doctor is persuaded by King ("I pay cash") to monitor Rose's dreams, Rose is placed in a ward with four patients: Murray (Steve Judkins) who snores, Hadara (Adinah Alexander) who has twitching leg syndrome, Leon (Jimmy Ray Bennett) who can't fall sleep except at work; and Cheryl (Donna Vivino) who fears not being able to wake up. Their problems are amusingly revealed in a pithy little ditty "Can You Cure Me." They are deployed throughout the action as participants in Rose's dreams, harmonizing in a refreshing tune, "Still Small Hour," sung in the nostalgic style of the Mills Brothers.
Rose is undoubtedly a beauty, as she reclines comatose in a lovely party dress of rose petals (as prettily fabricated by costume designer Miranda Hoffman). Rose's dreams take her back to her search for the spindle on which, true to the story, she pricked her finger.
More importantly, the clinic's apparently only Orderly (a wonderfully eccentric and disarming performance by Bryce Ryness) is seriously narcoleptic among his other neurological challenges. Of course, he is smitten by the lovely but unresponsive Rose with whom he nevertheless can cavort in dream-time. Is he destined to become her prince in reality? Are we surprised that Rose's over-protective dad King is at the root of her problems and appears to be the cause of Rose's rebelliousness, unhappiness and her subconscious decision to escape in sleep?
It's fortunate that a character-defining song such as "Good for Me," in which Rose unleashes her rage at her father, comes along to shake up a mild building up of insouciance. In another instance, Kecia Lewis-Evans, who throws away almost all her spoken lines, miraculously reinvests herself in the show when she sings. She is also spectacularly re-invented as the Bad Fairy in a disturbing dream with Rose.
Sheinkin, lauded for her book for the Tony Award-winning musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, has been an essential collaborator on Sleeping Beauty Awakes since it was originally awakened in a much different form for the Deaf West/Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles in 2007 (Curtainup's review). Allowing for the presumably many changes that this musical has gone through already over the past four years, I suspect that some more might be in order to achieve a more engaging and more empowering contrast between what the characters dream and what they experience as reality.
Doug Verone's fluid choreography, in particular a dream sequence in which a hospital bed becomes a spinning soloist and centerpiece in an ensemble number, is a highlight and underlines the need for more surprises. It's hard to understand why the options for more fantastical dreaming have not been explored or why the ones we do see are either muted or mundane.
This is a musical of many small delights, including some pithy declarations ("I don't know how I'll fall asleep without my phone. Usually I surf online for hours before I can let go of the day") and just as many missed opportunities. The ultra cool and clinical mostly white setting, as cleanly evoked by set designer Riccardo Hernandez, allows opportunities for the abstracted projections designed by Peter Nigrini. One almost longs to see the unseen band, perhaps becoming an integral part of the dream sequences. Taichman, who dazzled us with her rose-bedecked staging of Twelfth Night at McCarter in 2009, and for her direction of Orlando and The Scene Off Broadway will undoubtedly have time to dream some more with the company as it continues to its next stop at the La Jolla Playhouse.
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Sleeping Beauty Wakes Book by Rachel Sheinkin Music by Brendan Milburn Lyrics by Valerie Vigoda Directed by Rebecca Taichman Cast: Steve Judkins (Murray), Adinah Alexander (Hadara), Jimmy Ray Bennett (Leon), Donna Vivino (Cheryl), Bryce Ryness (Orderly), Kecia Lewis-Evans (Doctor), Bob Stillman (King), Aspen Vincent (Beauty). Set Design: Riccardo Hernandez Costume Design: Miranda Hoffman Lighting Design: Christopher Akerlind Sound Design: Leon Rothenberg Projection Design: Peter Nigrini Music Direction: James Sampliner Choreography: Doug Varone Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Theatre Center, 91, University Place, Princeton, NJ (609) - 258 - 2787 Tickets ($20.00 - $70.00) Performances: Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7:30 PM; Fridays at 8 PM; Saturdays at 3 PM; Sundays at 2 PM and 7:30 PM. Opened 05/05/11 Ends 06/05/11 Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 05/05/11 |
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Musical Numbers
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Act One
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Act Two
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Slings & Arrows-the complete set
You don't have to be a Shakespeare aficionado to love all 21 episodes of this hilarious and moving Canadian TV series about a fictional Shakespeare Company
