There's not much Carolee Carmello doesn't do in her new Broadway musical.
The
Tony Award-nominated actress ages 20 years and spends much of it
dressed like a nurse, except the time when she's dressed like a naughty Biblical Delilah. She belts out terrible song after terrible song. She faces off against the Ku Klux Klan, hands out roses to the audience and endures a rain of fake frogs.
But
try as she might — and Carmello was ordered by a physician to be put on
vocal rest the day before its opening night — nothing can save her
"Scandalous: The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson," a musical as overstuffed and uninspired as its title suggests.
An
endless — 2 1/2 hours, but seemingly longer — biography of the
controversial 1920s-era Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson,
the musical has a book and lyrics by TV host Kathie Lee Gifford, who proves she's not going to give up her day job anytime soon. Music by David Pomeranz
and David Friedman is almost absurd, linking one overwrought tune to
another and then stuffing in another. Airport waiting lounges have
better piped in music.
The tale of McPherson is something of
Gifford's Moby Dick, a project she's been writing for a dozen years. The
preacher is certainly a fascinating figure: She was a pioneer in radio
evangelism who incorporated vaudeville elements in her sermons,
considered the P.T. Barnum of the pulpit.
She fed millions during
the Great Depression, but also had a mysterious five-week disappearance
in 1926 that many believed was a fling with a married man. She died of a
drug overdose in 1944.
But what opened Thursday at the Neil Simon
Theatre is insipid and patronizing, a work that seems more at home in a
church parking lot than on Broadway. The most aggravating thing is, at
the end, the audience is no closer to understanding what really
motivated McPherson at all.
Gifford,
a proud Christian, says she's written a warts-and-all portrait, but
don't believe it: It's pure hagiography, except when it veers into camp,
an endearing Gifford quality. (Sample lyric from the ensemble when
McPherson disappears: "Lost or found?/Is she lost at sea/or just fooling
around?")
It's also got all
the stereotypes you'd expect these days — a sassy black lady (Roz Ryan,
still winning despite the sins), blissful tambourine bangers and old
timey reporters yelling out questions like, "The miracles. How do you do
it?"
They're not needed,
mainly because Gifford ladles out huge chunks of exposition as if we
can't be trusted to follow the tale. (Sample statement from the heroine:
"I'm going to take everything they're using in Hollywood to build the
Devil's Kingdom and I'm going to use it to build God's. I'm going to
give the people what they want while I'm giving them what they need.")
Director
David Armstrong has apparently decided to allow this grotesque mockery
of a musical to go on unedited. That explains why, instead of one
illustrated sermon, we get two. And why McPherson's trial goes on longer
than most real court cases. One scene has McPherson doing a 400-word
monologue.
Oddly, the songs and the book seem written by two
different people since they step on each other's toes so much, usually
when one repeats what the other just said.
Armstrong also has
allowed some of the most unsubtle dialogue ever heard to clang on stage.
"I cannot ignore the voice of God. Wherever it leads me," says
McPherson to her mother.
"Even if it means losing your mother?" her mother (a valiant Candy Buckley) asks, quivering, of course.
"Come whatever may," her daughter replies.
George
Hearn, who plays McPherson's father and later a rival preacher, is
excellent and deserves better material. But not enough can be said about
Carmello, who throws all she's got into this. On opening night, a metal
hook connected to a section of fabric became stuck onstage and it was
Carmello — of course — who came to the rescue.
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