An Upside Down Show

When I was younger and read Mad Magazine on a consistent basis, one of the things I loved were their musical movie parodies. We’d get “The Force and I” (based on “Star Wars”) and a “Jaws” based musical (which I believe was called “The Shark and I”). These parodies took scenes from famous movie and took famous songs and rewrote the lyrics to fit the film. So, for example, we’d have C-3PO explaining to the tune of “The Sound of Music’s “Do-Re-Mi” all the sounds a droid makes. There are plenty of other fuzzy examples rummaging around my head.

One of those fuzzy memories is that the magazine had published a musical parody of “The Poseidon Adventure” (in fact, the September 1973 issue featuring the regular parody called “The Poopsidedown Adventure” was their highest selling issue up to that time). Now, here is a movie that was ripe for musical parody in the pages of Mad Magazine. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect someone to actually attempt a live stage musical version.

The NYC Fringe Festival is a month-long parade of about 200 shows presented in various venues all over the city. These are shows that range all over the place, but the one thing they have in common is that they will most likely never be seen by such a wide audience. Occasionally, something comes out of this Festival and “makes it” (like “Urinetown”). “Poseidon: An Upside Down Musical” easily has the potential to make it as an Off-Broadway show (or even a Broadway show). But it needs some work before it gets there.

For those unfamiliar with the film, the plot concerns a luxury ship that is hit by a tidal wave and capsized on New Year’s Eve. A group of survivors slowly makes their way up towards the hull for possible rescue through many dangerous obstacles. The group includes a charismatic, if unorthodox, preacher Reverend Scott (Gene Hackman), police lieutenant Mike Rogo (Ernest Borgnine), his ex-hooker wife Linda Rogo (Stella Stevens), old married yenta Belle Rosen (Shelley Winters), her husband Manny Rosen (Jack Albertson), bachelor haberdasher James Martin (Red Buttons), band singer Nonnie Parry (Carol Lynley), Susan Shelby (Pamela Sue Martin), her bratty brother Robin Shelby (Eric Shea) and ship steward Acres (Roddy McDowall). As they slowly make there way, they argue over the right thing to do and try and convince others to join them. Most of the tension comes from Scott and Rogo arguing over who is right. Unfortunately, not all of them survive.

The musical adds a twist to break us into this story. The scene is set at a New Year’s Eve party being attended by fans of the film. They have all come as their favorite characters (including oddball background characters such as the Purser and Indian Lady). As they watch the movie on DVD, we see the musical unfold. Occasionally they stop to explain what it is about the movie that enthralls them.

The musical version of the film starts with Robin Shelby (Joshua Campbell…who is much older than 13) and the cast singing “Poseidon” in which we learn about the ship (it hold fifteen hundred passengers and a crew of five oh one) and the various characters (for example, he sings that “Mike and Linda Rogo, they really like to yell, he tells her not to worry and she tells him go to hell, my sister thinks they’re crazy, but they know what they’ve got, and you can bet when they make up the sex is really hot”) except for Reverend Scott (a Jennifer Connelly, not to be confused with THE Jennifer Connelly). We meet him in the next scene where he’s preaching how the lord is really only willing to look after triers (which prompts a discussion of the fact that this isn’t a word).

At the New Year’s Eve party on the ship, Belle Rosen (Steve Kimbrough) tries to badger James Martin (Joe Waterman) about the fact that he’s not married. He explains that “deep down I’m a normal a regular guy, I tell folks I’m happy it’s kind of a lie, I’d like to meet a woman but I’m kind of shy, I get by with Playboy and lots of KY” in “Bachelor Haberdasher” (where he’s backed up by the rest of the cast in this very bouncy number).

After the ship capsizes, the entire group (both survivors and the dead) sing of today being just an “Ordinary Day” until their world was turned upside down. Reverend Scott quickly realizes they need to climb up in order to live and they pull the Christmas Tree back up to climb to a balcony. As he starts sending people up, he has to make the women wearing long dresses take them off so it’s easier for them to climb. When he gets to Linda Rogo (Molly Faithe), she explains that the only thing she’s wearing is “Just Panties (What Else Do I Need?)”.

Once the small group is on the next level, some arguments break out and Reverend Scott explains “The Only Way Is Up” (“the floor is on the ceiling, the ceiling’s on the floor, I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know what’s in store, the only thing I do know we haven’t got a prayer, if we don’t try we all may die our only hope’s up there”). As they’re climbing through an air duct, Scott and Mike Rogo start to argue again as the rest of the group comment on their predicament in “Airpockets?!” Once through the duct the group needs to cross over a pool of water on a tightrope and they lose Acres (Brannen Daugherty) to a giant man-eating lobster.

Once on the next level, they reach Broadway, a corridor that runs the length of the ship (although they say the neon lights are bright on Broadway). It is here they run into Doctor Caravello (Talon Beeson) and his nurse (Brigette Ditmars) leading a group of survivors in the wrong direction. The Doctor tells the Reverend exactly how he feels in “Shut Up!” (“Shut up! Shut Up! Mind your business, zip your lip, please Reverend, spare us all your power trip, Shut Up! Shut Up! You’re an asshole and we wish you’d go away.”)

As the Reverend goes off alone to find the Engine Room, Susan Shelby (Cody Cosmic), Manny Rosen (Michael Miller) and Robin Shelby all sing “But I Love Him” and express their loves for the special people in their lives (for Susan it’s her unrequited love of Reverend Scott, for Manny it’s Belle and for Robin it’s Charlie the Third Engineer). Scott returns and takes them to the engine room, but part of the path is now underwater. Belle steps up to do her share of the job since she used to be a champion swimmer with “(In the Water) I’m A Very Skinny Lady”. Scott tells her that it’s not necessary and he swims through but gets stuck. Belle rescues him, but dies afterwards. Scott then leads the survivors up a catwalk as Linda Rogo sings “Bad Girls Need Love Too”. She’s interrupted by an explosion and dies. Reverend Scott then sacrifices himself so the others can open the hatchway to the hull. Robin is killed by the falling panel cut open by their rescuers.

The entire cast then sings “Keep on Climbing”, an inspirational message for any musical to give, no matter how silly it may be.

The show’s biggest strengths are its source material, the respect it has for it, the songs and the very energetic cast. The show does make fun of some aspects of the movie (like Nonnie’s spaciness) and adds some subtext that isn’t there (Robin’s homosexuality and a lot of homoeroticism) but makes sense if you read way too much into things. The songs are all catchy and very hummable and they all seem to come from dialogue in the film (or at least dialogue and situations suggested by the film). The cast is great and doing the gender switching for Reverend Scott, Belle Rosen and Nonnie Parry all just add to the level of comedy. Ron Kelly’s Mike Rogo is an almost dead on re-enactment of Ernest Borgnine’s performance (right down to the hunched over ape-lie crying and wailing when Linda dies…which is referred to as his “Oscar moment” here). Connelly’s Reverend Scott is more of a mix of Gene Hackman and William Shatner than anything else, but it works well. Ed Jones’ Nonnie is a work of art and needs to be seen to be believed (when Susan breaks into hysterics, Nonnie is the only one who can understand her as she also “speaks hysteric”…and when Martin tells her that she just needs to hold her breath when they’re “swimming” they’re well out of the water for about five minutes before she is told she can breathe again).

There are a few problems with the show. The framing device either needs to be re-enforced and used more or it needs to be eliminated. There are really only about four or five stories told by the various partygoers. Only two of those are memorable. Of the memorable ones, one is funny (one women tells how she gave Red Buttons a blow job) and the other poignant, but perhaps out of place (a dying friend used the movie to help get through the illness kind of puts a damper of what is essentially a very funny show).

I’m not going to comment on the staging. From press photos it looks like the show had a set in Chicago when it ran for several weeks in one theater. But here, in NYC, at the Fringe Festival, where it’s running for 5 performances (all of which are sold out) in the basement of a church at the corner of Bleeker and Carmine, there is little more than a representational space (a stage-wide platform about three feet off the ground, a ship backdrop and some other moveable platforms that don’t go up more than a foot). The Christmas tree is a step-stool attached to a cardboard cut out (of course, it’s referred to being just that in the dialogue anyway).

I could easily see this becoming an Off-Broadway hit with a little work and a modest budget…or even a Broadway cult item with an even bigger budget (like massive sets that flip over). But as it currently stands this is a fun and interesting curio that needs a rewrite or two of its book (and maybe some additional songs).

Anyone interested should note that the production company does have a CD available on their website (www.handbagproductions.org) of the entire score (it even includes a bonus track of a Belle Rosen solo called “It Comes From Caring” which was cut from the show – it would have been the second or third number based on the line in the movie). If you’re a fan of fun musical theater and can’t see a staged version of this, the $15 spent on the CD is well worth it.

Anyway…I’ll be leaving on August 27 for Napa and I’ll be away until September 1. So my Fugue before I leave will just be a general update on things in life.

Until then.

Be seeing you.

Spiders Lost In Your Hairspray

There are very few directors making films these days that I would consider talented enough to truly challenge their audiences. Today we’ll look at projects connected to three of them.

Anyone who knows me well knows that my absolute favorite director is David Cronenberg (although I will admit the same thing about George Romero, Martin Scorsese and Billy Wilder on other days of the week). Cronenberg’s films are not for everyone. In fact, if you look at his entire body of work, you’ll discover a bunch of cult classics and only two “popular” films (“The Dead Zone” and “The Fly”). But his films are always interesting, regardless of the subject matter… which always tends to be dark, depressing and offbeat.

His most recent work is “Spider” and it’s just been released on DVD. Ralph Fiennes stars as Dennis “Spider” Clegg, a mentally disturbed man who mutters a lot, collects things he finds on the ground and has recently moved into a halfway house from the asylum. The film is a look at just what it is that has caused Spider’s madness. We see Spider’s present day activities and we watch him watching his own past unfold around him. Because of his mental illness, you will not be able to trust anything that you see by the film’s end. And that is where the film’s genius and frustrations lay.

Patrick McGrath adapts the story from his own novel. Cronenberg has made a very grungy looking and time-displaced film (you’re never really sure of the era the parts of the film seem to take place in). And this all works in the film’s favor. I’m not going to go into some of the “tricks” used to move the viewer into trying to understand Spider’s plight, but some of them are brilliant (some are just weird). The supporting cast includes Gabriel Byrne as Spider’s father, John Neville as another mental patient, Lynn Redgrave as the director of the halfway house, Mrs. Wilkinson and Miranda Richardson in three roles as Spider’s mother, Spider’s stepmother and Mrs. Wilkinson (yes…the same Mrs. Wilkinson played by Lynn Redgrave).

This is one of those films that needs to be seen more than once to truly be understood and appreciated (or one could just listen to Cronenberg’s commentary and let him tell you what it’s all about). While the film isn’t as accessible as some of his other works, it’s not as weird and obtuse as it could have been. I enjoyed this slow boil film and look forward to subsequent viewings. For most of you, I’d suggest staying away unless you’ve sat through and liked some of his other films like “Naked Lunch” or “Crash”.

Next we come to Terry Gilliam. Gilliam has come a long way from being the token American in “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. In just over the past twenty years he has made six films. Almost all of them have been highly entertaining, visually challenging films to watch, but all of them have had long and rocky roads to hitting the silver screen. It was inevitable, I think, that Gilliam would eventually make a film that would never be completed. The subject matter he chose and tried to capture on film was “Don Quixote”. He should have learned the lesson from Orson Welles who also made an unfinished version of this story.

The making of Gilliam’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is chronicled in the wonderful documentary “Lost in La Mancha”. Here we see a modern day Quixote in Gilliam who has been dreaming this film since 1991. He tried to get it made in Hollywood and eventually had to get European financing to do it. Working on a much smaller budget and a very tight schedule, Gilliam tried to get this film off the ground in 2001. But the production was plagued with problems from the start of pre-production. They can’t nail down the actors for rehearsals, they can’t get prop built, they can’t find a suitable studio for set work and when they finally start the train rolling and start shooting the first six days are pure hell (for example, the second day on location is plagued by a storm that destroys equipment and changes the look of the location). And then the lead becomes ill and everything comes to a halt.

The film gives a very good insight into the stress that can go into a major production that hasn’t been budgeted or scheduled properly. It’s obvious from what we do get to see of the film shot that Gilliam was compromising his vision just to get the film started as if that would put everything on the right track. This is a great look at what might have been (and what may someday still be as Gilliam is still trying to raise new money to buy the film back from the insurance company that now owns it). If you like seeing how films are made, or unmade, this is a great example to watch.

The DVD is actually a two disc set that contains two hour-long looks at Gilliam’s career, several scenes deleted from the documentary, a twenty minute very frank interview with actor Johnny Depp and some other interviews and candid comments from various cast and crew. The one thing missing is a longer look at some of the footage actually shot for the unfinished film (only some of it is on display in the documentary).

Gilliam was unfairly tagged with the notion of being a difficult director during the making of “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”. He’s made a few films since then and the moniker should have been taken off by now, but it hasn’t. His next film is “The Brothers Grimm” starring Matt Damon and Heathe Ledger. Thankfully, he’s back in the director’s chair doing something, even if it’s not his dream project.

John Waters took a long path to go from cult favorite to “mainstream”. The start of that “mainstreaming” of Waters would be 1988’s “Hairspray”. The proof is in the fact that this movie was turned into a Tony Award winning musical that is selling out night after night.

Waters’ film is a fun and kitschy look at the TV dance show craze of the 1960’s. He’s propped the idea up with the story of a chubby high school girl who only wants to be on a TV dance show, added in a beauty contest and a thread about segregation. It’s fun, makes sense and moves along nicely. The musical has changed around parts of Waters’ film for dramatic staging purposes (combining some characters, eliminating others) and in doing so has left a few gaping plot holes. Luckily, the music is so much fun and so infectious that you’ll forgive this flawed piece any flaws it does show.

Like “The Producers” this show is moving mostly on star power and pure energy. Harvey Fierstein stars as Edna Turnblad, the hefty mother of our chubby hero and it’s gonna be tough to replace him when his contract is up (although when they do, they should find someone with a less gravelly voice…it was hard to understand some of his dialogue at times). There is only one misfire song in the whole show (it’s the Act Two penultimate scene that just brings all the energy that’s been built up over two hours to a screeching halt). Luckily, the show quickly recovers and flies to its final number that will have you dancing and clapping in the aisles (if you saw the Tonys you’ve seen this number)/

“Hairspray” isn’t art. It isn’t great musical theater. It’s a lot of fun and highly entertaining. You shouldn’t be disappointed.

Lastly, “The Dead Zone” finished its extension to the second season last night and it ended on a doozy of a note. The creators of this show have kept the feel of Stephen King’s novel intact while going off in some very wild directions. Last night’s episode, “Visions” was no exception and added an amazing level to the show that astounded and amazed. This show had better come back for a third season and the folks at USA had best leave the creators alone and let them do what they need to do.

That’s all for today. I’ll be back later in the week with a review of “American Wedding”, a personal update and a review of a musical from the New York City Fringe Festival.

Until then, be seeing you.

“Just panties. What else do I need?” – Linda Rogo (Stella Stevens) in “The Poseidon Adventure” on what she’s wearing after being asked to take off her long dress so she can climb up to the hull of the ship.