CHAPLIN
From IBDb
The new musical “Chaplin” opens with the sight of the Little
Tramp balanced on a tightrope high above the stage. It’s a fitting metaphor for
the show itself — a wobbly, high stakes attempt to avoid gravity. Guess what
happens? Gravity wins.
What opened Monday at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre tries hard to
be something to everyone and in the process becomes less than anything. The
great Charlie Chaplin deserves better.
It’s technically a musical, but one without a single memorable
song. It’s also a play that veers into the psychological — apparently Chaplin
had more mommy issues than Oedipus — but the drama is interrupted by silly
dance breaks. It’s another hammy attempt on a Broadway stage to describe a
famous life through the lens of a camera, a device that even its creators seem
half-hearted about.
Rob McClure in the title role certainly deserves more than this
to work with. He has clearly put his heart and soul into playing Chaplin — he
not only sings and acts with feeling, he also tightropes, roller-skates blindfolded,
does a backflip without spilling any of his drink, and waddles with a cane like
a man who has studied hours of flickering footage.
But save for one sublime scene in which the various inspirations
behind Chaplin’s decision to embody the Little Tramp is revealed, the show
McClure leads is equal parts flat, overwrought and tiresome.
The story by Thomas Meehan and Christopher Curtis is a linear,
two-hour biography that takes us from Chaplin’s poor childhood in London to his
staggering stardom and then self-imposed exile thanks to accusations of
un-American activities. Spinning newspaper headlines projected on the back wall
baby feed you the plot in case you doze off.
Professionally, Chaplin confronts the challenge of talkies and
then color. Personally, he confronts his own reckless fondness for young women
and inability to get past being abandoned by his parents.
It touches on his relationship with his brother (Wayne Alan
Wilcox) several lovers (including a sweet Erin Mackey as his third wife, Oona O’Neill)
and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Jenn Colella, another bright spot), who
destroys Chaplin by painting him a Commie.
“I’m gonna wipe the smile/From the famous little clown,”
she sings. If she had a mustache, she’d twirl it.
All the while, there are excruciating flashbacks of a young
Chaplin begging for his mother’s love from a valiant Christiane Noll. But then,
suddenly, a bunch of Chaplins in little mustaches will hit the stage to dance
furiously while balancing bowler hats on canes. All night, the show zooms
incoherently from anguish to zany. The nadir has to be a mock boxing match
between Chaplin and his ex-wives. Nothing funnier than domestic violence, huh?
The musical ends with Chaplin getting a standing-ovation at the
1972 Academy Awards. “I’ve come to realize that life is not a movie,” he
concludes in words he never actually said during the real show. “You can’t go
back and edit it.” Such arrogance to reality is unforgivable. It’s also pretty
trite. Someone needs to go back and edit this.
So ponderous is the staging — the director and choreographer is
Warren Carlyle — that it took a full 30 minutes for the first real cheer to
emerge from the audience. For a story about a man who delighted millions
without having the benefit of sound? Unacceptable.
Add to this unhappy story the fact that Curtis, who also wrote
the music and lyrics, has been unable to create anything approximating an
original, hummable tune.
In the last, predictable scene, a child playing Chaplin meets
the adult Chaplin and gives him a rose. The circle is complete. All is good in
the world. “The world’s bound to love him/When they see the Little Tramp,” the
cast sings. Not if the world see this.
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