A favorite film comedy of recent vintage—and why not?—is "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" about two loveable rogues (read: con men, who are only loveable in the movies) who meet cute among the upper classes of the Riviera. Streetwise Freddy (Steve Martin) is a small-timer who blackmails elegant master scammer Lawrence (Michael Caine) into being his mentor. In short order they become compatriots and then competitors, over the fortunes and ultimately the affection of reputed soap heiress Janet Colgate (Glenne Headly).
The kind of lighthearted escapade that seems built for musicalization—larger-than-life characters passionately pursuing an extravagant goal, quirky supporting characters, exotic milieux, entertaining plot twists, all of which motivate delightful ideas for song—it ha seen several aspiring teams have playing with the notion over the years since its 1988 release…but under the banner of developing producers MGM Onstage, authorship of an official version has fallen to composer-lyricist David Yazbeck ("The Full Monty") and librettist Jeffrey Lane (an award-winning TV movie and sitcom veteran). And wisely too. Yazbeck’s jazzhead imprimatur as composer and his free-wheeling irreverence as a lyricist (zany imagery and equally zany rhymes abound), combined with Lane’s shameless quippery (the show keeps self-consciously acknowledging out loud that it’s a musical, off-handed remarks blithely referring to lighting, scenic devices and various conventions of form) are a sublime match for the sensibility of the original screenplay of Dale Launer and the team of Stanley Shapiro & Paul Henning.
So of course, the new musical at the Imperial Theatre, solidly directed by Jack O’Brien, I might add, is great fun. I think the role of Lawrence might’ve used a better singer and suaver persona than the agreeable John Lithgow; but Norbert Leo Butz as Freddy proves himself a grandly comic foil (as well as a kickass vocalist); and the deceptively dotty Ms. Colgate, here re-christened Christine, of Sherie Rene Scott is the most fetching mark any schemer might hope to target. The show is worth the visit.
Yet something’s missing. Because while great fun is nice, near-perfect hilarity (i.e. "The Producers") is even better—and it’s well within the authors’ grasp. So why has it eluded them?
Well, I recently had this exchange with a colleague of mine in the Lehman Engel-BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. We both acknowledged that we liked the show, that the negative notices (a few, but the range has run the gamut) were inaccurate and that it should have been better still.
And I offered this: "I almost want to say I wish they’d been through the [BMI] program."
I was surprised to hear my colleague declare, "I was thinking that too!"
I hasten to add, these words were not spoken lightly, nor in the heat of some religious fervor about the infallibility of the curriculum…but rather as a kind of reflexive response to lapses in the show that seemed eminently avoidable with a little grounding in principles that—if this makes sense—are an integral part of "real world professionalism" but, to the best of my knowledge, are only flagged and codified in specialized places: the BMI classroom being one of a very few.
And what were these lapses? A few very entertaining songs that didn’t move the show along, storywise or emotionally. (One example: Our elegant con man finds himself stuck with the prospect of marrying a crude, down-country rich girl from Oklahoma [Sara Gettelfinger], and after we’ve already become well-acquainted with their base-level incompatibility, and her yippee-ti-yi sensibility, she then sings a howlin’ hoe-downer about it. Yazbeck has such an Out There sense of humor and musical exuberance that it holds stage, but only as a kind of parenthetical novelty.) And a number of scenes and detours that attenuate the proceedings to very little story payoff or even urgency impede the pace (the romance between Lawrence’s thickly accented French colleague Andre [Gregory Jbara] and one of his more recent pigeons, Muriel [Joanna Gleason] seems to waste first rate talents on a long sidebar).
In other words, Lane and Yazbeck are solid professionals with incredibly strong instincts, but there are challenges in the creation of a musical where even the sharpest instinct may not mean as much as a simple principle of tradecraft, and you kind of wish that the authors weren’t flying by the seat of their incredibly gifted pants quite as much as their heroes.
Because "charming" and "really great fun," while accolades not to be sneezed at, are still a few kliks shy of "classic."
And classic was so within reach…