Critics Cross Examine Carrie! Dead On Arrival!

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 5:00am

The New York Times:

Prom Night, Bloody Prom Night
by Ben Brantley

O.K., everybody, please remember that we’re on our very best behavior tonight. There’ll be no hooting, no teasing, no smart-aleck remarks. We will not — I repeat not — make fun of the girl with the really bad reputation. Lord knows, the poor child has suffered enough already. Is that understood? Good. Now sit down and enjoy the show.

Such unspoken admonitions seem to run like a news crawl through every minute of the much anticipated, exceedingly sober revival of the musical “Carrie,” which opened on Thursday night at the Lucille Lortel Theater, starring Molly Ranson and an excellent Marin Mazzie. An air of suppression hangs over this MCC production, as if a phalanx of stern teachers were standing guard over a passel of unruly adolescents, on the watch for the least sign of disrespect.

I suppose this is appropriate for a show that’s set in a high school, especially a show that is famous for its bad behavior in the past. Adapted from the ultimate revenge-of-the-nerd novel by Stephen King, “Carrie” (198 — as theater queens of any gender or orientation know — was one of the gaudiest disasters in Broadway history.

This was the musical, after all, that began its second act with a rockin’ pig-slaughtering scene bathed in pulsing red lights, leading the New York Times critic Frank Rich to observe (referring to the gold standard for theatrical bellyflops), “Only the absence of antlers separates the pig murders of ‘Carrie’ from the ‘Moose Murders’ of Broadway lore.”

Mr. Rich’s review was by no means the harshest. And after a run of five performances and a loss of $8 million, “Carrie” stopped singing, seemingly forever, consigned to the silence of that special shrine reserved for delicious failures.

But there were always those who felt that “Carrie,” like its unhappy heroine, had been badly abused and could have shone bright instead of flaming out. The show just needed, the theory went, to be treated with more gentleness and dignity than Terry Hands’s overwrought Broadway production had given it.

So now the original creators — Michael Gore (music), Dean Pitchford (lyrics) and Lawrence D. Cohen (book) — have teamed up with the director Stafford Arima to deliver what might be called “Carrie: The Chamber Musical.” As minimal and subdued as a little black choir robe, this extensively reworked “Carrie” has been presented in the best possible taste.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I have the feeling that good taste just ain’t what bad-musical cultists, who helped make this production a hit before it even opened, are looking for. (The show has already been extended to April 22, four weeks past its original limited run.) Despite a beautifully sung performance from Ms. Mazzie (as Carrie’s demented mother) that brings out an unexpected emotional delicacy in her character’s numbers, this show mostly suggests that what lay beneath all that stage blood on Broadway was a bloodless, Identikit body.

Thanks to the vastness of Stephen King’s readership, and to Brian De Palma’s 1976 break-out movie adaptation, “Carrie” has become a cultural touchstone in this country. It’s the great cautionary horror story of high school cruelty. The plot is sprung when Carrie White, the timid daughter of a fanatically religious single mother, gets her period in high school gym class and doesn’t know what’s happened to her.

The baiting of her by the other girls wakens her dormant telekinetic powers, not fully unleashed until the senior prom. That’s when Carrie is subjected to a nasty humiliation (also involving blood) that inspires a more than nasty vengeance.

The particular genius of Mr. King is his gift for turning garden-variety fears into man-eating plants. The translation of everyday adolescent viciousness and vulnerability into the excesses of Grand Guignol is what gave “Carrie” the novel and Mr. De Palma’s movie such cathartic power. Pauline Kael called the film “a new trash archetype,” and variations on that formula have been box office catnip ever since.

Perhaps because of the prevalence of such shock fests, the revamped musical “Carrie” has taken a counterintuitive approach, scaling down the gothic while scaling up the commonplace. Yes, there’s a bit of thunder along the way, and some shadowy lighting effects (by Kevin Adams). But metaphorically and literally, screams have mostly been replaced by a conversational drone. Only a few minutes into the show — which is presented, rather lazily, in flashback from a police station interrogation room — a survivor of the prom night from hell explains, “What you need to understand is that we were just kids.”

As it did on Broadway, this “Carrie” spells out in its opening number that the title character (Ms. Ranson) isn’t the only one who worries about being a social misfit. A host of awkward kids sings that “life doesn’t begin until you fit in.” With the dancers (choreographed by Matt Williams) making like the animated corpses from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, it’s the one ensemble number that evokes the ghastly freak that every teenager believes lurks inside.

But as portrayed here — by a group that includes Christy Altomare, Derek Klena, Jeanna de Waal and Ben Thompson — these students feel a trifle too ordinary, too unindividuated. (They have also been transplanted to the 21st century, with an obligatory reference made to Internet bullying, which gives this “Carrie” the instructional glow of a civics class.) And you never get a sense of the raging hormones that can make teenagers feel dangerous, as you did in recent musicals like “Spring Awakening” and “American Idiot.”

You wouldn’t think that Ms. Ranson’s Carrie would ever have trouble taking care of herself. True, she wears long skirts and slouches. But otherwise she seems like a pretty feisty babe, whose anger is on the surface from the beginning. (Early on, Ms. Ranson does what appears to be an imitation of Munch’s “Scream” to establish this idea.) And her discoveries of her telekinetic powers are presented so discreetly that they barely register.

Pulling all its climactic punches (that pig-slaughtering moment is now glossed over), this show puts new emphasis on the songs. Unfortunately, much of Mr. Gore’s music — especially as heard in Mary-Mitchell Campbell’s pared-down arrangements — is repetitive, usually beginning with mildly anxious-sounding vamps.

Mr. Pitchford’s lyrics are similarly plodding. (Carrie’s kindly gym teacher, played by Carmen Cusack, sings encouragingly: “You never know how things might go/Once you share that first hello./That’s how it starts, two unsuspecting hearts.”)

Yet there is something precious, if small, at the center of “Carrie,” to be found in the chiseled operatic pieces written for Margaret, Carrie’s mother. In keeping with the show’s willfully humdrum tone, Ms. Mazzie (“Ragtime,” “Kiss Me, Kate”) at first seems like your average strict but caring mom. But when she sings, in a pure fire-edged soprano, an intensity emerges that shades into something more sinister. And the line between fierce maternal solicitude and obsessive, homicidal madness blurs in ways that take you by surprise.

These moments are the only ones when the show seems to fulfill its intentions of finding the ghastly poetry that lurks in everyday prose. I should note that at the performance I saw, there was a technical glitch for the big, blood-spilling climax, which meant the play wasn’t saturated in red light, as it was meant to be. Still, it’s hard to imagine this defanged “Carrie” ever raising your blood pressure, or even making your flesh crawl.

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Updated On: 3/2/12 at 05:00 AM

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 5:04am

The Hollywood Reporter:

Carrie
by David Rooney

The 1988 production of Carrie, the musical based on Stephen King’s novel about a high school misfit with telekinetic powers, was a critical and commercial bloodbath that became the benchmark for spectacular Broadway failure. While it ran for 16 previews and just five post-opening performances, it became something of an urban legend. If every theater insider who claims to have seen the notorious fiasco had actually been there, the show would have run for a year or more.

Up to now, those of us not around to view the wreckage firsthand have had to settle for poor-quality bootleg clips on YouTube. But the original creative team has reunited under new director Stafford Arima to present a stripped-down, heavily revised version Off Broadway. The makeover aims to rescue Carrie from the scrap heap of musical-theater folly, paring away the camp excess to tell an earnest story of adolescent ostracism and cruelty. But those serious intentions have yielded a muted reincarnation that’s neither fish not fowl.

After the stinging experience of Broadway, where Carrie was directed with a mix of operatic bombast and ‘80s vulgarity by Terry Hands of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the show was pulled from circulation despite countless rights requests. Composer Michael Gore (who wrote the original songs for Fame), lyricist Dean Pitchford (the screenwriter of Footloose) and book writer Lawrence D. Cohen (who also scripted Brian De Palma’s 1976 high-school gothic screen adaptation) were coaxed by Arima to release their bloodied baby from seclusion.

A number of songs have been jettisoned – including the legendary Act II opener, “Out for Blood,” with its chant of “Kill the pig, pig, pig,” accompanied by the alarmed oinks of unseen livestock – and new tunes added. Also gone is the slutty aerobics choreography from opening number “In,” replaced by Matt Williams’ generic Spring Awakening-influenced agita. It’s more in keeping with the theme of oppressive teen conformity, if not as entertaining. In a half-baked attempt to tap into the current conversation on bullying, token references have been imposed to contemporize the story.

But the inescapable impression remains that Carrie was never meant to be a musical – certainly not one with this unmemorable score and literal-minded, on-the-nose lyrics. The Goth-chic black prom corsage bangles available at the merchandise stand suggest some element of subversiveness, but what’s onstage is merely innocuous. In an effort to make the show connect with awkward-age teens, it’s been watered down and robbed of all the distinctive qualities that made it “terrifyingly lyrical” onscreen (in the words of Pauline Kael) and ludicrously lurid on Broadway. It’s prime exploitation material treated as intense psychodrama.

What made the central character compelling in King’s novel and De Palma’s film was that the other kids didn’t just hate Carrie White because she was different. They were creeped out by her. She also was an unwelcome reminder of their own insecurities. Through no fault of Molly Ranson, the performer playing the title role, Carrie here becomes just a small-town outsider with an unhip wardrobe, lousy social skills and an inner resentment that spews forth in overwrought power ballads. Her telekinesis is almost an afterthought until the prom-pocalypse, when a bucket of pig’s blood gets dumped on her head, unleashing mayhem.

Likewise, Carrie’s mother, Margaret (Marin Mazzie), has been tamed from a hellfire-spouting, lust-tormented crazy woman to an over-protective fundamentalist who wants her daughter to remain a child, as much to soothe her own loneliness as to shield the girl from sin.

Even while thundering through the Biblical damnation of “And Eve Was Weak” (hands down best menstruation number ever from a Broadway musical), Mazzie is directed to avoid making Margaret a monster. Instead, she’s almost harmless, lacking the danger of Piper Laurie’s magnificent nutjob in the movie. (“He took me with the smell of the roadhouse whiskey on his breath, and I liked it,” was one of her more indelible moments.) The stage Margaret does get the show’s best song, “When There’s No One,” which the gifted Mazzie mines for emotional depth. But as a dark force, feeding Carrie’s paranormal retaliation, she’s ineffectual.

Where King’s novel framed the account of the prom-night massacre as a psychological case study, Cohen here intercuts the action with good girl Sue Snell (Christy Altomare) in a police interrogation scenario out of Law & Order. Sue is played capably by Altomare, but like the other kids in the under-populated cast, she’s a cookie-cutter teen who doesn’t make much of an impression.

Measured against their movie counterparts these characters are pallid indeed. De Palma had mischievous fun playing with screen archetypes. Amy Irving’s Sue was the noble-souled smart girl willing to sacrifice popularity to obey her conscience; William Katt’s Tommy Ross was the sensitive jock, his sun-bleached ‘fro glowing like a halo; Nancy Allen’s Chris was the quintessential morally unencumbered mean girl, snarling “I hate Carrie White” while using her oral skills to enslave John Travolta’s snickering dope Billy Nolan to her cause. There was good reason to invest in both the tragedy and retribution of these characters. Onstage, uber-bitch Chris (Jeanna de Waal) and moronic Billy (Ben Thompson) make especially dull villains.

Leaving aside the impossible assignment of competing with Sissy Spacek’s iconic take on the role, Ranson has affecting moments, notably with sympathetic gym teacher Ms. Gardner (Carmen Cusack) or when Carrie triumphantly silences her mother and sits down to a celebratory slice of pie.

Working on designer David Zinn’s minimalist set, Arima occasionally makes efficient use of Kevin Adams’ atmospheric lighting, Jonathan Deans’ soundscape and Sven Ortel’s projections, particularly in the climactic prom scene. But there’s a general shortage of invention to the stagecraft that further neglects the material’s roots in horror.

Could Carrie ever work as a serious musical? Hard to say. But the impression forms while watching it that Gore, Pitchford and Cohen would be well-advised at this point just to embrace their battered creature for the freak that she is. Should they choose to forego the interventions and instead liberate the original show for licensing, they might have a parody vehicle far more captivating to audiences than this timid resurrection.

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The Associated Press:

Infamous 'Carrie' returns but results the same
by Mark Kennedy

After what happened to Carrie White the last time she went to the prom, it's a wonder she ever returned. As for those of you in the theater seats, you may wonder why you came at all.

The MCC Theater's re-imagined production of "Carrie" that opened Thursday at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street is an attempt to reclaim what must be assumed is a stirring work evidently lost in the 1988 original, 1 of Broadway's most notorious failures.

The result may be better, but it's nowhere near good. Some lovely music is marred by a patronizing, out-of-touch book, an overwrought tone and characters that seem as light and insubstantial as an after-school TV special.

How bad is it? The new version directed by Stafford Arima produced quite a few titters during a recent preview. That's not good news: It's not a comedy. While it's not clear what "Carrie" is trying to be, it's not supposed to be funny.

Originally a novel by Stephen King about a shy teen with telekinetic powers who struggles against her overbearing mother and gets a gore-drenched prom, the story was turned into a 1976 Brian De Palma film.

Lawrence D. Cohen, the film's screenwriter, turned it into a theater piece along with music by Michael Gore and lyrics by Dean Pitchford. What emerged was a mess not entirely their fault, but it closed after five regular performances, lost $8 million and became the most expensive flop in Broadway history at the time.

Cohen, Gore and Pitchford deserve credit for returning to try to tease out their original intention, and in some ways the times have caught up with some of the themes in King's original novel: bullying and religious fundamentalism.

But even with the addition of Arima and a cast led by the talented Marin Mazzie ("Next to Normal") as Carrie's mother and the up & coming Molly Ranson in the title role, it's a bloody mess. Not enough has been done to make it better, and it veers into camp when it really doesn't want to.

"Something terrible's going to happen!" says one character in a typical overshare, and she's right.

The character of Carrie might be able to move chairs on the stage by using just her mind, but actually getting the seats filled in the theater night after night might be beyond her powers.

There's simply too much and yet not enough here. The story of Carrie White is both the story of a superhero and a nerd who becomes a princess. It's also about the push-pull of mother-daughter relationships. It's about angst and being popular and growing up. But not all of it can fit and that's why the beautifully voiced Mazzie is a one-note religious psycho who simply quotes scripture, while Ranson's transformation from dork to beauty to potential mass murderer has to be rushed.

Some of the returning songs - "In," 'Open Your Heart" and "Unsuspecting Hearts" - are still quite nice, and some of the new ones - the pretty "You Shine," 'The World According to Chris" and "A Night We'll Never Forget" - fit in nicely.

What doesn't fit is the attempt from a group of men on the other side of 40 to sound like teenagers. The action is updated to present day, but the dialogue and lyrics smack of "Porky's."

"Oh, c'mon, church-girl - dance with me. I'll make you see God," the head bully teases Carrie at one point, although he looks more like he's in grad school than high school. In one song, three boys sing: "We better get laid! It's the least we deserve, after everything we've paid."

Two secondary characters - Tommy, the cliched big-hearted star football player and secret novelist (a solid Derek Klena) and his girlfriend, the all-around Miss Perfect who tries to show compassion to Carrie (an underused Christy Altomare) - look lifted from Archie Comics. One thing that might get cut immediately: the closeted gay bully who has a fondness for his male friends.

The adults fare no better. A meddling gym teacher played by Carmen Cusack, who along with a Will Schuester character will make you want to go home and see "Glee" instead, at one point asks the bullying girls: "Do any of you stop to think that Carrie White has feelings? Do any of you ever stop to think?" Uh, like, no.

There are some nice touches, like the projections by Sven Ortel of candles, crosses and bright colors against David Zinn's simple set that mostly consists of a pair of gym doors. The final frenzy of Carrie's anger leaves her tormentors splattered against the back wall nicely, and the lack of an actual blood bath in favor of the digital kind is a relief.

Maybe "Carrie" simply cannot be turned into a good musical. Please no third try: No one can bear a re-imagining of this re-imagining. Maybe we should take advice from the musical and just suck it up: "All this high-school drama, none of it means anything," one character says. "Before you know it, it'll all be over."

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amnewyork.com

Carrie
by Matt Windman

** 1/2

Obsessive musical-theater fans have waited a quarter of a century for the notorious 1988 Broadway musical "Carrie," which shuttered after just five performances and left behind no cast album, to receive a new production.

Alas, Stafford Arima's new Off-Broadway staging is not so much a revival as it is an unnecessary apology for the excess, mess and insanity of the bizarre original production.

"Carrie," based on Stephen King's classic horror novel about a bullied girl who discovers that she has telekinetic powers, remains the most infamous flop in Broadway history. It even inspired a must-have book about flop musicals titled "Not Since Carrie."

The original Broadway production tried to mix elements of Greek tragedy with pop ballads and "Saved by the Bell" aesthetics. It was wildly uneven, perplexing and kind of unforgettable.

Arima's coherent but unexciting production, which incorporates extensive rewrites, downplays the horror, spectacle and mayhem that made "Carrie" so wildly theatrical. It plays out like a realistic, but toothless and generic, parable of teen bullying.

The story is now unnecessarily framed as a flashback with Sue, the heartfelt teen
who survives Carrie's rampage, narrating to the police. And Miss Gardner, Carrie's sympathetic gym teacher, sports an annoying Southern accent to differentiate her from everyone else.

The climactic sequence where a bucket of pig's blood is poured onto Carrie at the prom is merely suggested through video effects and a flood of red light, robbing the moment of its heightened gruesomeness.

The set is spare and the cast noticeably small, with just a handful of students. The offbeat choreography looks as though it was lifted directly from "Spring Awakening."

Marin Mazzie, who displays a quiet intensity as Margaret White, Carrie's religious fanatic of a mother, is noticeably restrained in the role.

Molly Ranson has a terrific voice but generally fails to suggest Carrie's extrasensory strength and spooky personality. At the prom, she looks and acts just like all the other teens.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 5:06am

Newsday

A bloody prom returns to New York stage
by Linda Winer

'Carrie," which was an infamous gargantuan floppola on Broadway in 1988, has risen from the grave into what should be a modest downtown guilty-pleasure hit.

The MCC Theater's sincere and dead-serious production -- reduced and rethought with strange dignity by director Stafford Arima -- has just enough bubblegum pop and heartfelt shock appeal to be a sort of "Grease" for the post-Columbine generation. With its revenge-of-the-outcast message and its shriek-show gothic story, the former joke of a musical about a bullied teen with telekinetic powers now feels like a bonanza for the high-school thespian market.

For now, let's hope ambitious producers don't push the show beyond the cozy 299-seat theater, where special-effects don't have to be too special and junk-food entertainments can relish their spooky authenticity.

Arima, working closely with original adapter Lawrence D. Cohen, composer Michael Gore and lyricist Dean Pitchford, updates Stephen King's 1974 creepfest novel and Brian De Palma's 1976 horror movie to include -- but not overdo -- cellphones and social media.

Carrie's catastrophe at the prom is neatly framed now by interrogations of the only surviving girl (Christy Altomare).

But the emotional core -- and, hey, there actually is one -- comes from the bond between Carrie and the religious fanatic of a mother who needs to keep her close. It helps that Molly Ranson and Marin Mazzie look eerily related and their fierce, distinctive voices are allowed to blend occasionally in softer emotions. And Mazzie brings a sympathetic sense of panic to monster-mom expectations.

Ranson shades Carrie's innocence with wild-eyed potential. And her steely, vibrato-less sound puts a nice chill in the middle-of-the-road songs -- some of them new -- with their simple high-melodic unisons and '80s pop-opera ballads against the reduced synthesized orchestrations.

The cast seems a bit mature for high school, but, unlike the original, nobody looks like 28-year-old Playmates in Vegas routines. Choreographer Matt Williams overuses the hand rituals and chair dances from "Spring Awakening," but the jerky, spasmodic couplings have a youthful, anxious eroticism.

David Zinn's set suggests, rather than spells out, the scenes against a concrete school wall. Carrie's kinetic powers are delicately discovered -- first a floating Jesus, then a moving chair, then violently slammed windows. According to the press representative, projections of buckets of blood malfunctioned in the prom climax at the preview I attended. No matter. There has been enough blood spilled over this show without it.

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Updated On: 3/2/12 at 05:06 AM

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 5:09am

The New York Daily News:

Carrie
by Joe Dziemianowicz

*** (out of five)

An ad for “Carrie” declares it “the musical event of the season!”

No such luck.

It’s too bad that the show about a supernaturally awkward adolescent doesn’t live up to the hype — for audiences and the original creative team who’ve revised their famous flop.

In 1988 “Carrie” opened on Broadway and died in three days. It was overblown. Reviled. It became a legend.

That was then. Now, director Stafford Arima’s modest and economical projection-heavy staging doesn’t inspire extreme reactions. It’s just another so-so musical adaptation of a popular novel that fails to expand upon its source. It’s not bad enough to be campy fun or stirring enough to really embrace.

Drawn from the 1974 Stephen King best seller that has spawned two movies, the show begins and ends in blood — conjured here with crimson lighting effects.

It follows teenage misfit Carrie (Molly Ranson) as she collides with her crazy zealot mother, Margaret (Marin Mazzie), classmate tormentors and strange telekinetic powers.

Michael Gore (music) and Dean Pitchford (lyrics) have added and cut songs since ’88. The hopeful “Unsuspecting Hearts,” sung by Carrie and her kindly gym teacher (Carmen Cusack), works well. But too often, the bubblegummy pop-rock score fights against the shadowy story.

Only the beautiful, mournful Act II aria, “When There’s No One,” in which sicko Margaret reckons with killing her daughter in the name of God, nails the chills and thrills lurking in the grim Carrie tale. It’s a great scene and Mazzie dazzles.

Ranson makes a less distinct impression in the title role. She’s a strong singer, but her acting lacks nuance as Carrie goes from outcast ugly duckling to prom-night swan to mass murderer.

In fairness, that’s partly due to Lawrence D. Cohen’s sketchy script, which pushes the action from late ’70s Maine to present day. Presumably it’s to seize upon the topicality of bullying, but the strategy backfires.

It’s harder to buy Carrie as clueless about the world and her own anatomy

in the Information Age. Even small-town New England schools come with computers, and they’re windows to the world even for girls kept in darkness at home.

“Carrie” ends on the wrong note, as the lone survivor of the prom-night massacre sings about the importance of looking closely at people. Though it strives to make the show resonate as a contemporary “It gets better” cautionary tale, it’s impossible to take it seriously. If the creators looked closely at the scene, they’d recognize how bloody illogical it is.

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The New York Post:

‘Carrie’: blood lite & boring
by Elisabeth Vincentelli

** (out of four)

There are two ways to bring back a flop. The first is to believe the show was good but badly staged, and to have a visionary set things right.

The “Carrie” revival that opened off-Broadway last night took the second road. Original creators Michael Gore (music), Dean Pitchford (lyrics) and Lawrence D. Cohen (book) went back to the drawing board and tried to improve their first version. Then they teamed up with a pedestrian director, Stafford Arima (“Altar Boyz”).

Big mistake all around.

Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, which inspired one of Brian DePalma’s best movies, “Carrie” came and went on Broadway in a flash. The story of a teenage outcast who destroys her high-school tormentors with her telekinetic powers played just 21 performances, including previews, in 1988. That brief run was enough to secure the show’s rep as one of the most infamous theatrical fiascos of all time.

Too bloody, too bloated, too demented: “Carrie” was just too much, and drew laughter and applause in equal measures.

Now, the show is the opposite: timid, unsure of what it wants to be or where it wants to go. Like an after-school special gone wrong, this “Carrie” is worse than bad — it’s boring.

Over the past few years, the creative trio cut some songs, wrote new ones, and tried to humanize the fraught relationship between ultra-geeky Carrie (Molly Ranson) and her religious nut of a mother, Margaret (Marin Mazzie).

But those efforts lead to a cramped musical with a split personality.

The mother-daughter scenes are spookily intense, and the two actresses rise to the quasi-operatic challenge. When Margaret warns Carrie to “Pray or He will burn you,” in “And Eve Was Weak,” it is terrifyingly grandiose. Mazzie’s haunted delivery of “When There’s No One” — a leftover from the original version — is another highlight.

But then we’re yanked back into laughable “High School Musical”-type scenes burdened with teeny synthesizers, witless lyrics and earnest, heavy-handed messages about bullying and daring to be yourself.

Desperately trying to avoid any suggestion of camp, Arima goes for the opposite extreme and steers clear from anything that could suggest flamboyance. There are blood-red projections rather than gore, and we don’t see enough of Carrie’s psychic powers. So she moves a chair without touching it — big deal.

But this is a larger-than-life tale where the supernatural plays a big part. Depriving it of visual and sonic extravagance completely misses the point.

Poor Carrie: First she’s the victim of bullies, then she falls to well-intentioned advocates.

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Bloomberg News:

‘Carrie’ Is Back, Shock-Challenged and Bloodless
by Jeremy Gerard

* (out of four)

Telekinetic Carrie White proved she wasn’t dead when her arm shot up from the grave at the end of “Carrie.”

She still isn’t dead, despite the kaleidoscopically bad $8- million kitsch fest that closed on Broadway in 1988 after five performances.

Now she’s back (I suppose ‘baack!’ is more apt), in a scaled-down, more thematically persuasive revision of the musical whose heroine is the ultimate victim of bullying as well as child abuse. No red goop drenches her in the climactic scene, which is symptomatic of the entire enterprise. It’s earnest and underpopulated, and it’s bloodless.

Carrie White (Molly Ranson) is a naive, 17-year-old walking target in her rural Maine high school. When her first period arrives during a shower after gym class, she freaks, prompting derision and a barrage of tampons from the “in” girls who torment her unrelentingly.

At home, her Bible-quoting nutjob mother (Marin Mazzie) greets this sign of womanhood with frenzied horror, apparently seeing this as her own story of pregnancy and abandonment as her daughter’s fate, too.

When the Queen Meanie (Jeanna De Waal) refuses to apologize for the gym incident, she’s told she can’t go to the prom. This sets in motion the cruel plot that will follow Carrie’s unlikely coronation at the dance. This relies on the repentant (Christy Altomare) turning so nice that she persuades her boyfriend (Derek Klena) to take Carrie to the prom (also unlikely).

You know all this from the Stephen King novel and the Brian De Palma movie. The musical, written by Michael Gore (music), Dean Pitchford (lyrics) and Lawrence D. Cohen (book) and originally staged by Terry Hands, tried mightily to out-lurid the film with teens who frequented leather bars, as if real teens aren’t scary enough.

For the MCC Theater revision, the trio and director Stafford Arima have gone the opposite way. David Zinn’s drab gray set consists almost entirely of the back wall of the gym, post-apocalypse. Emily Rebholz’s costumes are staid. The spooky lighting (Kevin Adams) and sound (Jonathan Deans) don’t compete with Hollywood, but they get the job done. The ensemble, especially in the prom scene, seems skimpy.

Scaling “Carrie” back has the unfortunate effect of demonstrating the key thing about “Carrie” that all the trappings may have hidden: It was a lousy score in 1988 and it’s still a lousy score.

The melodies, even the new ones, are outdated generic pop, the lyrics banal if somewhat more attuned to teen obsessions with not standing out and fitting into prom dresses. (“You should trust what you feel/That’s the only thing that’s real”)

There’s an admirable lack of gimmickry and the cast is terrific. Ranson underplays the ugly duckling whose moment of swanliness is cut cruelly short. Mazzie, too, seems rooted as the mother from hell. Altomare is convincing as the do-gooder and is rewarded with the best songs. Blair Goldberg defies stereotype as the knowing gym teacher.

I can understand workshopping a flop to see if there’s anything worth salvaging. But when the answer is so inarguably “No,” it’s hard to figure out why it came so much further along.
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[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 5:12am

Entertainment Weekly:

Carrie
by Tom Geier

Grade: C

Back in 1988, Fame composer Michael Gore's musical version of the Stephen King story Carrie became a Broadway legend — for all the wrong reasons. Closing after just five performances, the $8 million production was then Broadway's costliest flop. Not to mention its bloodiest, with gallons of stage plasma poured out each night (an offstage pig squeal during the 'Out for Blood' number remains a perverse highlight for the handful who saw the original show).

'Out for Blood' is one of several songs that's been cut from the MCC Theater's new revival of Carrie, now running at Off Broadway's Lucille Lortel Theatre through April 22. So has much of the stage blood (the climactic prom scene relies heavily on Kevin Adams' lighting design). And except for occasional glimmers from Molly Ranson as the telekinetic title character and Jeanna De Waal as ultimate mean-girl Chris Hargensen, much of the camp quality that fans might remember from Stephen King's novel or Brian De Palma's 1976 movie has been excised. This virtually bloodless Carrie takes itself very, very seriously, as if trying to elevate the material to the status of Greek tragedy. At times, director Stafford Arima seems to think he's doing Medea the Musical. It's not.

This is still Carrie, with its freaky paranormal plot and its underlying themes of fundamentalist Christian repression and female empowerment. As the curly-haired high school outcast, Ranson has a crystal-clear voice and appropriate sense of awkwardness. Marin Mazzie (Ragtime, Kiss Me Kate), as her Bible-thumping mother, has some well-sung solos (including the second-act tearjerker 'When There's No One') but remains a dour, one-note presence throughout the show. She's neither the over-the-top villain you might remember from Piper Laurie's movie portrayal, nor a fully rounded and flawed victim of her circumstances as this production clearly intends. It doesn't help that Lawrence D. Cohen's updated book glosses over some of her backstory (just why did Carrie's father leave her?) as well as her realization of Carrie's supernatural powers; her fateful decision to attack Carrie in the final scene seems to derive more from Carrie's act of rebellion at going
to the prom than a desire to rid the world of a devilish force.

There are some feeble attempts to update the story. After Carrie's locker-room humiliation over her first period, the bully Chris notes, 'Norma's already posted about it!' And one of the guys (Corey Boardman) makes not-so-subtle eyes for resident jock Tommy Ross (a bland Derek Klena), who's guilted by his girlfriend, Sue (Christy Altomare), into taking Carrie to the prom. 'Dude, if I'd known you were going to clean up this good, I would've taken you instead of what's-her-name-here,' says George — though moments later he winds up dancing contentedly with what's-her-name-here in the big prom number anyway.

What's clear in watching this underwhelming act of theatrical resuscitation is that Carrie is not a great, lost musical. Gore's pop-rock score is pleasant but not particularly memorable, and Dean Pitchford's lyrics are a mumble-mouthed jumble (consider this representative sample from the high school-set opening number: 'In is it! / What comes close to that? / Until you've been in / You ain't where it's at!'). What the show has going for it is the evocative source material, but in stripping the story of its camp value Arima and his team have also robbed it of any sense of fun.

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NorthJersey.com

Carrie
by Robert Feldberg

"Carrie" opened in a do-over Thursday night at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Excoriated, condemned and stomped on when it debuted on Broadway in 1988 – and ran for five performances – the musical has been renovated by its creators in a bid, one would guess, to remove, or at least lighten, the stain it's left on their careers.

The revisions, which include reducing the show's scale and refocusing its story, certainly make it better. It still falls short, though, of being a truly successful stage version of Stephen King's scary novel and the vivid 1976 film version.

In defense of the original production – which was pretty bad, but not, I thought, the crime against art that some people believed – it was of a genre that's tough to present onstage with a straight face: a horror musical.

The attempt to make grotesquerie dramatic led, at times, to unintentionally funny scenes, such as the number that had frenzied high school boys slaughtering (offstage) oinking pigs and decorating themselves with the animals' blood.

The new production has eliminated that moment, and subordinated the strange and supernatural to an edgily-told tale of bullying and revenge.

Under director Stafford Arima, the show doesn't build to dramatic high points; it hurls itself at us from the beginning, in capital letters, with exclamation points.

After introducing the surly, insecure students of Chamberlain High School, who tell us in song that they desperately want to be "in," the story quickly moves to the evening's pivotal scene.

Carrie (the appealing Molly Ranson), already considered weird by her classmates because she spontaneously drops to her knees in prayer, has her first menstrual period in the school shower after gym class.

Not having been told the facts of life by her intensely religious mother (Marin Mazzie), she becomes hysterical. That makes her a target for the school's mean girls, particularly the evil Chris (Jeanna De Waal).

Perhaps to tie in to the popularity of bullying as a contemporary issue, the show has been updated to the present, though only halfheartedly.

The kids use cellphones, and it's mentioned that news of Carrie's embarrassment has gone cyber-wide. But what happens is strictly in person, hands-on — or, in the case of the telekinetic Carrie, who can move objects through mental power, hands off.

Besides the show's trimming and tightening by book writer Lawrence D. Cohen – the plot is essentially unchanged – additions to and subtractions from the pop-rock score have been made by composer Michael Gore and lyricist Dean Pitchford.

One dropped song that I missed was "Don't Waste the Moon," an energizing showcase number that, admittedly, had minimal connection to story or character development.

The songwriters did retain "Unsuspecting Hearts," a lovely, country-tinged ballad sung by Carrie and her sympathetic gym teacher (Carmen Cusack).

Also kept was the touching mother's lament, "When There's No One."

The score isn't the problem, though. Ultimately, "Carrie" falls short because of a series of splits in its dramatic structure.

Scenes shift between the high school and Carrie's home, but the two worlds never connect.

At home, Carrie's nemesis is her fanatical, sex-hating mother, who exists apart from the other characters and, despite Mazzie's efforts, seems more a concept than an actual person.

At school, excessive attention is paid to the relationship of Sue (Christy Altomare) and Tommy (Derek Klena). They're nice kids, who befriend Carrie; their romance, though, is, like, awesome only in teenage terms.

A big positive is Ranson's winsome performance as Carrie. She persuasively transforms a wan and fearful teenager into a beautiful young woman after Carrie receives an invitation to the senior prom.

Finally, despite the attempt to make "Carrie" a character-issue show, it's a gothic revenge fantasy. And, unfortunately, in this reduced-size production, it wasn't possible to create the cathartic spectacle of Carrie responding to being doused with pig's blood at the dance by leveling the room, with everyone in it.

The destruction is, instead, suggested by lighting and projections. Not bad, but unlikely to satisfy hard-core horror fans.

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newjerseynewsroom.com:

‘Carrie’ looks bloody good
by Michael Sommers

Exploding over Broadway like the “Hindenburg” back in 1988, “Carrie” was one of the most notorious theatrical disasters of the last 25 years, but now the musical has been newly revamped by its makers and tuned up into a surprisingly entertaining thriller.

Opening on Thursday in the 299-seat intimacy of the Lucille Lortel Theatre, “Carrie” modestly packs musical chills and supernatural thrills in sufficient abundance to satisfy customers seeking such gothic diversions. “Carrie” sure ain’t high art, but she’s plenty of lurid fun.

Most of you already know the tale from the Stephen King novel and subsequent movie so let’s skip those details. This time around, writer Lawrence D. Cohen swiftly frames matters in flashbacks told by the nice-girl-next-door, Sue, and moves events to the present day, complete with i-phones. Interesting to note how the current debate on bullying among teens makes Carrie’s story all the more compelling.

Composer Michael Gore and lyricist Dean Pitchford have revised their score considerably. While the pop sound remains very ‘80s and catchy in the team’s characteristic “Fame” mode, the more theatrical music often soars to the melodramatic demands of the plot, especially in the urgent songs for Carrie’s twisted mama Margaret.

Among the numbers kept from the original, “Unsuspecting Hearts” remains a shining ballad that glows against the darker nature of the score.

The ill-fated original suffered from a grandiose concept, but MCC Theater’s production, which has been fluently directed by Stafford Arima, wisely keeps this high school horror show to minimal yet effectively atmospheric circumstances. While maintaining a high energy level among his 14 performers, Arima and his designers provide a flow of changing moods appropriate to the story’s gathering nightmare.

David Zinn’s deteriorated greyish-white industrial-style setting serves many locations thanks in part to Sven Ortel’s ghostly projections. Together with designers Kevin Adams (lighting) and Jonathan Deans (sound), they slam over a believably fiery finale for that infamous prom night scene.

A sensational Marin Mazzie depicts the maddening Margaret with scary emotional intensity and sings the blazes out of her combustible arias. Sweet and touching in the pivotal role of Carrie, newcomer Molly Ranson sympathetically suggests a telekinetic Molly Ringwald, especially when she blossoms in pink at the prom. Their mother-daughter encounters strike dramatic sparks that heat up the action.

Christy Altomare and Derek Klena appear nicely wholesome as the sweethearts who try to do right by the heroine. Jeanna De Waal is deliciously vicious as mean-girl Chrissie whose plot to humiliate Carrie backfires so badly. Dressed by designer Emily Rebholz in the flannels and jeans fashions of classrooms today, a small but animated ensemble sings well and moves dynamically through choreographer Matt Williams’ down to earth dances. A seven-member band kicks out the music with pulsating force.

This vastly improved version of “Carrie” remains a madly feverish musical that’s too weird for Broadway consumption, but might well find a future niche at New World Stages or another smaller venue where such paranormal goings-on will appeal to viewers eager for an offbeat thrill ride.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 5:15am

I really, really enjoyed this 2 weeks ago but put these reviews together as a whole and they are hitting every point that is wrong and right with this new production.
It still doesn't work as a major Broadway musical and it looks like this production will follow its far, far superior original into the history books as a 'must see'!

I may very well sit thru it again in 3 weeks time, its that kind of show.

Updated On: 3/2/12 at 05:15 AM

[philitalia]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 5:30am

I'm tempted ...

Any other shows while you're there ?

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 5:36am

Still planning, got 3 slots, 4 if I see Carrie again!

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 3/2/12 at 9:48am

The show is a legendary in its own right, so has become critic proof even with a 'plodding' score and could be a off Broadway hit, no shame in that. I don't see this show going uptown, it's not a Broadway show.

I wonder what made Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford select Stafford Arima and the MCC? as I understand there were plenty of offers to recreate 'Carrie'. Updated On: 3/2/12 at 09:48 AM

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 6:18am

Variety

Carrie
(Lucille Lortel; 299 seats; $89 top )
by Steven Suskin

Credits: An MCC Theater presentation of a musical in two acts with music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford, book by Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the novel by Stephen King. Directed by Stafford Arima, choreographed by Matt Williams, musical direction and arrangements by Mary-Mitchell Campbell.

Margaret White - Marin Mazzie
Carrie White - Molly Ranson
Sue Snell - Christy Altomare
Lynn Gardner - Carmen Cusack
Chris Hargenson - Jeanna de Waal
Tommy Ross - Derek Klena

The first time the 1988 musical version of "Carrie" hit the stage, it landed with a thud in London and went on to play Broadway in a famously disastrous run that's become shorthand for "major flop." Thirty years later, Off Broadway's MCC Theater has brought back this tuner based on Stephen King's 1973 novel and Brian De Palma's 1976 pic about teens and telekinesis, presumably the way the authors always intended it to be. But the result is smaller, less bloody and no more compelling.

Despite revisions by author Lawrence D. Cohen (who wrote the original screenplay) and songwriters Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford (who won an Oscar in 1980 for the title song from "Fame"), "Carrie" seems malnourished. Scenes featuring a group of malcontent teenagers alternate with those of awkward outsider Carrie (Molly Ranson), occasionally accompanied by her loony fundamentalist mama (Marin Mazzie). The onstage storytelling might baffle auds unfamiliar with the plot: The critical shower-room taunting scene is mild, while Carrie's displays of telekinetic powers -- levitating a small statuette of Jesus, for instance -- are minor.

Without a stage full of special effects to utilize, the story's climactic prom-night explosion is mostly loud music and blinking lights. The famous bucket of blood, on which so much of "Carrie" depends, is not real but a projection.

The show has been updated under the supervision of director Stafford Arima ("Altar Boyz"), who doesn't make much of a case for his decisions: The action has been moved forward to today, with the characters blithely texting away, which only leads you to wonder why a current-day "Carrie" would have songs that sound as if they come from the 1980s.

Ranson ("Jerusalem") and Mazzie ("Kiss Me, Kate") sing their guts out, with several songs that shake the rafters without being especially good. Ranson does a fine job as the outcast, while the talented Mazzie has little to do besides sing very loud and look very creepy. Christy Altomare and Derek Klena, meanwhile, give agreeable performances, respectively, as the girl who tries to befriend Carrie and the boy who ultimately takes her to the prom.

The authors have for years fended off revival requests, waiting to find a team that would give them the show they always wanted. But in this current incarnation, "Carrie" looks unlikely to rise once more.

Songs: "In," "Carrie," "Open Your Heart," "And Eve Was Weak," "The World According to Chris," "Evening Prayers," "Dreamer in Disguise," "Once You See," "Unsuspecting Hearts," "Do Me a Favor," "I Remember How Those Boys Could Dance," "A Night We'll Never Forget," "You Shine," "Why Not Me?" "Stay Here Instead," "When There's No One," "The Prom," "Epilogue"

Sets, David Zinn; costumes, Emily Rebholz; lights, Kevin Adams; projections, Sven Ortel; sound, Jonathan Deans; orchestrations, Doug Besterman; production stage manager, Amber White. Opened March 1, 2012, reviewed Feb. 26, closes April 22. Running time: 2 HOURS

With: Ben Thompson, Wayne Alan Wilcox, Corey Boardman, Blair Goldberg, F. Michael Haynie, Andy Mientus, Elly Noble, Jen Sese.

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New York Magazine:

Carrie Is Back and As Serious As a Telekinetically Induced Heart Attack
by Scott Brown

In the decades since its grisly debut and inglorious early closure, Carrie became a go-to metonymy for hapless Broadway camp, its unintentional foibles deliberately and ironically aped by countless Fringe meta-musicals. Now the show is back — and serious as a telekinetically induced heart attack. Gone is the Broadway bombast and the goofy-pants Debbie Allen choreography, replaced by a more sere, stark staging concept by director Stafford Arima and attenuated power-posing from choreographer Matt Williams. Gone also, I’m afraid, is a good deal of the pulpy fun. I didn’t see the original Carrie — I know it only via reputation and online video — but from what I can divine, it retained something of the penny-dreadful in its dreadfulness. This retooled, updated Carrie, which includes several new musical numbers and drops many old ones, most notably the infamous pig-killing number, is, by comparison, clean and sleek, a marvel of well-behaved formula
musical economy and austerity. Oh, make no mistake, there will be blood, but not buckets of it: The signature prom-night hemo-baptism of bullied, beleaguered outcast Carrie White (excellent, transfixing demon-waif Molly Ranson) is accomplished via (booooo!) digital projection, as is her subsequent mass murder of the senior class. The savings on dry cleaning bills alone must be impressive, but who put Paul Ryan in charge of cut-rate musical theater? We’re below 14th Street. This is Carrie. Where’s my $%&*ing splash zone?

Ranson has a steady alarm bell of a voice and plausible death in her blazing cornered-kitten eyes from the moment we meet her (in the gym shower, terrified by the onset of her long overdue menstrual cycle). Loathed on general principle by the popular kids at school and cosseted at home by the religious fundamentalism of her abusive mother (a wild-eyed Marin Mazzie), Carrie makes her way steadily to the Prom from Hell, as does Carrie, stopping off dutifully at every musical-theater station of the cross. Why, exactly, do we need a reflective song from kindly Miss Gardner (Carmen Cusack)? Because it’s where one puts a song, when one is in the song-putting business. Too much of Carrie feels obligatory and considered where it should feel compulsive, bonkers even. The composing team of Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, famous for raising towers of aggrandized pop that still bring tears of Velveeta to my eyes, feel most at home in the big ballads. The old
stuff still has a sheen of silvery eighties megamusical fairy dust on it; the new numbers are more generic. Mazzie, charged with delivering such wonderful, furious nonsense as "And Eve Was Weak" gets to have the most over-the-top fun, but even she feels slightly restrained. Carrie measures out its gore — and its glee, and its filth, and its fury — in coffee spoons. If only it had bent a few instead, Uri Geller–style. But I suspect that’d take more psychic chutzpah than this docile, lipsticked little piglet can muster.

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ScheckontheArts.com:

Carrie
by Frank Scheck

The original musical version of Carrie was a notorious flop upon its 1988 Broadway premiere--it closed after five performances at a loss of millions of dollars, nearly destroyed the reputation of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and was so ignominious in its failure that it lent its name to author Ken Mandelbaum’s now classic tome about Broadway musical disaster, Not Since Carrie.

Now it’s back, in a dramatically retooled and reconceived off-Broadway revival that attempts to strip away its camp excesses. But while the production generally succeeds in this aspiration, there’s an unfortunate side effect. It’s now simply dull.

Fans of Stephen King’s novel and Brian DePalma’s hit film adaptation are familiar with the story of Carrie White, the unfortunate high school wallflower with lethal telekinetic powers. Lawrence D. Cohen’s book for the musical is generally faithful to the source material, including such iconic moments as the blood-drenched prom and Carrie’s fateful final encounter with her religious fanatic mother. In what is perhaps a reflection on society’s current focus on the horrific effects of teen bullying, that aspect of the storyline is emphasized here to such a degree that Carrie sometimes feels like a supporting character. The attempt at psychological realism is understandable, but it results in an overall blandness that flattens the outlandish proceedings.

Director Stafford Arima takes a far more streamlined approach to the material than did Terry Hands in the big-budgeted original production, which featured lavish sets, bizarre production numbers, overblown special effects and buckets and buckets of fake blood. This scaled-down rendition relies mostly on lighting, projections and sound effects to convey the violent mayhem to generally impressive effect. The fact that not a drop of blood is used onstage is indicative of the overall restraint.

But the fact remains that the story, like most gothic tales, doesn’t particularly lend itself to musical treatment. And with the exception of “When There’s No One,” a haunting second act ballad sung by Carrie’s mother, the score by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford (whose biggest claim to fame is the movie Fame) is generic, unmemorable pop-rock.

Molly Ransom is touching as Carrie, although she’s never quite as vulnerable or scary as the role demands. And as the obsessed Margaret, Marin Mazzie mainly seems miscast, failing to project the ferociousness that Piper Laurie and Betty Buckley respectively brought to the film and Broadway versions. She ultimately seems less scary than a typical Rick Santorum supporter.

This version of Carrie is certainly viable, and its name recognition should ensure that it gets produced in smaller theaters for a long time to come. But no amount of tinkering will ever make it a successful musical.

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[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 11:32am

I counted around 5 positive reviews, 5 mixed and 6 negative on opening night (so DOA It is not). I think for a show that opened DOA in 88 they team have to be happy with that, general word is mixed. I think its a great show, flawed still? sure, but my hat is off to Arima and co and i wish them a great run (now release the rights so my company can do it right lol)

Updated On: 3/3/12 at 11:32 AM

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 2:11pm

Why don't you do the show without the rights, like they did with Stagemoor Manor and Fort William, even Michael Gore and Larry Cohen attended the former.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 7:37pm

No, we seem to get quite a bit of press attention when we do shows for some reason so we would be closed down before we even got to the stage. I think they will release the rights this time.

We are toying with the idea of doing the show as a straight play

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/3/12 at 8:28pm

^You might as well just do it without the rights then. Making changes to the licensed version is still illegal and could get the production shut down.

Even if you wrote your own straight play version you still wouldn't have the rights to adapt the novel and could get shut down with that as well.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/4/12 at 7:33am

Gay City News, March 2, 2012

Bloody Revenge
"Carrie" is back on the boards: Are they all going to laugh at her?
BY DAVID KENNERLEY

It’s impossible to talk about the revival of the musical “Carrie” without referencing the notorious 1988 premiere, arguably the most appalling flop on Broadway. It closed after five performances, to the tune of $8 million.

Legend has it that the production, starring Betty Buckley, was so ghastly that the audience’s guffaws in the wrong places often drowned out the dialogue. Curtain calls were met by boos (for the creators) and then polite applause (for the cast).

It wasn’t just the repulsive source material — Stephen King’s creepy tale of a pasty, socially inept teen girl, bullied by her classmates and abused by her Bible-thumping mother, who uses newfound powers of telekinesis to wreak deadly revenge. It was the atrocious staging as well. The spectacle relied on cheesy special effects — it had to compete with the new mega-musicals like “Les Miz” and “Starlight Express” — and buckets and buckets of faux pig’s blood.

For nearly a quarter of a century, nobody was able to remount a serious production (spoofs like the one starring Sherry Vine don’t count). So when MCC Theater announced a revival — an earnest, stripped-down version Off Broadway — the question on everyone’s lips was, “Are they all going to laugh at her?” Critics and audiences would surely be out for blood.

Well, you can put those pitchforks and rotten tomatoes away. This revamped “Carrie,” starring Molly Ranson in the title role and Marin Mazzie as her mamma, Margaret, is far from a disaster.

With a book by Lawrence D. Cohen, music by Michael Gore, and lyrics by Dean Pitchford (the original creators), the story has wisely been reconfigured to focus on the troubled bond between mother and daughter. Under the sensitive direction of Stafford Arima (”Altar Boyz”), whenever these two are onstage, emotions run high. The heartfelt duets, articulating their embattled love-hate relationship, truly soar, achieving an almost operatic quality.

Ranson and Mazzie, who look remarkably like mother and daughter, plumb the depths of their characters and reveal unexpected treasures. For the first time, Margaret registers as more than just a God-fearing lunatic. We understand her motivation behind forbidding the late-blooming Carrie to date boys and feel more than a few pangs of sympathy.

Another revelation is Christy Altomare as the likable Sue Snell, who reluctantly sticks up for her longtime classmate. Her vocals are so sweet and pure she threatens to outshine Ranson.

The score is a fairly pleasing mix of upbeat pop and tender ballads, and the raucous opening number, featuring the insecure students stressing about fitting in, has faint echoes of “Spring Awakening.”

But while the central conflict is nicely rendered, this “Carrie” is short on thrills. The story, set in present-day, unfolds in flashbacks as told by Sue, which gives away that there was a calamity and that she survived it.

In keeping with the stripped-down aesthetic, David Zinn has designed a drab, concrete structure, suggesting the burned-out shell of the gymnasium. However, the somber palette blunts the impact of the climactic scene, minimizing the contrast between normal school life and devastating aftermath.
Come to think of it, perhaps the first staging of “Carrie” was ahead of its time. Shocking topics that were taboo back then are now embraced by mainstream theatergoers (songs about female circumcision and AIDS, anyone?). Sadly, carnage at high schools is now a reality. And with increasing reports of suicides among teens triggered by ruthless peers, the topic of bullying couldn’t be more timely.

Naturally, it’s also hard to assess this “Carrie” without also comparing it (unfairly, I know) to the classic 1976 Brian De Palma film, starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, both nominated for Academy Awards. This take flubs some key moments that made that film so awesome.

For instance, the famous locker-room scene where the girls mock Carrie for getting her period is sloppy. There is scant suspense in the moments leading up to the crowning of Tommy and Carrie as Prom King and Queen, and the tastefully restrained cataclysm that follows is serviceable at best. The timing is off, and the scene is over in a flash. Pig’s blood is kept to a minimum.

And if you’re hoping to see the gym teacher — who was Carrie’s pal, yet laughed at her anyway — get crushed by a falling basketball backboard, you’re out of luck.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 3/4/12 at 4:06pm

CATSNYrevival Mr King has already been contacted

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 3/4/12 at 4:56pm

A very good idea, to attempt to do 'Carrie' as a play.

[devonian.t]

Posted: 3/4/12 at 5:23pm

I'd honestly sooner see it as a musical