Hello Again, Mary Lou: A Conversation with Ron Oliver

Anyone who has watched film and television over the last 25 years will be familiar with Ron Oliver's work in one way or another.  His impressive credits include Are You Afraid of the Dark, Goosebumps, Animorphs (all three of which he was involved with both as writer and director), The Secret World of Alex Mack, the Donald Strachey films starring Chad Allen for Here!, plus many other films and TV shows.  Most recently he directed Annie Potts in The Music Teacher for The Hallmark Channel, which premieres this Saturday, August 11th. 

Still as busy and hardworking as ever, Mr. Oliver kindly took some time to reminisce about his first two professional film projects: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II and Prom Night III: The Last Kiss, for which he wrote both screenplays and received a co-directorial credit for III.

The four original Prom Night films, all of which have garnered cult audiences, spanned 1980-1992, although only II & III share any real connection with each other: the delightfully evil character of bad girl would-be prom queen Mary Lou Maloney (Lisa Schrage).  The story starts in 1957, where Mary Lou's jilted prom date decides to get revenge by lobbing a stink bomb onstage when she's selected prom queen.  Unfortunately, the flaming bomb ignites her dress and she burns to death in front of her horrified classmates.  30 years later, her accidental killer Bill Nordham (Michael Ironside) is now principal of Hamilton High, still haunted all these years by the memory of his crime.  Things get even more tense when his son's girlfriend, Vicki Carpenter (Wendy Lyon), begins to act...differently; dressing in 50's clothes, becoming increasingly mean tempered, and confronting Bill with things only Mary Lou would know.  Mary Lou is back, within Vicki, and is determined to get her crown at long last.

Hello Mary Lou, a sequel in-name only to the Jamie Lee Curtis original, wasn't conceived as such by Oliver: "I wrote the script as a spec called The Haunting of Hamilton High and they made it, but they owned the Prom Night title, so they called it that for commercial value."

The film was directed by Bruce Pittman.  "I remember liking Bruce a great deal, but his original cut of the movie was not terribly scary," Ron recalls. "We reshot about 1/3 of it for scary improvement and I directed that material, with input from the editor and our producer Peter, both of whom sadly are dead now." (producer Peter Simpson passed away in 2007, while editor Nick Rotundo died last August in Toronto).

Shot primarily in Edmonton, Alberta and released theatrically in 1987, the movie garnered its biggest audience on home video.  In 1989, Mary Lou came back from the dead for another round of murder and mayhem in the third installment, The Last Kiss, this time shot in Toronto and released direct-to-video.  The new plot involved Mary Lou once again returning to Hamilton High, after ingenously escaping from a macabre chained chorus line down in Hell with a nail file...and yes, you read that correctly.  Mary Lou becomes infatuated with perennial average student Alex Grey (Tim Conlon) and is determined to help him succeed in any way possible, even if it means killing off the whole school to do it.

"The PN3 script I wrote at the same time [as II] and tucked it away in my desk in case of a sequel, and then a couple years later we did it. Directing with Peter consisted of me doing all the prep work and then him being on set during the shoot more like a supervising producer, but the finance guys weren't going to give me - a first timer - a shot at directing unless Peter was there, so I am forever in his debt." 

Despite Mary Lou appearing in both entries (with actress Courtney Taylor replacing Lisa Schrage for III), the tones of the two films couldn't be more different.  Whereas II was darker and more of a direct homage to past horror films, III was an all out tongue-in-cheek black comedy.

"Tonally, horror was out in 1989, so PN3 made sense to them.  I had written it very tongue in cheek, and we followed through on it. Lots of things I like about the movie but lots that I hate."

As for the two Mary Lous: "I don't have a favorite. Both ladies did lovely jobs with what little character I gave them. If I had it to do over again, with 25 years of experience, I would love to revisit the mythology and make it a full on nasty ghost story."

Today, he views the film with a combination of sentimentality and 20/20 hindsight: "I love the stylized stuff when we get to the alternate Prom world; love the look and colors of it all. I love many of the murder scenes and the garish comic book feel of it. I HATE that as a first timer I spent a great deal of time struggling with simple cinematic things, like eye lines and axis crosses, which ultimately don't make a bit of difference artistically.  I was working with a very experienced but not-terribly-risk-taking crew and I listened to their counsel a great deal more than I should have; should have probably just gone with my instinct and the film would have been much crazier, much more to my tastes. And while I love Tim [Conlon] and David [Stratton] and Courtney [Taylor] and all of them, and think they did very well given what I saddled them with, I think I made a huge mistake in not casting 18 year olds versus almost-30-year-olds. It just feels off. But live and learn."

"I think what I'm trying to say is, the things about PN3 that I hate are all of my own creation; first time at bat, as it were. But it must be said that my DP on the picture, the very gifted Rhett Morita, and I were on a steep learning curve. We were doing absurd 20 hour days on that movie, and shooting in Toronto in the middle of freaking winter trying to do exteriors when the cameras would jam from the cold....but we were trying to make it look like anytown USA in the early autumn."

Even nastier than filming conditions was the financing of the film. "There's a marvelous and tragic story to be told about how PN3 was financed....suffice to say it involved the infamous Menendez family and a late dinner at Trader Vic's, and a deal was made to make the movie. A week later, we had to delay production because Jose Menendez and his wife, our dinner hosts, had been murdered. Ultimately it was revealed their killers were of course their sons....our OTHER dinner companions that night."

Simpson would produce one last entry for the series in 1992, Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil.  Yet despite the continued use of Hamilton High as the setting (plus some recycled shots from the opening prom scene of II) there was no Mary Lou, or Ron Oliver, in sight. "By the time they made 4, I was long gone from Toronto; had moved to LA and was trying to find my next gig. I don't think they ever considered bringing the character back again."

Oliver has long since graduated to much more contemporary and serious fare in entertainment, but everybody has to start somewhere, and there are still plenty out there who appreciate and remember the golden days of 80's horror. 

"Making that movie was a thrill because it was my favorite kind of script....my own! Seriously though, the black comedy elements were lost on a lot of people at the time, but it seems to have taken on a life of its own over the years."

Mary Lou may have peaked in high school yet never obtained her crown, but with an Emmy nomination and two DGA nominations under his belt, Oliver still has a long and successful climb ahead of him.

Thanks for your time, Ron.

Lucille Ball: 1911-1989

In honor of Lucille Ball's 101st birthday, I present a paper I wrote analyzing the impact she had on the worlds of comedy and feminism.

Known to billions worldwide simply as “Lucy”, the scatterbrained character she played variations of on four different television shows spanning the 1950s through the 1980s, the Lucille Ball behind the camera “had one focus: hard work” (Bloom & Vlastnik, 170). She channeled her hard work into comedy, and created a comic persona that is as much loved today as it was 60 years ago. Paradoxically, “as a sixty-foot image on the screen, the actress was only a journeywoman performer; as a sixteen-inch TV image, she turned into a superstar” (Kanfer, Preface, x). With the help of husband Desi Arnaz, Ball changed the face of broadcast television and pioneered the role of women in the entertainment industry. Her real-life accolades and triumphs aside, the actions of her TV characters, however zany and humorous, speak to the desire some women felt for liberation from the patriarchal society of postwar America. Her most famous incarnation, Lucy Ricardo on I Love Lucy, was particularly in tune with this idea, constantly struggling to break into husband Ricky’s nightclub act and form her own career in show business. Media critic Gerard Jones argues that “Lucy Ricardo was less a feminist than an argument for why women needed feminists. What she had was just an insane desire to be noticed. Lucy demonstrated how much energy, how much ambition was being wasted by the early fifties ethos that women should be in the kitchen” (Finding Lucy, CBS). Lucille Ball is both a cultural icon and a truly unique performer who continues to entertain us to this day.

Although television is where Lucille Ball struck gold, it was hardly her first attempt to find her acting identity. Indeed, she cycled through movies, theatre and radio before taking the small screen by storm in 1951. As biographer Kathleen Brady notes, “Television was her medium, and really nothing else was. It took television, which required all her talents, her wonderful expressions, her physical gifts, to really bring her to flower” (Finding Lucy). Before the advent of television, however, Ball tried her hardest to hone her skills in the movies, appearing in sixty-five films by 1948. Earning the unofficial title “Queen of the B Pictures”, Lucille played everything from chorus girl to romantic heroine, cycling through four major movie studios throughout the 1930s and 40s. Her best film appearances were those that showcased her comedic ability, such as The Fuller Brush Girl and Miss Grant Takes Richmond, but it was not enough to make her a major movie star. In those days, “the gospel according to Goldwyn was clear: funny women don’t sell tickets, beautiful women do” (Finding Lucy). Lucille had the good fortune to be both funny and beautiful, but the stringent rules of the Hollywood studio system did not make many allowances for such duplicity: glamour girls were supposed to be beautiful, not funny. As Lucille’s good friend and occasional guest star Carol Burnett put it, “She didn’t have that opportunity [to be funny]. They didn’t give it to her, so she went out and got it” (Finding Lucy). With the strong success of her CBS radio comedy My Favorite Husband from 1948 to 1951, plus the burgeoning medium of television, Lucille saw a golden opportunity not only get to work with her husband, Desi Arnaz, but also to take her comedic training to another level.

Lucille’s radio program was her first opportunity to hone her comedic timing in front of a live studio audience. Her longtime writer Madelyn Pugh Davis says that “Lucy learned to play to the audience; she was used to doing movies, so it was kind of a new experience for her to say the gag and look out at the audience”. Kathleen Brady elaborated by stating “she came alive before a live audience, and developed the expressions that she used on I Love Lucy while doing her radio show” (Finding Lucy). Sensing a hit for television, CBS wanted Lucille and her co-star, Richard Denning, to take the program to the small screen, but Lucy would only do so if her real favourite husband, Desi, could do the show with her instead. Ball explained that she was anxious to work with Arnaz, as he was constantly on the road with his band, and working together would allow them to stay together. The resulting deliberations became legendary, with CBS insisting that the public would not buy an all-American girl being married to a Cuban bandleader. Eventually the Arnazes won out because, as Robert Osbourne succinctly put it, CBS “needed her more than they didn’t want Desi” (Finding Lucy).

Already, Lucille was showing more determination and grit than most women in Hollywood, and her insisting that Desi do the show with her was one of the smartest moves she could have made. As stated by Lucille’s brother, Fred Ball, “Lucille would never have succeeded the way that she did without Desi…He put this thing together technically, financially, emotionally…he’s the guy that made it work” (Finding Lucy). Indeed, it was “The Bongo Player” who developed the three camera method of shooting in front of a live audience, knowing that Lucille needed an audience to perform to. The Arnazes soon proved to CBS how wrong they had been. With the ideal casting of Vivian Vance and William Frawley as the Ricardo’s neighbours and landlords, the Mertzes, the archetypical sitcom was underway. With each week of filming, the I Love Lucy team “invented from whole cloth the wheel of situation comedy…it was a format so successful it is still in use today” (Finding Lucy). More importantly, with each week of filming, Lucille Ball continued to nurture and perfect her comedic ability, unknowingly cementing her legacy on the entertainment world.

Lucille Ball was the first female comedianne to live up to the glory of her male predecessors. As Media Studies Professor Lori Landay notes, “There weren’t a lot of female role models for someone like Lucille Ball. She had to look to the male comics”(Finding Lucy), particularly the Marx Brothers, Red Skelton, Charlie Chaplain and Buster Keaton. It had been Keaton who had given her a great deal of comedic training, and taught her the importance of props. Kathleen Brady states that it was Keaton who taught Ball “ to take comedy seriously…that her props were her tools. She really had to treat them as treasures” (Finding Lucy). If that is so, then no prop was a greater treasure to Lucille than the Vitametavegamin bottle that appeared in I Love Lucy episode no. 30, Lucy Does a TV Commercial. In that particular episode, the brilliance of Ball’s ability plus the main crux of the series were never more well articulated.

The premise was simple: Lucy learns that Ricky is going to be hosting a television show, and becomes eager to get into the act. Ricky answers her with a resounding “no!” Determined to be involved, she quietly lets go of the girl Ricky hired to do the sponsor’s commercial and takes the job herself, not knowing that the product in question is a high-alcohol health tonic, Vitamegavegamin. After rehearsing the commercial several times, Lucy is soon too drunk to stand up straight but carries on pitching the product, and inadvertently bungles Ricky’s big evening. This episode has consistently been ranked the number one I Love Lucy episode for years, and is declared such in the 2001 50th anniversary special aired on CBS. Author Geoffrey Mark Fidelman speaks for most Lucy fans by saying that this “is the penultimate Lucille Ball performance…[she] is perfect; there is not a wasted gesture or inflection. With each line and movement, she keeps topping herself in a never-ending crescendo of comedy” (The Lucy Book, pp. 46). Ball herself later commented on the episode‘s popularity: “I think that Vitametavegamin bit is the best thing I ever did. And one of the hardest. God, I was nervous! It really gratifies me to know the audience loves it so much, generation after generation” (46). What makes the scene so enduring is Lucy’s honesty: she is not messing up because she is inefficient or stupid, but because she gets drunk rehearsing the commercial too many times. Each time the director asked her to drink, she did. The audience laughs not at her, but with her, as Lucy Ricardo is having just as much fun selling the tonic as the audience is watching her! When she interrupts Ricky during his solo, she is very tanked but still innocent and charming, and Ricky carrying her offstage while she screams out her lines is a brilliant coda. As Ricky would later tell Lucy four years later in the episode Return Home from Europe, “Being married to you isn’t easy, but it sure is a lot of fun”. The sentiment applies to Vitametavegamin as well as almost every episode of I Love Lucy.

The obvious love and affection between Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, not to mention Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, remains one of I Love Lucy’s most appealing aspects. By the mid-1950s, the couple had become so popular they even played variations of Lucy and Ricky on the big screen twice, in MGM’s The Long, Long Trailer and Forever, Darling. On another level, however, the series also set the standard for female friendship for every sitcom to come. The interplay between Lucille Ball and co-star Vivian Vance had a chemistry and ease that is nearly impossible to duplicate. Although the two actresses may not have seen eye to eye at first (“You don’t look like a landlady”, Lucille reportedly quipped. “I want a dumpy, fat woman in a chenille bathrobe and furry slippers with curlers in her hair” (Castellucio & Walker, 152) ), Lucille and Vivian eventually formed a sisterly bond and professional relationship that translated to the small screen beautifully. Writer Madelyn Pugh Davis recalls: “Vivian was a perfect foil for Lucy, they played together beautifully. They had a real friendship, and it made it so much funnier. They would get mad at each other or something, then they’d feel terrible and cry and make up” (Finding Lucy). Vance’s Ethel Mertz was the older, more disenchanted of the two women, and was often happy to join in Lucy’s scheming in search of a vicarious thrill. Over the course of 180 episodes (plus the 13 hour long specials aired between 1958-1960), Lucy and Ethel constantly frustrated their husbands by challenging their domesticity, and would continue to tread new ground in their later series, but it was Lucy acting as instigator who pushed the most cultural buttons.

Lori Landay feels that Lucille Ball and her writers found occasions “for laughter and pleasure by creating comedy out of the constraints of the postwar feminine mystique” (Kanfer, 315). The character of Ricky Ricardo is fully aware of his wife’s burning desires, and of her scatterbrained antics that often prevent her from succeeding, which may be his primary reason for trying to keep her at home: for her safety and others. This could be a clever mask for keeping the illusion of the husband’s power over his wife, but then again, the Lucy character would undoubtedly not be as inclined to act out against Ricky if he let her have her way more often. Even though “Lucy Ricardo was conniving, sneaky, and downright criminal at times, she was still an innocent at heart, usually wanting nothing more than a new dress, an opportunity to perform in her husband’s nightclub act, or a chance to pick a grapefruit from Richard Widmark’s tree” (Bloom & Vlastnik, 170). There is also, as Lori Landay points out, the ironic paradox of art being at odds with life:

"How seriously can we take Ricky’s injunctions that his wife can’t be on television when Ball and Arnaz are a husband and wife on television? On one level, the show does what on another level it says shouldn’t happen. This contradiction illustrates the gap between the social experience of the women who were working in the public sphere and the ideology that attempted to contain them within domesticity. The series itself is a kind of trick that encourages the audience to participate in the attractive image of the stars’ happy marriage, a fiction representative of postwar behaviour and attitudes that obscures asymmetry in the sex-gender system" (Kanfer, 315).

In this sense, I Love Lucy illustrates through humour that times were changing, by acknowledging the domestic ideology and deliberately going against it practically every week (it is also interesting to note that I Love Lucy director William Asher later helmed another groundbreaking sitcom with feminist undertones, Bewitched). Biographer Stefan Kanfer notes that “onscreen [Lucy] protested that her status was nothing to quo about, but that was only so that she could do her Sisyphus routine, making a grand effort - and then falling back to the starting point to begin again next week” (317). However, even if Lucy Ricardo never found a permanent escape from domesticity, during the nine years I Love Lucy was on the air she met more celebrities and experienced more exciting and daring situations than most people do in a lifetime. In the end, it was not her domestic confinement that mattered, it was her willingness to try anything that was the spirit of Lucy Ricardo; indeed, the same could be said for Lucille Ball.

In 1960, the Ball/Arnaz marriage finally ended, as did I Love Lucy. Even though they had started the show to keep their marriage together, the pressures of doing their own show and running their own studio ultimately drove them apart. Two years later, Ball once again was breaking new ground on network television, this time carrying on without Desi. She started another sitcom with co-star Vivian Vance, The Lucy Show, and succeeded Desi Arnaz as President of Desilu Productions, the first female studio head since Mary Pickford. In order to differentiate the new series from the old one, both Ball and Vance‘s characters were renamed and made single. As Ball told Look Magazine, “We have to be [single], with so many of our old shows around we’d look like bigamists” (The Lucy Show: Collector’s Edition, Linear Notes). Ball played the widowed Lucy Carmichael raising her two children, sharing a house with divorced friend Vivian Bagley and her son. Not only were two single women depicted living together in the same home, but Vivian Bagley was television’s first divorced female character. Once again, Ball was pushing the boundaries for women in entertainment.

Gerard Jones feels that Lucy “was wise to keep Vivian Vance around. In some ways, that relationship gets almost deeper in the second show with the absence of Ricky and Fred. You really see a years long female friendship with mutual understanding that you almost never see on TV” (Finding Lucy). Even though Vance left the series in 1965 to spend more time at home with her new husband, she continued to make frequent guest appearances on The Lucy Show and the subsequent Here’s Lucy, so that by the time of their last joint appearance together in 1977‘s Lucy Calls the President, she and Lucy had “completed a circle of friendship that stretched over 25 years and almost 300 television shows” (Finding Lucy).

After Vance’s departure, Lucy never again had a full-time female co-star out of loyalty to Vance, and relied mostly on famous guest stars to fill in the blanks, actors who only appeared on television because of Lucille. Her only remaining constant was character actor Gale Gordon, playing pompous, grouchy Mr. Mooney on The Lucy Show and pompous, grouchy Uncle Harry on Here’s Lucy. Ball, fiercely loyal to those she admired, adored Gordon, and their interplay as hot-headed boss vs. ditzy secretary is one of television’s most memorable friendly feuds. These later episodes often addressed the different views the characters held about money, as Mooney controlled Lucy’s trust fund while Uncle Harry paid her salary. This gave the Lucy character, like Lucy Ricardo, an undeniable dependence on a male superior. Lucy Carmichael (The Lucy Show) and Lucy Carter (Here‘s Lucy), however, had one thing Lucy Ricardo did not: a steady job. Although the character remained as scatterbrained as ever, Lucy’s shows did keep up with the times, and her character was now a single working woman, setting the scene for the upcoming That Girl and Mary Tyler Moore shows. By the end of Here’s Lucy in 1974, “Lucille Ball…existed in two time periods, in black-and-white and color, with Desi and without him - television’s first schizoid super-star” (Kanfer, 268). From 1951 to 1974, Lucille reigned as the First Lady of Television, a record she still holds.

All good things must eventually end, and while Lucy’s reruns could go on forever, Ball herself could not. She tried once more in 1986’s Life With Lucy at the age of 75. As Emily Daniels, wife of Life With Lucy director Marc Daniels recalls: “On the final series she was a grandmother, but she still had to behave the way she had when she was Lucy in the first year, and it just didn’t go…I just knew it was an omen of what was coming…which was the end of her career” (Finding Lucy). Physical comedy is difficult enough for young women, let alone those more than three-score and ten. Robert Osbourne shrewdly addressed the situation: “All she wanted to do was work as an actress, and all the public would ever buy her in was Lucy. And then it came that they wouldn’t buy her as Lucy, and then that was the tragedy of her life” (Finding Lucy). Although the public could no longer buy the present Lucy as “Lucy”, the “Lucy” still seen in reruns was as popular as ever. In 1989, shortly after Lucille‘s death, her legacy grew even stronger, and most amazingly of all, “each year she has grown in significance and popularity”, suffering no decline in reputation (Kanfer, Preface, ix). The apotheosis had begun, sealing Lucille’s unique fate on the impact of entertainment.

Lucille Ball’s career spanned every form of mass entertainment of her time, yet it was not in trusted, reliable mediums that she made her mark; it was in the brand new medium of television that she made her biggest impact, she and Desi Arnaz revolutionizing an entirely new way for audiences to look at commercial entertainment. Countless before and after her have come and gone, yet Lucy remains constant. Stefan Kanfer argues her longevity is due not just to her comedy, but being black-and-white: “There is something incompatible about humor and colour; the palette calls attention to itself, instead of to the jokes” (318). Lucille’s hair may have been flaming red, and was indeed visible to audiences on her later programs, but audiences do not need to see the colour of her hair to see the fiery spark present in Lucille Ball. Lucy Ricardo makes herself accessible to all because “her ability to create possibility where others would only recognize restraint, and her untiring optimism that this time her scheme will succeed, above all, keep [her]…alive and at the centre of our popular culture.” Feminist or not, Lucy speaks to the sense of adventure in all of us, the idea that if we take chances no matter what obstacles may be in our way, we just might have a chance to be in the show.


Works Cited

Bloom, Ken, and Frank Vlastnik. "I Love Lucy." Sitcoms: the 101 Greatest TV Comedies of All Time. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007. Print.

Castelluccio, Frank, and Alvin Walker. The Other Side of Ethel Mertz: the Life Story of Vivian Vance. Manchester, CT: Knowledge, Ideas & Trends, 1998. Print.

Daniels, Marc, dir. "Lucy Does a TV Commercial." I Love Lucy. CBS. 5 May 1952. Television.

Fidelman, Geoffrey Mark. The Lucy Book: a Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television. Los Angeles: Renaissance, 1999. Print.

Finding Lucy. Dir. Pamela Mason Wagner. CBS Paramount, 2001. Videocassette.

The Funny World of Lucy Volumes 1 & 2. Prod. Paul Harris and Sandy Oliveri. Goodtimes Home Video, 1993. DVD.

Kanfer, Stefan. Ball of Fire: the Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Print.

The Lucy Show: Collector's Edition. Dir. Jack Donohue. Perf. Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance, Gale Gordon. Columbia House, 1997. Videocassette.

In Defense of "Bad" Movies: One for the Money

One for the money, two for the show.  Heigl's underrated and deserves another go!

In this recurring feature, I'll be discussing films that received negative critical and audience reaction and explain why I feel they deserve a second chance.  I won't likely be claiming any of these films as true masterpieces or anything, but rather as enjoyable works of entertainment if taken for what they are and not what people want them to be.

I'll start off with a very recent critical and commercial bomb: Lionsgate's One for the Money.  Based on the first entry in Janet Evanovich's wildly popular series about amateur bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, the film seemed an ideal beginning to a new summer franchise for women, to offset the vast number of male-oriented action blockbusters that usually occupy the timeframe.  The plot concerns New Jersey native Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl), recently fired from her job as a lingerie buyer for Macy's in Newark, moving back to Trenton to try and get a grip on her life.  Visiting her sleazy cousin Vinnie's (Patrick Fischler) bail bonds office in the hopes of obtaining a temporary filing job, office manager Connie Rossoli (Ana Reeder) instead persuades her to fill in as a bounty hunter while regular skip chaser Morty Byers (Fischer Stevens) is on medical leave.  Initially planning to take on some simple civil cases, Stephanie is shocked to find that an old flame, Joseph Morelli (Jason O'Mara), is wanted for murder on a $500,000 bond, meaning she'd get $50,000 if she brought him in.  Considering that Joe humped and dumped her back in high school, she decides bringing him in would be a perfect act of revenge in addition to curing her financial woes.  Receiving training from primo bounty hunter Ranger (Daniel Sunjata), and obtaining some useful clues from a friendly hooker named Lula (Sherri Shepherd), Stephanie soon learns there's more to the case than meets the eye, and becomes just as concerned at proving Joe's innocence as she is with nabbing the money.

First published in 1994, One for the Money proved a tremendous success for author Janet Evanovich, a former romance novelist, who has since penned 18 Plum novels (the 19th is due in November this year), 4 Plum novellas, and several other series to boot.  The material has long had the elements Hollywood loves to film: action, romance, comedy, sex, crime and thriller all rolled into one delightful package, yet for some reason they waited 17 years before acting on it.  Though Evanovich sold the film rights to the book before it was even published, it continued to linger in development hell.  A pilot for a proposed TV series was done in 2002, featuring Lynn Collins (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) as Stephanie, but the show wasn't picked up.  One insider claims it was dreadful.  Finally, in 2010, producers Sidney Kimmel and Wendy Finerman, working with a script by Liz Brixius, were able to get the film greenlit at long last.      

Originally slated for a July 2011 release, Lionsgate abruptly delayed the opening to January 2012, hinting that executives feared critical backlash and financial losses on the final product.  Thus the film opened with little fanfare and much derision in the bleak midwinter, barely recouping its $40 million budget and putting a final nail in the coffin for a Stephanie Plum film franchise anytime soon.

Holding a surprising and arguably unfair 2% "rotten" raiting on Rotten Tomatoes, almost nobody had anything nice to say about the film.  The script and direction received universal denounciation, and star Katherine Heigl fared little better.  The announcement of Heigl's casting in 2010 was a shock to most people, as she apparently hadn't made it on to many "Stephanie Plum dream cast" lists.  While several reviewers felt she was the best thing about the film (and that she deserved better material), most felt she was terribly miscast and that her Jersey "accent" was awful.  This translated into audience reaction as well.  Heigl's confident assertion that "I will be your vision of Stephanie Plum" seems to have backfired horribly, and was perhaps spoken in haste by an actress who just felt extremely passionate about her new project.

One of the few people who was pleased with Heigl, and the whole film for that matter, was Janet Evanovich.  Janet sang the film's praises the moment she saw it, and even did several joint interviews with Heigl to promote it.  Calling Heigl "the perfect Stephanie Plum", she declared that the film was an improvement on her novel and that it gave her a whole new perspective on the world she created.  Yet in spite of her endorsement, many fans were unimpressed with the final product, refusing to translate what was onscreen to the visions they had in their head, while non readers for the most part just seemed bored.  What exactly went wrong?  If the author could accept this interpretation of her work, why couldn't everyone else?

For the moviegoing public in general, not just the book readers, there was one obvious drawback that hurt this film even before it began shooting: a little 2010 comedy called The Bounty Hunter.  Starring Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler, the film was not well received and seemed to sour the public on bounty hunter stories, which are more prevalent in fiction nowadays than they were in 1994.  Perhaps had the movie been made 15 years ago when it was newer and fresher, One for the Money may have made more of an impact.  Perhaps the timing was not right for all to appreciate the film on its own merits, given the competition, and hopefully its life on TV and home video will reveal its many charms over time.  But for those who have their minds made up on who these characters are, there's probably no adaptation that could appease them.

To be fair, 17 years is a fair amount of time for long-term readers to nail a definite image of these characters in their heads.  Even if the chosen cast matches the general template of character descriptions given in the book, die-hard readers will be critical of even the smallest difference.  In the book, Stephanie Plum has curly brown hair, fair skin, good fashion sense, a nice figure, and a plucky attitude that disguises some of her insecurities and apprehension.  As Plum, Katherine Heigl has curly brown hair (a very convincing wig), fair skin, GREAT fashion sense, a nice figure, and displays a plucky attitude that disguises some of the characters insecurities and apprehension.  So the question in my mind is, what exactly did she do wrong?  Did she look exactly like the character as pictured in my head?  No.  In fact, she fit the description of the book character better than I had ever pictured her.  Evanovich said that she will be picturing Heigl from now on when writing the character, and I will be picturing Heigl in the part from now on as well.  After viewing her performance, I honestly can't imagine another actress out there I'd rather see do the role. 

Part of the reaction may have less to do with her performance and more to do with Katherine Heigl being one of the least popular actresses in Hollywood at the moment.  I find the backlash against her very surprising and quite unfair.  So she spoke her mind about a few things and some feelings got hurt, big deal!  She's a talented actress who seems like a person you'd enjoy spending time with, and in my eye she imbibes Stephanie with these qualities as well.  True, her movies on the whole have not been stellar choices that ideally display her full talent, and a number of people probably had the perception that this was just another Heigl "rom-com".  While it may have similarities to some of her other roles, if you take her performance for what it is without any outside association (and I've seen very little of her work), she's perfect.  I can't vouch for the accuracy of the accent that so many people criticised, but Janet said she did a good job with it so that's good enough for me.  I think most people also have an exaggerated view of what a "Joisey" accent really is, and I commend Heigl for keeping it minimal and not attempting to overdo anything.

The rest of the cast fairs quite well too, in my opinion.  Jason O'Mara, despite being Irish instead of Italian, infuses Morelli with sexual energy and much testosterone, and he and Heigl work well together, in spite of the press feeling otherwise.  With the exception of Debbie Reynolds, in a delightful cameo as Stephanie's eccentric grandmother, the film has few big names.  A lot of faces you may recognize from television, but no marquee headliners.  Frankly, I found it quite refreshing to see a film that was cast with actors the creative team felt suited the characters, and not stuffed with A-listers just for the sake of luring in crowds to an unsure property.  Some found them bland, but I found them fun and engaging, and most gave me new faces to put to the characters when I read the books from now on.       

Director Julie Ann Robinson has been criticised for not nailing down a definite tone for the film, which does shift between comedy and action and crime quite rapidly.  Many people seem to be locked in to "conventional" scripting techniques, and anything that deviates from the strict 3 act structure is wrong.  Janet's books intertwine all of those tones and so does the film.  While it's true that the mystery portion doesn't quite have the suspense or urgency it needs, it's certainly serviceable, and makes for a decent backdrop for this debut outing. 

Heigl also provides some narrative voiceover, with some of the prose from the novel ported over to help tell the story through Stephanie's eyes.  The voiceover was not a part of the original cut, as confirmed by Heigl, and those lines were obviously contributed by Stacy Sherman and Karen Ray, the two scribes credited before Brixius and therefore responsible for rewrites.  The narration is surprisingly effective most of the time, but gets a bit redundant towards the end.  Still, it's a nice touch that makes it a very personal story.

The cinematography and editing, while not awe inspiring, do what they need to do to tell the story.  It's a rather low key story and it's shot in a low key way, but it looks great for what it needs to be.  While parts of the story may be a tad underwhelming for some audiences, it's nice to see a film that doesn't resort to extremes the way so many Hollywood movies do.  It plants itself firmly in the middle and remains solid because of it.

Is One for the Money groundbreaking cinema?  Hardly.  Is it really as bad as everyone says?  Not at all.  Is it a fair adaptation of a popular novel that retains the spirit of the story while adding a new perspective? Absolutely!  I hope its life on home video and television will show people that there's a lot to be enjoyed from this little outing.  Clocking in at a scant 91 minutes (the credits actually start to role at the 85 minute mark) it's fun, tight and really not much of a time commitment for those who are hesitant about sitting all the way through it.  Some fans may be just as content to rely on their original book images, and if so I say go for it.  But don't spoil it for those who do enjoy alternate interpretations.  Just because it isn't done your way doesn't mean it's necessarily the wrong way.  If the author of the books can set aside her original vision for it and allow this new one to enhance her experience of enjoying these stories, I don't see why we all can't make the effort.  It's a shame the cast won't likely have the opportunity to film the next installment, Two for the Dough, as the characters become more defined as the series progresses and these actors could do a lot with the material.  Perhaps with a more film inclined director at the helm the series could easily have a longer life ahead of it, but Hollywood isn't big on second chances at the moment, especially if it's an expensive gamble, as any sequel to this film would unfortunately be.  I am grateful, at least, that we have one such Plum to enjoy for now.

You may have been told that it's a rotten plum, but I encourage you to take a bite out of it.  It's much tastier than you might think.

           

A Boulevard in Brunswick - Maine State Music Theatre's "Sunset Boulevard".

"Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup!"

So Norma Desmond declares in one of the most famous movie lines ever. The film is Sunset Blvd., Billy Wilder’s biting and unflinching 1950 film about Hollywood’s hitherto unknown dark side.

The story, for those few unfamiliar with it, concerns faded silent screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), who lives in her gothic, secluded mansion with her manservant, Max (Erich von Stroheim). Norma is blissfully unaware that her public has long since forgotten her, and refuses to accept that silent films will never return, still idolizing the glamour of her past. Joe Gillis (William Holden), on the other hand, a young screenwriter who can’t find a job anywhere in town, thinks he sees Hollywood for what it is and holds a very jaundiced view of the business. Chased by finance men in pursuit of his car, Joe just happens to pull into the driveway of Norma’s mansion at 10086 Sunset Boulevard. He meets Norma, who, upon learning that Joe is a writer, hires him to edit her “comeback” script, Salome. Joe knows it’s an exercise in futility, but needing the job he agrees to stay with Norma and work on the script. As the story unfolds, Joe discovers more about Norma than he cares to know, and Norma begins to harbor romantic feelings for him…feelings he cannot fully return, not when he’s working on another new script with Betty Schaeffer, an idealistic script reader at Paramount who dreams of becoming a writer, and who thinks she and Joe Gillis are ideal partners in every sense of the word. Needless to say, the ending will have you reaching for tissues.

It remains one of the all time classic films, consistently landing on most people’s “Top 10/20/30” movies lists. So popular was it that in 1993, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber released a musical version that has played around the world and whose songs have long since entered the Lloyd Webber canon.

The stage adaptation, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, has allowed countless actresses the chance to put their own stamp on Norma Desmond. Over the years, the likes of Patti LuPone, Glenn Close, Betty Buckley, Elaine Paige, Helen Schneider, Linda Balgord, Diahann Carroll, Petula Clark and Rita Moreno have all donned Anthony Powell’s lavish costumes and descended John Napier’s gilded staircase, uttering the famous quote mentioned above and singing Lloyd Webber’s memorable tunes.

Although no large scale production has been mounted since the original closed in 1997, Sunset Boulevard has seen a flurry of regional revivals in recent years. Now, lavish sets make way for more sedate surroundings, and large ensembles are whittled down to the bare essentials. Such downplay for the sake of budgetary and space restrictions are not necessarily a detriment, as different stagings can highlight other aspects of the material even while foregoing others.  Most recently, the Maine State Music Theatre in Brunswick has mounted a production, which I had the pleasure of seeing on Sunday, July 29th, and which is playing until August 4th. 

This is the second production Maine has seen in 2 years, the first being an impressive effort at the Ogunquit Playhouse back in 2010, featuring a regal Stefanie Powers as Norma and Todd Gearhart as Joe Gillis.  This new production, directed and choreographed by Marc Robin and presented by Steven C. Peterson, is admirably squeezed onto the tiny stage of the Pickard Theatre. The sets, which vary from Paramount Studios to Schawb’s Drugstore to the set of Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (a production specific anachronism, as it's usually the historically accurate Sampson & Delilah), are mostly pretty backgrounds that do their job well enough but don’t especially knock your socks off. Norma Desmond’s mansion, however, the focal location of the piece, is another matter. Scenic designer Robert A. Kovach outdid himself in creating a fantastic interior for Desmondland, which is at once reminiscent of John Napier’s design while also standing on its own merits. Norma’s mansion may hold itself up high, but the production as a whole doesn’t quite capture the full emotional scope of the story. Shortcomings aside, it nonetheless manages to offer enough impressive moments to make it a worthwhile evening (or matinee) at the theatre.

In the pivotal role of Norma Desmond we have Denise Whelan, a talented actress who looks stunning in Anthony Powell’s elaborate costumes. Presenting the audience with a strong singing voice and a commanding presence, Whelan confidently navigates her way through Norma’s two big numbers, “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye”. Decent singing aside, she unfortunately fails to capture the true imperial essence Desmond should possess. Hers is a more broadly comical Norma than we’ve seen before, often more reminiscent of Betty Hutton than Gloria Swanson. She cavorts around the stage with little of the slow, controlled grace the character should ideally show. Her comedic instincts are sharp, there’s no doubt about that, and when the dramatic moments count she delivers, but as a former silent screen star that didn’t make it in talkies she’s woefully unbelievable. Her Norma Desmond would have been a sensation in the talkies; a “Brazen Burgundy Bombshell” to rival Hutton. Had Whelan been directed with a bit more restraint in regards to the comedy, she would’ve come across more appropriate. As it is, while it’s certainly an enjoyable and original performance, it’s not truly Norma we’re seeing until the final scene.

Gregg Goodbrod, in the difficult role of Joe Gillis, acquits himself nicely. Energy wise he’s full tilt right from the get go, and his performance doesn’t waver far on the emotional scale much. However, that consistency serves him well, and he presents a Joe Gillis who is at once highly cynical yet not without compassion. There’s still some human being in there that Hollywood has yet to squeeze out. For some reason, a few of his early lines were re-arranged, and did not quite fit in their new locations, but he handled the changes well. Goodbrod is in fine voice and belts out the title song with gusto at the start of Act II. His high, sharp tenor is a nice contrast to the rich bass provided by David Girolmo’s Max. Girolmo also has the imposing heir a Max should have, and infuses much emotional warmth in his affection for Norma.

Betty Schaeffer, a sadly underwritten character who lost a lot of her edge in the transition from screen to stage, has been lucky to have some solid actresses play her over the years and provide some badly needed energy behind her characterization. Lauren Blackman does a terrific job, and is totally believable at showing naiveté with a savvy lust for learning all she can about the business. Vocally, she is so reminiscent of the original Los Angeles Betty, Judy Kuhn, that on more than one occasion I closed my eyes and swore I was listening to the American cast album. Betty’s love duet with Joe, “Too Much in Love to Care”, is in good hands with Blackman and Goodbrod.

The production features a modest ensemble of 11 actors, considerably smaller than the 29 members of the original company. I do not mean this to sound critical, as this is obviously not the West End we’re talking about here. On the contrary, considering the small size of the company, it’s even more impressive how effective they are. There is considerably more cast doubling among the ensemble parts than usual, but everyone involved is obviously having a blast and putting their best foot forward. Listening to the last group number of Act I, “This Time Next Year”, I was amazed I was listening to only 9 people singing, so powerful were their combined voices. It was also a hoot to see women participating in the usually all-male number “The Lady’s Paying”, where Norma treats Joe to a whole new wardrobe. It was even funnier to have men participating in the usually all-female number “Eternal Youth is Worth a Little Suffering”, where a phalanx of beauty experts give Norma a makeover before her supposed return to the screen. It’s a comedic number anyway, and watching the boys camp it up made it a downright laugh riot, with more delightfully gay overtones than Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

The biggest drawback in the company’s size does not affect the latter half of the piece, only the beginning. The opening number, “Let’s Have Lunch”, a cynical ensemble piece showcasing the shallow nature of Hollywood, is omitted entirely. Those who know the score by heart will no doubt feel a slight jolt at the jarring cuts. The cue underscoring is still present, and just when you expect to hear singing the dialogue kicks in. The next group song, “Every Movie’s a Circus”, is also almost entirely cut, with only a few of the solo verses remaining. The nine piece orchestra does a very admirable job of handling Lloyd Webber’s music, and manages to sound larger than they actually are thanks to the fine acoustics of the Pickard Theatre.

Unlike other regional attempts, this Sunset Boulevard does not fade entirely into the sunset once the curtain has fallen. Although the scope of the piece really demands a large stage with lavish production values, this small scale effort goes for the stars and manages to snatch a few. It’s shows like this that redeem the value of summer stock and regional theatre, and allow audiences to discover shows that are no longer the big ticket New York items they once were. It was wonderful to see a few audience members who clearly had no knowledge of the story being exposed to it for the first time. I distinctly heard one woman ask if the show was set in New York, and another pondered if the movie had been a musical as well (thankfully, both had friends with them to correct their misperceptions). Norma may have been forgotten, but Sunset Boulevard won’t be, if its newfound regional life is any indication.

Desmond herself may very well say: “The show is big. It’s the venue that got small!”
That’s very true, but not necessarily a bad thing at all.

Sunset Boulevard is presented by Steven C. Petersen for the Maine State Music Theatre, with direction and choreography by Marc Robin.  Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Book & Lyrics by Don Black & Christopher Hampton.  Based on the Billy Wilder film.  Costumes based on the designs of Anthony Powell.  Starring Denise Whelan, Gregg Goodbrod, Lauren Blackman, Curt Dale Clark, David Girolmo, Bill Nabel.  Featuring Brian Michael Hoffman, Theo Lencicki, Charis Leos, Chuck Ragsdale, Courtney Romano.  Scenic Design Robert Kovach.  Costume Design Kurt Alger.  Sound Design Colin Whitley. Lighting Design Nick Cyr. Production Staff Management Mark Johnson. Musical Direction by Edward Reichert. Sponsored by Mid Coast Hospital, Norton Insurance - Financial, The Times Record. Season Sponsors The Highlands & Highland Green.  Sunset Boulevard is presented through special arrangement with R & H Theatricals and The Really Useful Group, Ltd. www.mhtheatricals.com.  Sunset Boulevard logo TM & Copyright 1992 The Really Useful Group Limited.

Evita - How Brecht Met Broadway

Whether we like it or not, we are once again facing a presidential election this fall. As a result, political celebrities are once again at the forefront of the American consciousness, wooing the masses with varying ideologies, winning some over while alienating others completely. So it is little wonder that works of art that deal with such a subject are once again extremely relevant. I am talking, of course, about Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's hit musical Evita.

What with a Broadway revival currently playing at full force (producing a complete cast album to boot) and the recent 15th Anniversary Edition Blu-Ray of the 1997 film adaptation, Evita is very big news once again...not an accomplishment every 36 year old musical can achieve.

When Hal Prince's production debuted in London in 1978, it was met with critical derision but audiences loved it. They had never seen a musical of this kind before; one that was told in episodic segments and which made no attempt to stage each sequence naturally. At all times, one was keenly aware he or she was viewing a show. Not everyone may realize this, but the innovative staging that Prince brought to the production owes a debt of gratitude to German playwright Bertholt Brecht (1898-1956), without whom Evita may have turned out quite differently.

Bertolt Brecht’s contribution to theatre provided innovations that reformed a revolutionary style of performance. Although he was not the first to utilize such ideas, he was the first to synchronize them into such an effective and collective whole. His use of the verfremdungseffekt to create a greater distance between the performance and the audience was particularly important to him, “a distance which, ideally, would allow [the audience] to objectively contemplate and consider the events of the play and the nature of the characters".  Although Webber and Rice’s intention may not have been completely in line with his purpose, Evita is arguably a type of neo-Brechtian Epic Opera.

Brecht’s use of the verfremdungseffekt, often translated as the ‘alienation effect’, is frequently misunderstood. Author Michael Patterson argues that a better translation is ‘estrangement’ because “’alienation’ too often suggests a deliberate intention to thwart the enjoyment of the audience” (The Revolution in German Theatre: 1900-1933, 159). In Brecht’s own words: “[alienating] an incident or character means simply to remove from the incident or character all that is taken for granted…to generate surprise and curiosity about them” (160). If a character or incident has no spontaneity, therefore, the audience has no need to question what has just happened. Predictability must be downplayed in order to achieve a proper emotional and questioning reaction.

While the actions of the characters must raise questions, however, the stagings of Brecht’s works were meant to be seen for exactly what they were: plays, not an illusion of real life.  He disagreed with the concept of traditional “Aristotelian drama” that had the audience “identify with the characters and accept their fate rather than calling it into question…” (Gerould, 445). To counter the traditional dramatic view, Brecht tended to set his works in the past rather than present to help emphasize that the audience was seeing a deliberate re-creation of something that has already occurred, not an illusion of something happening in the present. Audience members could then ponder how such actions were relevant to their current social and political environment. Of particular note, Brecht utilized this approach in Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children), written in 1939 but set during the 30 years war of 1618-48. As he stated, “The performance…possesses the quality of repetition. The incident has happened, now it is being repeated” (Patterson, 171). This element of obvious re-creation was further emphasized by making no attempt to completely disguise the transitions between scenes: “Don’t show him too much / But show him something! And let him be aware / That you are not magicians, but / Workers, my friends” (163-4).

 In keeping with the non-realistic staging, Brecht also stressed the importance of his actors being “demonstrators” who were re-enacting these events rather than actually experiencing them. He expressed that an actor “must not allow himself to be completely transformed into the person he demonstrates” (171). Having certain characters break the fourth wall and address the audience directly, as well as “demonstrate” in a stylized manner by incorporating his idea of the Gestus, further elaborated on the story-telling aspect of his Epic Theatre.

In addition to straight plays, Brecht spoke of the possibility of music to enhance the work. Considering opera relies on underscoring and singing, such factors immediately denounce realism and proclaim theatricality. Therefore, it is natural that Brecht saw possibility to achieving his Epic Theatre goals through the operatic medium. He felt it should differ from the more traditional dramatic opera in that “Words, music and setting must become more independent from one another” rather than each working together equally (Gerould, 450). The music must tell the story by putting forth the text rather than serving it, and should serve more as an attitude compliment than psychological background. As with his view of theatre in general, Brecht saw opera as a chance to move beyond an instrument of mere pleasure “into an object of instruction… [converting] certain institutions from places of entertainment into organs of mass communication” (Gerould, 453). Opera could then have the same kind of effect as Epic Theatre, perhaps an even stronger one. Little could Brecht have imagined that, 20 years after his death, the worlds of Epic Theatre, opera and pop-music would make an unlikely collision thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

To be fair, all musicals are Brechtian to an extent: the act of bursting into song is very theatrical and does not allude to realism at all. However, many musicals sweep audiences away into fantasy, and the characters are often comedic, likeable and relatable, and prompt only applause and laughter rather than questions. Such characters of traditional musical comedy seldom have the complexity and perplexity of a Biblical figure or a seductive political icon. Two of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s earliest works each tell the story of two such legendary figures: Jesus Christ and Eva Perón. While both shows are similar in that they are episodic and entirely sung-through, Evita is arguably more neo-Brechtian than Jesus Christ Superstar.

Even if Superstar does make the audience question Jesus Christ and the actions of Judas, Jesus Christ is a far more universally known figure than Perón, and many people feel no need or desire to question him at all. Even though there are exceptions, to many he is simply the Messiah; a figure to be worshipped rather than doubted. Eva Perón is another matter. When considering the similarities between Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, and their home city of London, Webber and Rice saw “in the story of a charismatic populist who clawed her way to power by manipulating the trade unions…the presence of a cautionary tale” (Michael Walsh, 97). The fact that they were dealing with a powerful and somewhat frightening protagonist was emphasized when Rice told Webber, “I know you think she’s a bitch, but make her wonderful” (97). It was not their intention to create a historical docudrama, but rather a satirical reassessment of her life. Brecht’s shadow was already looming over the production even before the score was composed, as Webber and Rice’s decision to take thsi approach suggested early on that this project would make audiences face the dangers of fascism.

Initially conceived and marketed as a double “concept” album in 1976 (as Jesus Christ Superstar had been), Evita displayed a number of Brechtian elements before even reaching the stage. The plot was told entirely through song, leaving no doubt that this was indeed a story being retold in a new manner. In fact, seeing how the show opens at Eva Perón’s funeral, audiences will know the ending of the piece from the start. The narrator, Che, who serves as the ironic and bitter commentator throughout the piece, sings directly to the audience most of the time and only seldom addresses other characters. In his opening number “Oh, What a Circus”, Che raises the question as to whom exactly this “Santa Evita” was, and why her death has caused so many to mourn. From its beginning, Evita makes the audience ask questions; even though they know Eva’s ultimate fate, they do not yet know how she got to where she was, and anticipate the arrival of the “demonstrators” to retell her life story through song. 

When selected to stage the piece for the West End and Broadway, Harold Prince made decisions that emphasized many of the Brechtian elements the concept album displayed. A harsh, nearly constant lighting design illuminated the practically bare stage, with only essential props appearing when necessary. There was no scenery, which Brecht would have approved of because “such fairy-tale indifference to historical detail imposes a non-realistic style on the design” (Patterson, 164). Costumes were approached with a degree of realism, as in Brecht’s own works, and most of Eva Perón’s costumes were based on historical photographs. 

Prince initially envisioned having “Evita played by three different actresses, each to reveal different facets of her nature” (Walsh, 100), but Webber and Rice disliked the idea. Since each song on the album could be interpreted as an individual scene, Prince decided an episodic stage format would be appropriate. Author Michael Walsh notes that “Prince was not a cerebral, what-is-my-motivation-for-this director; instead, he was interested in making stunning stage pictures” (100). In that regard, Prince succeeded. The songs in Evita not only encompass a broad range of musical styles, including rock, Latin, classical and jazz (helping to set attitude rather than character psychology, as with Brecht’s Epic Opera), they are often very independent of each other in terms of the scenes they represent, despite sharing several recurring musical passages. For the most part, there are significant narrative gaps between each number. Rather than disguise this, Prince embraced it.

In keeping with Brecht’s template, each number was performed in a very stylized and non-literal manner, a number of them very memorable and original. In “Buenos Aires”, a jubilant young Eva Duarte kicks up her heels alongside the eligible men about town to celebrate her arrival in the Big Apple, singing directly to the audience about her dreams and ambitions. In the following number, “Goodnight & Thank You”, Prince symbolizes Eva’s climbing of the social ladder by placing her in the middle of a large revolving door; each time the door rotates, Eva kicks out this week’s suitor and in walks the new one. With each rotation, Eva gains another piece of jewelry or trinket; a succinct and effective metaphor for her rising to the top thanks to seducing successful men. A similar approach was taken in the proceeding number, “The Art of the Possible”, showing Juan Perón’s rise through the military ranks in a sinister game of musical chairs. Perón is the last one left. “Buenos Aires” and “The Art of the Possible” are also two examples of scenes that involved projections, a technique that had been utilized by Brecht. In the former scene, archive footage of the real Buenos Aires was presented, while archive footage of the Argentine military was shown in the latter. Photographs of the real Juan and Eva were also displayed in the Act I finale, further emphasizing that the actors seen on stage were not intended to be taken as the real Juan and Eva.

In a true Brechtian nod, the show’s finale consisted of a montage of previous songs before the dead Eva addresses the crowd with her “Lament”. Eva’s lament originally included a second verse on the album that helped explain her inner motivations, a verse that was rewritten and given to Che in London and eliminated completely in New York. While this made her character more ambiguous, it also heightened the Brecht connection, as that second verse delved deeper into her psyche than Brecht cared for his actors to do. After all, the actors should only demonstrate their characters, not become them.

Prince also added touches of visual comedy to accompany Rice’s often biting and sardonic lyrics. Utilizing choreography by Larry Fuller, the aristocracy, a major factor standing in the way of Eva’s rise to power, are depicted as snobbish high-society folk who walk together in a straight line in various haughty poses: some with their hands held high bearing cigarette-holders, others wrinkling their noses in disdain. Critic Frank Rich even made note of this “phalanx of chorus people who seem to have stepped out of the ‘Ascot Gavotte’ number of My Fair Lady” (Walsh, 106). The army officers who were against Colonel Perón’s flaunting of his mistress moved stiffly back and forth in exaggerated marches. No matter how much the main characters were reduced to satirical caricatures, it was those who disagreed with them who were presented in the most cartoonish fashion.

Not all Brechtian elements that appeared on the concept album made it to the stage. The character of Che as presented on the album was described by Michael Walsh as “an amorphous, Brechtian Everyman” (100), but Prince chose to make him identifiable as the revolutionary Che Guevara, in order to have the dissenting voice come from an actual historical figure in order to broaden the perspective. A minor comedic subplot that Che had on the album about developing an insecticide, in keeping with Brecht’s usage of comedy to break up the main action, was deemed irrelevant and scrapped, despite prompting clever (albeit corny) lyrics such as: “If you’ve got six legs I ain’t doin’ you no favours!”. In addition to the subplot, Prince dispended with the rock number “The Lady’s Got Potential”, in which Che informs the audience about both Eva and Juan’s increasing fame shortly before their first meeting. Despite the Brechtian approach of ignoring the fourth wall and giving information directly to the audience, the lyrics did include a minor endorsement for the capitalist system that Brecht argued so fervently against in Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder. By removing this number and lyrical reference, Prince unwittingly strengthened the show’s Brechtian ties. The number was replaced onstage by the aforementioned “The Art of the Possible”.

The initial reviews Evita received upon opening in London were mixed, and not only confirmed its Brechtian roots but also led to modifications that strengthened them even more. Reviewing the London production in anticipation of its forthcoming Broadway opening, Frank Rich found it “a cold, uninvolving show that does little to expand the traditional musical comedy format or our understanding of a bizarre historical figure" (Walsh, 105-6).  Rich had obviously experienced a type of verfremdungseffekt; the show made him ask questions and ponder her motivations. Some critics wondered if the show was deliberately glamourizing fascism instead of warning against it due to what was considered a sympathetic, pro-Evita stance.

In answer to this, undoubtedly in hoping not to receive the same response in New York, Rice modified a few of the lyrics for the Broadway production to make Eva even less sympathetic. In one of her earliest scenes, trying to persuade tango singer Augustin Magaldi to take her away from her dreary home town to glamorous Buenos Aires, her bemoaning “Who could ever be fond of the back of beyond?” became the snarkier “Who could ever get kicks in the back of the sticks?”. Later in the same song, her declaration of “I only want variety of society” became the more ambitious and cunning “I only want variety, notoriety”. Towards the end of Act I, when Che questions Eva about her acting career and affair with Colonel Perón, Eva’s response, “Acting is limiting, the line’s not mine. That’s no help to the Argentine” became the more self-involved “Is that the extent of your interest in me? It shows how futile acting must be”. Eva’s more self-involved personality, coupled with actress Patti LuPone’s more biting portrayal compared to the one given by her spunky London predecessor, Elaine Paige, helped make her more of a fascinating enigma and less relatable.  Indeed, the American cast as a whole gave more individual, stylized performances than their London counterparts, thus elevating the obvious theatricality of the piece to an even more Brechtian degree.

The reviews the Broadway production received were little different than those in London. John Simon also accused the show of glorifying fascism, finding it an “artfully produced monument to human indecency”, among other things:

It is perfectly useless to say that Evita is not held up for approbation; a protagonist who displays cunning, energy, wit and, above all, phenomenal success will always seduce the unthinking masses, whether they be shirtless Argentines or bedizened Broadwayites…I am not arguing of course, that anyone seeing Evita will rush out and do likewise, but I am saying that a show like this ends up glorifying a base opportunist and Fascist…how would [oppressed minorities] feel about a musical whose protagonist was Stalin, Hitler, or that other Eva, Braun – even assuming that the show would include a choric Mandelstam or fictionalized Einstein to berate that protagonist? (Walsh, 107-8)

By suggesting that audiences would not be inspired by Eva to follow in her footsteps, he is inadvertently suggesting an alternative Brechtian response: to fear glamorous, charismatic people with strong, personal agendas gaining power and manipulating the masses. If indeed audiences found themselves temporarily mesmerized by Eva’s power-hungry charm, only to see the negative results it produced, they would question not only Evita-like figures but also themselves, and could learn to desensitize themselves to her contemporaries in order to prevent such a government from happening again. The show’s original choreographer Larry Fuller, who mounted a touring production of Prince’s original staging in 1999, noted that "History repeats itself. Audiences will relate to the message that if you glamorize and package something in an attractive way - even fascism - you can sell it to the general public…people today have become distrustful of political figures, so I think the show now has a greater resonance” (Spindle, The Charms of “Evita”). In an age where government is indeed under close scrutiny from the public, people may not need an Evita to make them ask questions, but it does stand as a potent reminder of the past.

However Brechtian the show may be in its written form, it was Hal Prince’s staging that truly emphasized the connection. Michael Grandage’s London revival of 2006 (which transferred to New York in 2012), the first non-Prince staging to be professionally performed, de-emphasized many of Prince’s approaches. The episodic structure was made less obvious through more fluid, but nonetheless theatrical, transitions. The inclusion of “You Must Love Me”, written by Webber and Rice for the film as Eva’s admission of her impending death, strengthened her character realistically and made her more sympathetic. In addition, Eva’s second verse of the “Lament” was restored for the first time since the concept album, thereby creating a more developed character and less of an enigma. Appropriate enough for one striving for artistic realism, but not for Brecht. One notable change Grandage made that was more Brechtian than in Prince’s production was reconverting Che back into the amorphous Everyman he had been on the album (sans insecticide plot).

Although Bertolt Brecht may not have gotten the desired uprising out of his audiences, his works nonetheless prove that Epic Theatre is a perfect format for presenting major social and political concerns to audiences. As Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder attempted to do with capitalism, Evita attempts to show the effects of fascist regimes and bitter personal agendas.

Historical accuracy is irrelevant. What does matter is the agenda driving the show and its intended effect on the audience. Although Webber and Rice surely did not intend audiences to race to the aid of other nations to overthrow such regimes, Evita nonetheless could make them fear such a regime ever taking over their own country. As history has proven, fear can provoke powerful reactions from those oppressed. If Brecht’s audience did not fear capitalism enough to take a powerful enough stand against it, Evita’s audience, and especially critics, proved themselves to fear fascism enough to never want to see it happen to them. If Evita helps prove anything to a theatrical audience, it’s that although such a narrow-minded political focus can bring you everlasting infamy, it nonetheless can provide devastating consequences to certain sects of populations and to their respective nations. It is here that Brecht’s idea succeeds, for if the problems of past and present are brought into the light for questioning, then perhaps people will learn to prevent them from affecting the future.