OUT IN THE ARTS

by D. L. Groover

What a Dump!

The show had been gestating in musical-theater limbo for eight years-pummeled, shaped, reworked-but when the eagerly awaited musical adaptation of the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford shocker What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? finally received its Houston world premiere, the audience was shocked all right.

For eight years producers Michael Rose and Theater Under The Stars, writer Henry Farrell, director David Taylor, and the musical duo of Lee Pockriss (music) and Hal Hackady (lyrics) fiddled with this adaptation. It looked and sounded as if they had hardly tried. What were they doing all this time?

Baby Jane needed a complete overhaul. Flavorless, it was neither outrageously campy, which was a blessing, nor did it compel with any psychological depth as a creepy look at the ravages of stardom or the shattering effects of being a has-been in an industry that thrives upon youth. Undemanding and unwilling to offend, the show was much too nice and eager to please.

In the movie, Jane is a violent, dangerous psychotic, overwhelmed and ruled by her past. Here, she was tranquilized and more sympathetic than was good for the show. She seesawed unnaturally between cute and cuddly and whacked-out harridan. We were supposed to care about her. Never, though, were we repulsed. Millicent Martin had crazy Jane down pat, and her full-tilt portrayal was mesmerizing and largely responsible for whatever success the show achieved.

Blanche, however, was a problem. Relegated to her upstairs bedroom, she faded into the woodwork and never commanded the stage because she was always too far away from it. The movie had powerhouse Crawford to get our attention. Leslie Denniston, lovely of voice, lacked the star wattage to make this character anything but secondary. This was Jane's show from the get-go, never a duel between equals.

This imbalance might have worked had the music and lyrics been anything but serviceable. Uncanny in their blandness, the songs were generic Broadway show tunes, generating no heat whatsoever, except for Jane's "Talent," a bitter look at how little it takes to become famous. The uninspired '30s flashback numbers and the abysmally leaden choreography by Dan Siretta were all wrong. Nothing sounded like the period; nothing looked like it, either. Blanche never would have become a movie star performing these wretched routines. Haven't the creators ever seen Top Hat, or Rosalie, or Gold Diggers of 1933?

Baby Jane comes from good genes-a Grand Guignol celluloid freak show. Except for Martin's radiant portrayal, however, the musical didn't capture the movie's horror and rancid dark humor, nor evidence a flicker of Hollywood's fabled past. It didn't do much at all, but leave us baffled, sadly muttering, Whatever happened to Baby Jane?

Handel with Care

When the princess of Scotland dreamed in David Alden's Houston Grand Opera production of Ariodante, G.F. Handel's high baroque opera masterpiece, she dreamed all-out Euro trash. The dancers fluttered their handkerchiefs ominously, spat out half-eaten apples that had rolled across the stage, and proceeded to dunk the dreaming princess's alter ego naked into a glass-walled tank of water. Handel survived this neo-1980s once-hip staging with all his musical genius intact, thanks in large part to the effervescent conducting from Christopher Hogwood, founder of the revered Academy of Ancient Music, and the sublime singing and acting talents of the cast.

If HGO's Year of the Diva campaign were a beauty contest, glorious mezzo Susan Graham, assaying the fiendishly florid title role for the first time in her meteoric career, would be the one to beat. Her rapturous voice effortlessly wrapped itself around Handel's difficult ornamentations and spun out creamy adagio passages, even when executing Alden's misguided directions. Graham has appropriated the mantle from last generation's Marilyn Horne and wrapped herself quite cozily in it, deservedly so. She was superb, as were Alexandra Coku (the dreaming princess), Oren Gradus (a Lear-like papa), and Christine Brandes (a vocal high-flying Dalinda).

Handel would have loved it, had he kept his eyes closed.

Come Out, Come Out

If the rest of the cast, and the play itself, had the pizzazz and stage command that actors Ed Wittke and Vaughn Belcher brought to their roles, then maybe Theatre New West's production of John Michael Caffey's Pygmalion-goes-gay Coming Out Party would have had a chance. As it stood, director Joe Watts lost 80 percent of his original cast during rehearsals, which threw the production an insurmountable curve. Even by the opening, the ultra-light touch that this wispy gay romp demands was beyond their reach. Sometimes, even the best of intentions turns Billie Burke into Ernest Borgnine.