Curious and Curiouser
Obscure Musicals on Netflix: Alice at the Palace
Meryl Streep should do more musicals. There, I wrote it. How else to explain Alice at the Palace? I honestly don't know why I put this DVD as high as I did on my Netflix list, but if she did more stuff like this and less like Mother Courage, where she plays a tyrannical dictator who abuses her three disadvantaged children (well, one of them is a deaf-mute, one of them is named Swiss Cheese, and one of them is Fred Weller...so, yeah, talk about disadvantaged!), maybe the world would be a better place.
There's no better time to rent this hidden, albeit incomprehensible, 1982 filmed-for-television gem than now. After all, Streep is currently selling out crowds at Central Park as Mother Courage, and this is a Joseph Papp Public Theatre Pro-duction. Meaning the actors in it probably made a huger deal out of the fact that they were doing this one show than any Broadway work they'd ever done. It's the same deal with Lincoln Center, if you read the program bios close enough. To actors, this is an even bigger deal than actually getting in the Union! Oddly enough, no, I have not seen Mother Courage. I don't know why I find Mother Courage uneventful, and yet, I keep working it into the same conversations I always do...it was the same deal with Lestat and the movie Undercover Brother, actually.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I just like saying "Noseworthy."
But the real reason Alice at the Palace probably exists is because it is "that" show. It's the weird, avant-garde rock-influence artsy, experimental "Music Hall" that none of these leotard-clad actors has ever mentioned, nor will ever mention, in their current bios. Which is a shame, because, unlike Bonfire of the Vanities (et tu, Tom Hanks?) or Virtuosity (eh, Denzel?), I think kids should check this out if they really want to know why there probably is nothing Meryl Streep isn't capable of as an actor. Anyone who's watched Postcards from the Edge or even the first five minutes of Death Becomes Her knows Meryl can sing. She actually has a very sweet, true, lilting soprano voice that goes in between hard-core riffing and a killer Joan Baez impression - while strumming a flamingo guitar, no less.
Well, it's on DVD, and it is one strange...bird. The idea behind the show is a "Music Hall" based on Alice in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass. The music itself was written by Elizabeth Swados, who is frequently mentioned alongside pretty much every major late-seventies rock musical composer (like the Hair guys) for her own Public Theatre rock musical Runaways, about teenage runaways. This DVD speaks to pretty much everything f'ed-up and exciting that was going on in Off-Broadway musical theatre at that time. You want retro pastiche? There's a square dance number, a Charleston, a calypso, a barbershop quartet, and a waltz (just in case all you A Little Night Music fans were still holding out for the waltz to come back in style at some point during the mid-to-late seventies). The costumes are all variations on striped or bland-hued leotards, turtlenecks, and legwarmers, except for a few odd ball gowns and tiaras. Toy instruments are utilized with the music, and the movement is all experimental, Viewpoints-type choreography (read: Do whatever the fuck you want right now) where one moment everyone is marching around in a circle chanting gibberish all in unison, when the next minute they're tumbling all over each other and doing the robot for no apparent reason. This is a show that has painted backdrops with both pictures of British music halls and big squares on them, and includes lyrics like, "Bananas, hot buttered toast, cherries and pineapples" and "Goodbye feet, I wonder who put on the stocking you choose, I wonder who ever put up with you..." so any attempt to even try to explain it would seem like a waste of valuable bandwidth.
Streep, of course, is Alice, a wide-eyed seven-year-old girl played by a fully-grown woman, and she wears Olive Ostrovsky-like pink corduroy overalls with too-short legs to cover up the fact that she is very obviously pregnant. I can't speak for Meryl or any of the Streep kids if this show had a very definite influence. There is one scene with lots of smoke where the ten actors in the ensemble huddle on top of each other to make a caterpillar, who gives Alice soup in a mushroom, and she sings, "Beautiful soup, so rich and green, waiting in a hot tureen. Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful soup." But I can speak for the fact that this musical was probably, um, influenced by mushrooms of a very different sort.
Then, what happens next is anyone's guess. Like Story Theatre, Godspell, Pippin, and the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar, Alice continues that strange tradition of "The actors are really actors acting out the story with as much exaggeration as possible!" that is a watermark of so many late-seventies classic-story-based retro-pastiche skit musicals. It might as well star a very young Martin Short and be called Stepbrother de Jesus, for that matter, only this is more...insane. Nobody lugs around a suitcase at the beginning, but someone does play a baby who bangs on pots and pans. And, with the small cast, there's at least some future-star-finding to be found, of the "Spot Data in Sunday in the Park with George!" variety. Mark-Linn-Mr.-Larry-Appleton-Baker from "Perfect Strangers" plays both the March Hare and the Mock Turtle, and, for some reason, he uses a thick Jewish accent as the Turtle. Michael Jeter is the Dormouse, and he even does a hilariously accurate Bob Dylan impression. And Debbie Allen is the Queen of Hearts, but her role amounts to little else than yelling "Off with their heads!" The scenes never really go anywhere. They're more like skits with pop culture references aplenty. When some Terrence Mann-looking fellow named Richard Cox sings, Frank Sinatra-style, about the turtles under the sea, he apparently has groupies, too!
And the songs? Besides the retro pastiche, there's nothing here that screams "traditional musical theatre." It's basically throwing things into a blender and seeing what sticks. There's almost no rhyme in the lyrics. Lots of cacophonous "sound bombs" that just involve the actors yelling off-key, banging random things, and doing statues while making weird sounds with whatever they can think of. It's like a free-association musical. There's almost no dialogue, and the camera movements jerk from scene to setting, making this very unlike what you'd normally see in a televised musical. Once Upon a Mattress this ain't.
So, rent Alice at the Palace if you're into seeing young, experimental New York City theatre actors at the end of an era doing what they did well. Just be sure to check what you're tripping on before second-guessing what the heck is going on in this one.
New York Times Review of the Original Off-Broadway Production
Buy Alice at the Palace!
Meryl Streep should do more musicals. There, I wrote it. How else to explain Alice at the Palace? I honestly don't know why I put this DVD as high as I did on my Netflix list, but if she did more stuff like this and less like Mother Courage, where she plays a tyrannical dictator who abuses her three disadvantaged children (well, one of them is a deaf-mute, one of them is named Swiss Cheese, and one of them is Fred Weller...so, yeah, talk about disadvantaged!), maybe the world would be a better place.
There's no better time to rent this hidden, albeit incomprehensible, 1982 filmed-for-television gem than now. After all, Streep is currently selling out crowds at Central Park as Mother Courage, and this is a Joseph Papp Public Theatre Pro-duction. Meaning the actors in it probably made a huger deal out of the fact that they were doing this one show than any Broadway work they'd ever done. It's the same deal with Lincoln Center, if you read the program bios close enough. To actors, this is an even bigger deal than actually getting in the Union! Oddly enough, no, I have not seen Mother Courage. I don't know why I find Mother Courage uneventful, and yet, I keep working it into the same conversations I always do...it was the same deal with Lestat and the movie Undercover Brother, actually.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I just like saying "Noseworthy."
But the real reason Alice at the Palace probably exists is because it is "that" show. It's the weird, avant-garde rock-influence artsy, experimental "Music Hall" that none of these leotard-clad actors has ever mentioned, nor will ever mention, in their current bios. Which is a shame, because, unlike Bonfire of the Vanities (et tu, Tom Hanks?) or Virtuosity (eh, Denzel?), I think kids should check this out if they really want to know why there probably is nothing Meryl Streep isn't capable of as an actor. Anyone who's watched Postcards from the Edge or even the first five minutes of Death Becomes Her knows Meryl can sing. She actually has a very sweet, true, lilting soprano voice that goes in between hard-core riffing and a killer Joan Baez impression - while strumming a flamingo guitar, no less.
Well, it's on DVD, and it is one strange...bird. The idea behind the show is a "Music Hall" based on Alice in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass. The music itself was written by Elizabeth Swados, who is frequently mentioned alongside pretty much every major late-seventies rock musical composer (like the Hair guys) for her own Public Theatre rock musical Runaways, about teenage runaways. This DVD speaks to pretty much everything f'ed-up and exciting that was going on in Off-Broadway musical theatre at that time. You want retro pastiche? There's a square dance number, a Charleston, a calypso, a barbershop quartet, and a waltz (just in case all you A Little Night Music fans were still holding out for the waltz to come back in style at some point during the mid-to-late seventies). The costumes are all variations on striped or bland-hued leotards, turtlenecks, and legwarmers, except for a few odd ball gowns and tiaras. Toy instruments are utilized with the music, and the movement is all experimental, Viewpoints-type choreography (read: Do whatever the fuck you want right now) where one moment everyone is marching around in a circle chanting gibberish all in unison, when the next minute they're tumbling all over each other and doing the robot for no apparent reason. This is a show that has painted backdrops with both pictures of British music halls and big squares on them, and includes lyrics like, "Bananas, hot buttered toast, cherries and pineapples" and "Goodbye feet, I wonder who put on the stocking you choose, I wonder who ever put up with you..." so any attempt to even try to explain it would seem like a waste of valuable bandwidth.
Streep, of course, is Alice, a wide-eyed seven-year-old girl played by a fully-grown woman, and she wears Olive Ostrovsky-like pink corduroy overalls with too-short legs to cover up the fact that she is very obviously pregnant. I can't speak for Meryl or any of the Streep kids if this show had a very definite influence. There is one scene with lots of smoke where the ten actors in the ensemble huddle on top of each other to make a caterpillar, who gives Alice soup in a mushroom, and she sings, "Beautiful soup, so rich and green, waiting in a hot tureen. Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful soup." But I can speak for the fact that this musical was probably, um, influenced by mushrooms of a very different sort.
Then, what happens next is anyone's guess. Like Story Theatre, Godspell, Pippin, and the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar, Alice continues that strange tradition of "The actors are really actors acting out the story with as much exaggeration as possible!" that is a watermark of so many late-seventies classic-story-based retro-pastiche skit musicals. It might as well star a very young Martin Short and be called Stepbrother de Jesus, for that matter, only this is more...insane. Nobody lugs around a suitcase at the beginning, but someone does play a baby who bangs on pots and pans. And, with the small cast, there's at least some future-star-finding to be found, of the "Spot Data in Sunday in the Park with George!" variety. Mark-Linn-Mr.-Larry-Appleton-Baker from "Perfect Strangers" plays both the March Hare and the Mock Turtle, and, for some reason, he uses a thick Jewish accent as the Turtle. Michael Jeter is the Dormouse, and he even does a hilariously accurate Bob Dylan impression. And Debbie Allen is the Queen of Hearts, but her role amounts to little else than yelling "Off with their heads!" The scenes never really go anywhere. They're more like skits with pop culture references aplenty. When some Terrence Mann-looking fellow named Richard Cox sings, Frank Sinatra-style, about the turtles under the sea, he apparently has groupies, too!
And the songs? Besides the retro pastiche, there's nothing here that screams "traditional musical theatre." It's basically throwing things into a blender and seeing what sticks. There's almost no rhyme in the lyrics. Lots of cacophonous "sound bombs" that just involve the actors yelling off-key, banging random things, and doing statues while making weird sounds with whatever they can think of. It's like a free-association musical. There's almost no dialogue, and the camera movements jerk from scene to setting, making this very unlike what you'd normally see in a televised musical. Once Upon a Mattress this ain't.
So, rent Alice at the Palace if you're into seeing young, experimental New York City theatre actors at the end of an era doing what they did well. Just be sure to check what you're tripping on before second-guessing what the heck is going on in this one.
New York Times Review of the Original Off-Broadway Production
Buy Alice at the Palace!
posted by Gypsy at 1:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home