Reviewed
by David Spencer
A thriller is supposed to thrill, in terms of story and suspense. That first. Everything else is secondary. The Woman in White doesn't precisely fail to thrill, it just fails to do it thrillingly. By which I mean to say its key elements are all rather mild.
This latest Andrew Lloyd Webber show neither starts with a panoramic "concept" number to give us the world (a la Robbins/Sondheim/Prince), nor gives us a close up character number to set up a dynamic that in turn prepares us for the panorama (a la Rodgers & Hammerstein/Loesser, also Sondheim & Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George). As if to prove a point about the Webber-verse requiring none of these American conventions, it just kind of jump starts into recitative, kicking off its story with no preamble, at the middish 19th Century railway station in England where our hero (well, we think he's our hero) Walter Hartright (Adam Brazier) will soon briefly encounter the mysterious, threatened woman in white, a.k.a. Anne Catherick (Angela Christian). This jumping into the deep end has lots of precedent in opera, and might well even work here too, but the trick would have to be achieved by letting music set up a more specific mood of foreboding. Mr. Webber's brief opening music, before the set opens onto the story (more on the scenery later) constitutes a fairly generic ooky-spooky, that misses only a Theramin for completion of the cliche -- we intuit its intent, but don't feel its point of view. Thus it carries no threat, nor does it make a musical statement that takes hold. By contrast, even if we discount the opening song of Sweeney Todd, there is still that prologue played by the pipe organ, then just the vamp of the opening number, music laden with attitude and perspective -- it's a gloss on familiar suspense techniques, true enough (Sondheim cited Bernard Herrmann as a strong influence), but a pointed and purposeful one: from the opening motives to the restless triplets, we know we're in a place that's volatile, where violent death can spring like the face hugger in Alien, and there's a signature of melodrama as well.
As for the recitative itself, Mr. Webber's desire is to build certain components of the score backwards -- to start with thematic precursors which he will later reintroduce as full-blown themes. Also not an unprecedented strategy, but here too, one onto which it's difficult for the listener to grab hold. The leading man's role is a thanklessly bland one, and his first exchange, nakedly expositional, is with a railroad signalman (Norman Large), a passing character we know we needn't invest in. (Again contrast the first exchange in Sweeney: brooding, haunted Todd and naive, callow Anthony: exposition is camouflaged by the dynamic of two extreme types we'll stay with for the evening.) The faults of Webberıs opening choices are underscored (to use the term ironically) by melodic motives that aren't particularly compelling. (There's actually a kind of shifting between straightforward, consonant melody and modern opera dissonance, which further dilutes the power of these introductory motifs to properly "seed" our ear for the evening to come.)
From the station, the locale shifts to Limmeridge House, the manse where Hartright has been engaged as a private art teacher -- "drawing master" -- to two half-sisters: 30ish, smart, feisty -- yet plain -- Marian (Maria Friedman, who isn't all that plain) and bright, blonde and sunny Laura (Jill Paice) -- who bears more than a little resemblance to Anne Catherick. But it is Marian we meet there first, and in a song of even more naked exposition, that serves as a travelogue around the estate and its small population, she briefs Hartright (and us) on a lot of backstory. As it will develop (but not for some time to come), she is in fact our main character. (She will start to fall for Hartright, who will fall for half-sister Laura, who in turn will fall for him, and thence motivations will ensue.) But while this song is certainly a major set piece, in terms of performance time, it's a light tune in the service of narrative, that doesn't function well enough either as an "I Am" or an "I Want" moment of character definition. And it subsequently misrepresents Marian as a secondary, featured player. This is exacerbated by the fact that not until midway through the first act does she slowly begin to drive the story. When she's firmly established as heroine, Hartright then disappears from the scene for quite a long time. Again, we're in a very mild place, because our lead character is sidelined by structural choices that diminish her, while the guy we thought we'd follow might as well have dropped off the face of the earth.
Though the 1860 Wilkie Collins novel that forms the basis for The Woman in White is a British staple, dramatized many times (it is said to be the archetype for all "sensation" potboilers to follow), it is less familiar here in the US, so I'm loathe to spoil any of its twists and turns (however "freely adapted" according to the credit). I'll add only that the remaining characters in the drama involve Laura's hypochondriac old father (Walter Charles); a too-slick gentleman to whom dad has promised Laura's hand in marriage, fittingly named Sir Percival Glyde (Ron Bohmer); and a friend of Glyde's, a round-waisted doctor with the persona of an Italian opera comic rogue, and a fondeness for pet mice, Count Fosco (Michael Ball).
When dad is introduced, he sings his own version of Marian's narrative song, further fostering the impression that its music "belongs" to the house, not the character -- so he's mild. And as the others are introduced, their songs are pastiches that go with their archetypes -- so they're mild. (To be fair, because the Italian Count is such an extreme and narcissistic character, he's far less mild than the others -- but he's also so broadly drawn that each of his two large numbers ["A Gift for Living Well" and "You Can Get Away With Anything"] is just a variation on his self-satisfaction.)
There are ballads and anthems for the romantic trio, all of which seem like Webber at second or third best, lacking even the ear-grabbing contour of the early scores (though they often do showcase a numbing repetition, most especially "All For Laura," which seems intent on turning its title line into a Zen mantra) -- and as for the recitative between songs:
Well, here's the most interesting manifestation of the problem, to me. Webber, nobody's dummy, tries not to write arioso (free form) -- even in the land of faux dialogue, he's loathe to wander, lest the audience lose its musical bearings. His recitative technique therefore is to develop a motive that can carry a scene, that characters trade back and forth.
While this provides character interplay a musical motor with a song-like profile, and gives the listener signposts that ordinary recitative would not -- it also lacks character specificity. The motive becomes an all-purpose vehicle, into which high drama is poured, at times forced, whose foursquare patterns reduce it to light verse, with the same doggerel-like regularity. So an exchange that should be hot is...well, you know: mild.
(Contrast this, not only to the recit in Sweeney Todd, seemingly explosive melodic variations -- consistent with volatile behavior -- over unifying vamps, which are what keep the listener grounded, a less ³visible² technique that often works on a subconscious level; but with Webber's previous own recit in an early show like Evita. Evita has not nearly the sophistication of Sweeney, but what it does have is sufficient unto its own task: characters trade snatches of established melody, excerpted from prior songs -- a phrase from this tune butts up against a phrase from that tune. It's self-consciously clever, as delivered, and there's nothing subtle in the symbolism [welcome to the world of Tim Rice] but it's angry and jagged and dynamic, which compensates for a lot.)
I have not yet mentioned the wordsmiths involved in The Woman in White. Nor am I sure how much responsibility each bears: As has been well-attested, on and off the record, when you play in the Webber sandbox, it's really about realizing his vision, more than mutual creation toward a mutually conceived goal. So before I broach the topic, one more thing about the novel:
It was fairly bold in its time, as it is a first person narrative from multiple viewpoints. A character tells of his/her experience up until the point where s/he is no longer witness, and then, essentially, hands off the story to the next character. If the musical had found a way to adapt this technique, many of the structural problems (i.e. meeting our heroine late and defining her as such later) might be mitigated. It would ostensibly have flown in the face of the traditional musical theatre structure missing here; but I think it might also have constituted a thrilling (!) experiment with tradition -- shifting the driving force as the point of view shifts.
But since, as with the equally mild Aspects of Love, and the almost as mild Sunset Boulevard, Mr. Webber has mandated a theatrical equivalent of the omniscient, third person overview, librettist Charlotte Jones has devised a dramatic structure that is coherent, but lacks teeth; and lyricist David Zippel's noble attempt to infuse it all (perhaps even to mitigate the mildness) with wordplay and wit, comes off as the oddly exposed efforts of a writer working hard, rather than the natural utterances of character.
There are also logistical puzzlements. Here are just a few samples out of a fair number. At one point in Act Two, Marian is outside Count Fosco's house, about to enter for reasons I won't reveal here. Inside, he is packing to leave. He sings his second big song, pretty much to us, pretty much consciously so. (Most of the big solo numbers tacitly acknowledge the presence of the audience, a possible [intentional?] holdover from the novel's original structure.) It's a novelty number, the musical's closest thing to a showstopper, and it even yields an encore chorus. It's great fun, but it leaves you wondering: what the hell happened to Marian? How long can it possibly take to climb the front steps and enter Fosco's chambers? (According to the song's playing time on the live performance London Cast Album, about six minutes, apparently.) Then there's the deal with Fosco's animals, especially his white mice. The Count's fondness for the little creatures does, in fact, derive from the novel, but has been introduced into the libretto at a point in Act One while he was conniving, as if the critters were meant to have some kind of plot payoff. They don't. They pay off in a showbiz sense, as during Fosco's Act Two song, he showily gets a mouse to run from the tip of one outstretched arm over his shoulders to the tip of the other, and back again. (One imagines the delayed Marian doing much the same on the stairway to his chambers.) Much later, at the end of this scene (Marian having finally arrived, done her business and left), Fosco, alone with us again, sings a brief reprise of his ditty, and exits, bags in hand, to leave the country -- without his precious animals. Huh? Shouldnıt we at least know theyıre going to be cared for in his absence? (As a point of trivia, it's amusing to note that London's original Count Fosco, Michael [also Webber's original Phantom] Crawford, had, many years previously, starred in the flop musical version of Flowers for Algernon, where, as Charley, he famously shared stage with a trained mouse. One wonders if there was any conscious connection on the part of the creative team. For the record, the mouse who played Algernon did not himself make Crawford's transition to The Woman in White.)
The set (William Dudley) consists primarily of three curved screens in which are doors, panels, etc. The screens, on an elaborate set of tracks and turntables, can be configured to connect contiguously, to fit into each other variously, to spin about so that at one point the curve is a cyc, at another point the equivalent of a show curtain, at any point a backdrop. Onto these scenes is projected a perfectly astonishing series of CGI locales, each flying to the other as if via a single wide lens camera that can pull back, fly overhead, target a new locale, zoom in...it's breathtaking at times. Even -- dare I say it -- thrilling. It also, as you might imagine, often overwhelms everything else onstage. Thus, any humanity that might emerge from a more intimate moment is made to compete with the lightshow canvas. Ironically, the show's most impressive feature only adds to the round-edging out of the material.
The actors, all mentioned above, are just fine. But any actors similarly well cast would be similarly fine. With the arguable exception of Fosco, because the role allows its actor some breathing space, nobody particularly gets to define his/her part of the Woman in White experience with the desired original cast signature, because nobody particularly can. (And they're well able. I've worked with Jill Paice, to cite but one, she was Delphi in the York Weird Romance, and showed every positive sign of being a star on the rise. [Which, I like to think, she is, or Webber would not have imported her to London to create the role of Laura soon after.] In The Woman in White, though, she fills a damsel in distress template that gives her no moment in which to be distinct, or own the role.) Under Trevor Nunn's direction -- technically stunning, emotionally moderate -- The Woman in White is a pushbutton event. It doesn't really need the audience, because the audience can have no impact on its pacing or delivery.
Let's not even bring up Sweeney Todd again. Let me throw another thriller at you. Non-musical. Made into a movie, but born onstage. Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott. Our heroine is blind. We've come to love her. And there's a very bad guy terrorizing her, in search of a toy doll stuffed with heroin, that he's secreted in her apartment. He's already killed for it. More than once. We've come to fear him. But she has the advantage over him, at this climactic point, albeit a desperate one. Because she's injured him. And she can do what he can't: find her way around the place in the dark. Knowing this, she shatters every goddamn lightbulb in the place.
Total blackness.
Now all she has to do is wait him out until help arrives. She's hidden and safe.
We know this. It's a done deal. The game is being played by her rules now.
She wins.
And then the bad guy opens the refrigerator door.
Good production, bad production, indifferent, movie: every time I've seen it, the audience gasps!
At The Woman in White, there is no such moment. No equivalent shock, rush or reveal. Nor empathic surge of concern.
When one icebox bulb can have more dramatic wattage than all the operatic and technical hoohah money can buy, it's kind of a clue to where an intended thriller has gone wrong...