FAR FROM HEAVEN
(@ SpeakEasy Stage through Oct. 11th) is a musical remake of the 2002
Todd Haynes movie of the same name—which
itself is an homage/remake of the 1955 Douglas Sirk Technicolor soap opera, ALL
THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (which was also adapted, brilliantly I might add, by Rainer
Werner Fassbinder but that has nothing to do with this). They all center round
a woman whose “picture perfect” life is turned upside down—who then turns to her gardener for support,
thereby scandalizing friends, family and, it seems, the whole world: Certainly,
her whole world.
The scandal in
the 1955 film stems from the difference in their ages and social positions: The
housewife is considerably older and wealthier than the gardener. In the 2002
FAR FROM HEAVEN movie, the scandal is race and social status. I’m swept away
every time I see the corny Rock Hudson/Jane Wyman vehicle (Turner Classic
Movies loves Sirk) but the musical, alas, just didn’t do it for me. It should
have. The book by Richard Greenberg avoids a whitewash of the 1950s. I grew up
in the homophobic, racist, republican decade: No picnic if you were poor or gay
or African-American. All I can say about the ‘50s is thank God for the ‘60s.
Director Scott
Edmiston and music director Steven Bergman have a talented cast to interpret
the material but the problem, I think, with FAR FROM HEAVEN is the material.
No matter how you approach it, you’re still stuck with Michael Korie’s
impossible lyrics. Poor Jennifer Ellis rhapsodizes about “Heaven [having
created] Connecticut”
and being “sure they broke the mold.” It’s supposed to show her naïveté but
it’s so bloody bland and it works against the story. Ditto her dialogue: She
wants to go to Florida
because everything there is “pink!” Good Lord.
Scott Frankel’s
score is so dissonant, I didn’t think I could weather another distorted
merry-go-round plunge down the scale. I had high hopes for the song, “What’s it
like being THE ONLY ONE” (for the white housewife and the Black gardener) but
then they did it to death. Charles Schoonmaker’s period costumes (some more 40s
than 50s) are gorgeous, especially the chocolate/mocha/beige cocktail dresses
and I got a kick out of David Connolly’s hipster, jazzy “chair” choreography
for the guys on a bench outside the office.
For me, the acid
test is whether or not other musicals cross my mind while I’m watching. I’m
truly sorry to say they did and when Maurice Emmanuel Parent boards the train
for a better life in Baltimore,
all I could think of was: He’ll meet John Waters and be in a much better
musical there.
