"I want the fairytale” reads a T-shirt for sale at DeVos during the run of Pretty Woman: The Musical. It echoes the iconic line from the 1990 film starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
Much of the musical, in fact, is an echo of that celebrated rom-com and takes the fantasy of the film’s story to the next level by putting it to music.
Written by the film’s screenwriters, Garry Marshall and J.F. Lawton, the dialogue is practically verbatim. And from costumes to scenes to lines to memorable moments, they’re pretty much all approximated on stage to tell the quintessential 1980s story of a hooker with a heart of gold who’s short on rent and gets scooped up by a cold, richer-than-God takeover king who hires her for $3000 to be his companion in and out of the penthouse suite while in L.A. on business for six days.
But therein lies the rub. This is an ersatz Pretty Woman, largely because what made the film work—despite its tired, sexist plot—was the performances: Julia Roberts’ charm and the chemistry she and Gere had together, and the small moments captured by the camera, such as when he presents her with a diamond necklace and snaps the box on her fingers to great laughter. It simply doesn’t translate to the stage, particularly with lesser actors.
However, Dani Kucera and Jack Rasmussen have something Roberts and Gere didn’t: they get to sing. And they sing dramatically, from the heart, revealing the motivations and inner workings of the characters they play. We learn that Vivian longs for a different life in “Anywhere but Here,” and that Edward does, too, in that he feels there’s something he needs more of when he’s in Vivian’s presence, as suggested in “Something About Her” and “Freedom”. The songs are pleasant enough, written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, largely in a country-pop style with a few harder rock songs thrown in—just as one might expect from ‘80s pop icon Bryan Adams.
The chorus is strong, setting the seedy scene on Hollywood Boulevard in 1989 with big dance numbers (scenic design by Christine Peters, costumes by Gregg Barnes, choreography by Rusty Mowery) as well as setting up the fairytale with “Welcome to Hollywood” and “Never Give Up on a Dream”. And secondary characters do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of comic relief and bringing a real sense of humanity to the tale, with solid performances from Devyn Trodson as Vivian’s roommate and sex worker mentor Kit, Ian Underhill as Happy Man, and Yamil Rivera as the gymnast bell hop Giulio, who rightfully earns the biggest applause of the night at curtain call.
“If you love the movie, you’ll love the musical” is an often-quoted by promoters, hyperbolic line from a Buzzfeed review of the musical; and while it may be enough for those who “want the fairytale” to go through the motions of the original film with lesser performers expanded by pleasant musical numbers and some cartoonish comic relief, it’s ultimately an unimaginative musical adaptation that simply doesn’t work as well as the film. And that’s without even touching the fact that it’s a male-savior, anti-feminist “fairytale” in a post #metoo world.
Pretty Woman: The Musical
DeVos Performance Hall
April 29-May 4
https://grandrapids.broadway.com/shows/pretty-woman/
