'Big Fish' won't quite reel you in
NEW YORK -- "I would hate to see the rainbows in your world," a father tells his son in the new Broadway musical Big Fish (* * 1/2 out of four stars). "Bet they're all shades of gray."
The speaker is one Edward Bloom, traveling salesman and spinner of tall, usually self-aggrandizing tales; and the show -- an adaptation of the novel by Daniel Wallace, and the 2003 Tim Burton film that book inspired -- is, technically, bursting with the sort of bright, bold colors that old Ed would surely favor.
Donald Holder's vivid lighting is matched in Benjamin Pearcy's (for 59 Productions) animated projection design and Julian Crouch's whimsical scenery. When Edward proposes to his future wife, Sandra, hundreds of yellow daffodils sparkle against a clear blue sky.
Somehow, though, the effect isn't as dazzling, or as moving, as you would hope -- particularly given the talented players involved in this production, which opened Sunday at the Neil Simon Theatre.
They include two-time Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz, who as Edward ages from a spry teenager to an expectant grandfather dying of cancer. As Sandra, Kate Baldwin, one of musical theater's most graceful leading ladies, grows old -- and springs back to youth -- with her spouse, much as she did playing another resilient wife in the Public Theater's splendid staging of Giant, another musical based on a book that became a film, last year.
But Big Fish doesn't afford its stars the same depth or, more crucially, consistency of tone. Librettist John August wrote the screenplay for the Burton movie, which also shifts back and forth in time as we watch Will, Edward's son, try to come to terms with a father he resents and doesn't trust, before Edward dies and Will's own child is born.
On stage, August and director/choreographer Susan Stroman show us Will, as both a child and a young adult, reacting to Edward's fanciful accounts, while Edward himself steps into and out of memory sequences, at one point dropping 40 years by simply shaking off his robe and donning a baseball cap.
But much of the dialogue feels stilted, as if August were trying too hard to get into the song-and-dance spirit of his new medium. There are more hokey one-liners and sober declarations than there were in the film. That disjointed vibe extends to composer/lyricist Andrew Lippa's score, which juggles earnest ballads with generically jaunty production numbers.
Edward's stories do accommodate flashes of Stroman's playful wit. In one scene, characters from a Western flick strut out of a TV set; in another, Edward, as a young solider, heroically chases the enemy through lines of tap-dancing chorines. Too often, though, the choreography seems more busy than vibrant, with ensemble members spinning around creatures ranging from a sultry witch (an overbearing Ciara Renee) to a friendly giant (a resonant-voiced Ryan Andes).
Butz, Baldwin and Bobby Steggert, as the grownup Will, all bring a sense of genuine humanity to their roles. In the end, though, this Big Fish lacks the imagination or cohesion to reel you in like one of its hero's yarns.