By Ilana Jael
If you’re looking to kick off your Halloween season early this year with some horror-inspired theatregoing, then you need look no further than Carrie: The Musical. In case you didn’t guess it from the title, yes, the show is an adaptation of that Carrie — Stephen King’s 1974 horror novel about an isolated teenage girl who uses telekinetic powers to take bloody revenge on her high school bullies.
The show also incorporates elements from the 1976 film Carrie, which sprang from the same source material, and was a big enough hit to ensure the story a lasting place in cultural memory. Though this ubiquity should have put Carrie: The Musical at a significant advantage commercially speaking, the original production of 1988 is actually most notable for being one of the biggest and costliest flops in Broadway history, closing after only five official performances and 16 previews and losing the entirety of its multimillion-dollar investment in the process. After that debacle, the script for the piece, which had music by Michael Gore and lyrics by Dean Pitchford, to a book by Lawrence Cohen, was reworked substantially, and a subsequent Off-Broadway production in 2012 was comparatively well-received.
Since then, Carrie: The Musical has been enjoying a pretty fruitful second life on the regional and educational theatre circuit, but it’s still not a show that’s so commonly done that I would bet on getting a second chance to catch it locally anytime soon.
But, luckily for any adventurous South Florida theatregoers, Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre and Dance Department is currently offering an impressive production of this theatrical curiosity, which ultimately proves a positively inspired choice of October musical for more reasons than surface “spook” factor.
Having first seen Carrie: The Musical staged in an Orlando production about a year ago, I had a better idea of what I could expect from the script this time around, which tonally leans much further into the surprisingly grounded psychological horror of the premise than the eeriness of the supernatural elements or potential for garish, campy excess.
Yes, there are a few thrilling moments throughout the play where theatrical effects create the chilling illusion of objects moving unprompted, and anyone who’s averse to the sight of blood should be advised to think carefully before sitting for Act 2’s gory climactic scene. You see, what’s really scary about Carrie is less the fantastical facilitation of a brutalizing bloodbath than its sharp portrayal of how the ordinary indignities of adolescence can leave vulnerable teens profoundly isolated — and how that profound isolation can spiral, for some, into impulsive acts of violence that have irreversible consequences.
In a director’s note, Ana Marie Calise expresses a poignant awareness of these darker implications, recognizing Carrie as “a story of rejection and the need to be accepted” that has continued to resonate because of how many of us can recognize the “universal truth behind exclusion.” In particular, this sensitivity seems to have informed her directorial approach to the characters closest to the story’s emotional center, including Carrie herself. In the role, Hailey McDonough’s naturalistic performance paints her more like an ordinary teenage girl in unimaginable circumstances than an unstable outcast, which makes it all the more devastating when those circumstances finally do push her fully over the psychological edge.
This is particularly noticeable as a contrast with Carrie’s mother, Margaret, whom we can easily identify as unhinged from the start thanks to the intensity of Katie Reifsnyder’s performance. The claustrophobia of their dynamic and the realism of Margaret’s emotional abuse made some of their scenes together a little hard to watch compared to the lighter and more plot-driven high school scenes, but the fact that both performers are strong singers kept their dark duets from dragging the energy down too much.
This isn’t the only place in Carrie where I felt the action being slowed down by songs that did more to set the mood than propel the plot, with much of the score feeling more serviceable than standout. Some numbers movingly conveyed powerful emotional beats while still feeling tedious to actually listen to, but a lot of the pacing issues fade away when a setup-heavy Act 1 gives way to Act 2’s eventual catastrophe.
The other standout duo where this production was concerned was Libby McDonald as Sue Snell and Zachary Simpson as Tommy Ross, two more excellent singers who were also skilled enough actors to convey the fact that their characters’ misguided decisions began in genuine good intentions. Their duet, “You Shine,” was one of the otherwise lackluster score’s more affecting moments, though Simpson’s short and sweet solo “Dreamer In Disguise” might actually be my favorite in the whole musical in its earnest simplicity.
Marissa Spur sells the heck out of a supporting role as power-hungry bully Chris and Desir Dumerjuste delivers some much-needed comic relief as her doofus of a boy-toy Billy. They both get their biggest moments to shine in “The World According to Chris,” which uses a peppy tune to cloak cynical lyrics that paint her social aggression as a defense against being hurt herself.
Several other members of the sizable ensemble add energy and laughs when the script gives them opportunity, inhabiting and creating an embodied high school world onstage. For the most part, they also execute Madeline Dunn’s demanding choreography for the show reasonably well, with her work being at its most striking when it combines with Ted DeChatelet’s fight direction and Rebecca Lucatero’s technical direction in an extended movement sequence that has an intense emotional effect.
A set by K. April Soroko visually forecasts the destruction to come from the start, which cleverly reflects the narrative structure of the piece, which begins with a traumatized Sue Snell recounting the play’s major events afterwards before proceeding to take us through them narratively. Though the melodramatic trappings of Carrie make it far easier to watch than might be a show with similar themes in which a troubled youth’s revenge takes more realistic form, the image of a high school prom turned violent massacre probably hit me a little harder by calling up associations with the many true stories in which innocent teens become casualties of a classmate’s rage.
Columbine, Parkland, Virginia Tech…. Three such incidents that I now mention by name not to minimize the impact of these real-life incidents but to examine the prospect of Carrie as less “horror” than cautionary tale. Calise entertains this notion in her director’s note as well by articulating her hope that “our version of ‘Carrie’ leads to reflection on . . . how we, as a society, can continually find ways to lead with humanity and kindness.”
Since there’s no way of knowing which, if any, tragedies a perfectly timed dose of “humanity” might’ve prevented, I won’t be so simplistic as to suggest an ethos of kindness as a catch-all antidote. On the other hand, to be kind rather than cruel usually costs nothing and could mean everything to someone in crisis — but Carrie itself complicates that thesis in the way that Sue Snell’s efforts to extend that kindness ultimately backfire in the wake of the damage that her own and others’ cruelty had already done.
The resulting gap between outcome and intention is what I left Carrie contemplating this time around, but you’re perfectly free not to take it nearly so seriously. Moral philosophy aside, it’s a quirky, unique show with plenty of sheer entertainment value, and one that I enjoyed all the more for its edgy intensity on this second viewing. In other words, this production is one I can safely recommend to local theatregoers who prefer theatrical thrills and terror to more traditional
feel-good fare. And though Carrie the character may never have gotten her Cinderella story, at least Carrie: The Musical has finally proven itself a solid enough theater date to be worth making room for on your dance card.
If you go
Carrie: The Musical runs through Oct. 11 in the Marleen Forkas Studio One Theatre on the Florida Atlantic University Campus, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton. Tickets are $27.
Visit www.fauevents.com or call 561-297-6124.