It's tough business reworking a nearly 30-year-old musical that never quite made it.
But UTEP Dinner Theatre, which has been packing 'em in as long as Sir Tim Rice and the late Stephen Oliver's "Blondel" has been around, is nothing if not game.
Its youthful, 23-member cast has taken on the difficult assignment of performing a musical comedy that's not only been rewritten substantially since its debut in 1983, it was being rewritten as they rehearsed it.
That musical is now called "Lute!," a clever, if occasionally confusing comedy about a 12th century English minstrel (yes, a lute player) who can't shake the muse and figures that if he can just get a gig with the good King Richard the Lionheart, he'll have it made.
Of course, that's easier said than done. There's that little matter of the Crusades to deal with. Richard wants to go, leaving his throne temporarily in the hands of his nasty brother John, who is more concerned about wearing the crown than his brother's risky mission.
Blondel, the lowly lute player mistakenly called "Fondle," knowing a good heart when he feels one, traipses around most of Europe in search of his wayward king, eventually finding him in Austria, where a repugnant, doo-wopping Duke locks him up and dangles the key nearby.
Blondel is earnest about his desire to find his king, and impress him with his loyalist anthem "I'm a Monarchist." Fiona, the minstrel's feisty missus-to-be, ain't so sure. She wants her freedom from the monarchy, but is relegated to the lowly life of a washer woman. Still, she swallows her pride and sets out in search of her lute-player she loves.
That's a whole lotta what "Lute!" is about. You can kind of figure out how it turns out.
"Lute!" is no "Evita," "Jesus Christ Superstar" or "The Lion King," to name a few of Rice's mega-collabs, but is Pythonesque fun, which, no doubt, has been fluffed up some more for this iteration.
With energetic musical contributions from young British writer and keyboardist Mathew Pritchard, who co-wrote two songs and did all the vocal arrangements, "Lute!"/"Blondel" has four new songs (one written during rehearsal), including the hilarious doo-wop romp "(I Am) Duke of Austria" and the lovely, helpful, from a narrative point of view, "Laundry Lament," which showcases some nice female four-part harmony.
Combine them with the major revisions to the story, a retooling of the Blondel and Fiona characters and the addition of several songs in its last incarnation in 2006 and you've got a musical that, on paper at least, appears to be more logically structured and fleshed out than the original, which UDT staged in 1985 and '88.
Friday's world premiere of this reworked and retitled bit of silliness in song opened a three-week run. It was as much as you'd expect from a tongue-in-cheek anachronistic medieval musical with pop-rock pretensions, if a bit spotty.
The young cast clearly looked as if it was having a good time up there, but some of the leads did struggle with Rice's cleverly worded, and sometimes wordy songs near the end of opening night's two-hour run. The material is pretty demanding.
It's musically diverse, ranging from Renaissance to rock (the music of Prince John's "No Rhyme For Richard" sounds like something from David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" album). Lyrically, well, Rice gives his singers a lot to chew on, made all the more difficult when they're trying to get a handle on a work that changed in rehearsal.
You get the sense they'll grow into it, but the material may require a bit more than some in this cast can give.
The cumulative effect of all that singing, however, clearly took a toll on a cast toward the end of the two-hour performance. It didn't seem to affect the more powerful voices in the cast, notably director Greg Taylor as the lecherously funny Prince John. He's got a sturdy tenor, which, with his penchant for tongue-in-cheek comedy, made the would-be king a real scene stealer.
Also strong was Troy Taylor as the sincere, if a bit self-important King Richard. His is an almost operatic tenor which occasionally drowned out the others. Yet his standout moment came when he turned down the volume a notch for a beautifully nuanced pop-style vocal on "Saladin Days," one of the oldest songs in the piece.
Ricardo Parra's pleasant tenor, earnest demeanor and goofy rock star poses gave Blondel a needed understated charm and made clear his need to follow his muse wherever it took him. Betsy Tinajero's Fiona had a kind of 12th century feminist feistiness about her and had a standout moment on the romantic ballad "Running Back For More."
Ivan Cano threatened to steal the show with his fey Duke of Austria, a pompous pig with an affinity for bodily fluids and a Brian Jones wig. Jorge Ollivier was a cutup as the sickly looking Assassin, who "took to slaughter like a duck to water." He follows Blondel in order to kill the king, but Ollivier's knack for comedy was dampened some by his frequent struggles with the low notes.
John Guevara, Taelon Stonecipher and Allen Thompson were appropriately saucy as the monk chorus, who, when dispensing a bit of history, noted self-consciously "who said this piece wasn't educational." But either poor diction (a problem for some cast members) or a muddled sound mix made it hard to understand them at times, not good considering they served as the musical's narrative voice.
The cast seemed to expend so much energy on the words that they often forgot to maintain their English accents. By the second act, they were pretty much gone. Probably best to do the whole show that way, especially since there's an El Paso/Las Cruces joke inserted into a musical that takes place in England and Austria.
Most of the technical details were well done, particularly Jaime Barba's spot-on costumes and Mike Spence's imaginative set design, which used as a rotating box as the focal point that transformed from a castle to a jail to the stage where a white-clad, Elvis-invoking Blondel performs his elusive hit, "I'm a Monarchist."
There were some snags. The sound wasn't clear enough at times, especially on the more difficult vocal arrangements in which three or more singers were involved. They tended to drown each other out. Also, the spotlighting tend to cast shadows on the actors faces, instead of illuminating them.
The finale, like the last part of the second act, was a bit sluggish, the only real slipup in a well-directed, quickly paced show.
Then again, it was a tough assignment taking on a work-in-progress. It appears Rice and Pritchard may have found the winning combination, now the hard-working cast just needs another performance or two to catch up.
"Lute!" continues through Feb. 12. Tickets range from $14 to $40 depending on the performance date, meal and other considerations. Call 747.6060 or go to academics.utep.edu/udt for more information.
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