Review: "Nightmare Alley"

Los Angeles, California – There is always that wonderful moment when you’re seated in a theater, taking measure of the set, in happy expectation of a new play. Nightmare Alley was to be a musical revival of a 1946 novel, done in 1947 as a film-noir with Tyrone Power. A manipulative guy enters a tacky carny sideshow.  He intrudes into this seamy world which includes a “geek” act — lowest rung on a shaky ladder — the guy who bites heads off live chickens. This “geek” (Larry Cedar) is a drunk, but his wife, the show’s fortune teller, only wants to make enough money for them to retire.  Our charismatic intruder accidentally kills the “geek,” his sense of guilt drags him down, and he himself ends up the alcoholic geek — beautiful story, and with music…a natural.

So the lights go down, a chorus of four girls, reminiscent of the chorus in Little Shop of Horrors, sings us into the carny world, and Zeena the fortune-teller (Mary Gordon Murray) ominously warns us about the unpredictability of life. Good start. Something nightmarish is about to happen. The carny barker, the excellent Michael McCarthy, introduces us to the “geek show,” and into this promising scene comes the tall charismatic stranger with the glorious voice (James Barbour) to point out a few spots that might be jazzed up to bring in more customers. And we meet the beautiful Molly (Sarah Glendenning) who is the “electrical lady,” shocked into sexually inviting positions in her “electric chair.”  We sit in happy expectation of being drawn into this seamy world.

But it doesn’t happen. Something doesn’t click. We realize, about ten minutes in, that the story is undeveloped and that the emotional connection (remember Showboat?) just doesn’t connect. In any really moving theatrical piece, we must be pulled “inside.” We leave the ordinary world and enter a new space where we “feel” someone’s loss, someone’s joy, someone’s angst. Somewhere in this production with its  wonderful cast,  stirring voices,  well-staged scenes, the excellent unseen little orchestra conducted dramatically by Gerald Sternbach, there is a missing opening scene where we give up our world and move into theirs.  We are aware of the  voices, the  staging, the  production of songs which, for the most part, miss in distinction (…there is no “Bess You Is My Woman” to tear your heart out nor “Luck be a Lady Tonight” to intrigue you)…yet the cast is so talented, the voices so compelling that we yearn for that one song that will remain for us to remember. And we pretty much sit and listen “outside” the piece. The magic doesn’t quite happen.

Yet  the voices in Nightmare Alley are so great, the cast universally does the best it can with the material and occasionally it does click, we get pulled in for a moment, and then find ourselves flat out because the story isn’t logically believable.  The story is so slight, the actual “crime” so accidental that it doesn’t sustain the piece. Good lyrics are lost in the mix.

The first act is carny; the second is where Stan takes his own show on the road and becomes a fake spiritualist who forces Molly to do his dirty work. She rebels and he unravels. A psychiatrist (a second role for our Zeena fortune-teller) comes onto the scene with a threat that Stan must manipulate a very rich man and share the money with her or she will reveal his “crime,” but the “crime” itself is slight, not intentional, doesn’t really make us feel his guilt.  Why does the psychiatrist set Stan up and then betray him? Somewhere in this material is the story and, once rewritten, will make a powerful piece.

But those voices are so powerful, the cast so excellent, the staging effective. The alcoholic “geek” (Larry Cedar) in the second act becomes a prissy old lady, McCarthy the rich old man. All well done. This excellent cast deserves a revision of the book. I saw the performance second night and it may be that, as a new piece, it’s still in transition. I look forward to some version where the storyline can support the level of performance.