Thursday, April 01, 1999
'Victor' shows little life
Problems outweigh its few highlights
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The hours pass like days in Victor/Victoria, which marks the return, after almost two dark months, of the Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series to the Aronoff's Procter & Gamble Hall.
Victor/Victoria is based on a charmer of a 1982 film comedy about an English singer down and out in Paris in the '30s. She makes her fame and fortune when she's befriended by amiable gay entertainer Toddy, who transforms her into a female impersonator and a sensation.
In no time Victoria falls for a Chicago near-gangster, King Marchan. She has to keep her secret; for his own sanity, he has to find out whether Victor is a Victoria.
It's been a mystery since the musical's Broadway debut how the show could be so truly awful when all it had to do was stay fairly close to the genial sex-farce spirit of the original.
But instead of allowing us to get to know the three engaging principal characters, the musical's script (by the film's director/scripter Blake Edwards) is a string of flat one-liners, cheesy sight gags, boring dialogue and homophobia disguised as creepy jokes. It explains the situation ad nauseum but manages to make Victoria, Toddy and King infinitely dull.
Victor/Victoria is one of the worst musicals ever to have legs on Broadway. That's no mystery, because its legs belonged to its star, stage legend Julie Andrews (who also starred in the film and is Mrs. Blake Edwards).
Toni Tennille is the gender-bending star of the tour, and she doesn't have the necessary equipment to play the part. She has no sense of the underlying high comedy necessary for farce. She has no insouciance. She doesn't have the sizzle of sexual tension for a romantic lead. She isn't even a soprano.
Considering that one of the show's big, ongoing jokes is about a killer high note and that as a contralto Ms. Tennille can't get anywhere near it, even this gag has no pay-off.
The only parts of Ms. Tennille's performance that don't fall flat are her musical numbers. Even then she doesn't project the high-wattage star power that would carry her over a lot of mediocre material by the late Henry Mancini (with Leslie Bricusse) and current no-talent Broadway darling Frank Wildhorn.
None of this is to suggest that the rest of the show isn't a whole lot worse than Ms. Tennille. Dennis Cole is dreary as Victoria's guy, and Jamie Ross is merely passable as Toddy.
Of course Victor/Victoria is gorgeous looking. All Broadway musicals look fabulous. That's one of the reasons tickets cost a fortune.
Several members of Tuesday's opening night audience decamped at intermission. All they missed was two minutes of nicely choreographed, door banging sex farce early in the second act that took place on a scrumptious, two-level set piece of adjoining hotel suites (14 doors in all).
The decampers had it right. Life is too short to waste even two minutes of it on Victor/Victoria.
Victor/Victoria, through April 11, Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series, Aronoff Center. 241-7469.
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