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WPCNR On The Aisle. Review By John F. Bailey. October 15, 2005, UPDATED 11:41 P.M. With Historical Pictures, and Editor’s Note at close. E.D.T.: The long awaited Saving Aimee, the show billed as the kind of show the WPPAC wants to bring to our town opened last night at the White Plains Performing Arts Center.
The musical is based on the controversial life of the first woman evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson showcased to a celebrity studded audience. Mayor Joseph Delfino was there. Councilman Larry Delgado was there. The Giffords, Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were there. So was the 95 year old daughter of Ms. McPherson, for whom the “virtual curtain” was held thirty minutes. Writer and Lyricist Kathie Lee Gifford consulted extensively on the creation of the musical with Ms. McPherson’s daughter.
Maybe that is the problem. Authenticity does not for an Evita make.
Rather than celebrating Aimee Semple McPherson, Saving Aimee makes her into an unbalanced, self-centered, immature, unsympathetic martinet of a woman that in this reviewer’s opinion, fails to demonstrate Ms. McPherson’s hold on the multitudes she swayed in the 20s and 30s to the WPPAC audience.
The brassy Broadway pro, Carolee Carmello as Ms. McPherson, , sings 15 of the 25 numbers in this show, but delivers tenacity without tenderness, intensity without intimacy, emotion that does not elevate, and domination that demands only reluctant devotion.
Aimee Semple McPherson in Action, 1930s. Photo, The Funeral Guy Website
Her Aimee Semple McPherson does not appear to be a happy Aimee Semple McPherson, which is true-to-life, but does not endear her to the audience. Rather than making Ms. McPherson a character to be admired, the way Ms. McPherson is directed by Eric Schaeffer, who directed Under the Bridge, Ms. Gifford’s other musical which enjoyed a short off-Broadway run, creates Semple McPherson as a character to be pitied, badly in need of therapy, and not to be emulated.
I want a heroine I want to look up to, and go to bed with, not a character displaying neuroses. Director Schaeffer apparently does not understand the difference between charisma and attitude. Carmello, who is very talented, delivers attitude and full-throated schmaltz, but I am not going to throw away my crutches for her. (Ms. Semple McPherson was credited and documented with thousands of “healings.”)
Ms. Carmello, playing all ages of Aimee, is a formidable stage presence. A little too formidable. She overrides her tentative vocal co-stars, with the exception of the sensual, very real and confident Aisha de Hass as Emma Jo – the Kansas City Madam who holds her own against Carmello, takes back the stage, and delivers terrific Tony quality supporting actress style. She has the show’s cutest, only toe-tapping number, A Girl’s Gotta Do What She’s Gotta Do which Ms. De Hass performs with elegant sassy gusto when she delivers her “technique so to speak” in this Chicago style number.
Another actor who comes through is James Moye as Brother Bob, the hypocritical rival evangelist with villainous delight, reminiscent of a pious Rush Limbaugh, slimy and chillingly sanctimonious. His Demon in a Dress is an intriguing tour de force of meanness in song. He is one of the few standout ensemble characters, “the fall guy” as Gilbert and Sullivan would call him.
The Angelus Temple, 1930s. A National Landmark, built by Aimee Semple McPherson. Photo, National Parks Register.
Aimee’s mother, played by Florence Lacey is appropriately dislikable, and her singing the title song, Saving Aimee is her highlight moment in the show, but purely from a writer’s viewpoint, a secondary character should not sing the title song. Mistake there.
Don Blovingloh as Ms. McPherson’s father plays out a touching scene of father saying good bye to daughter as she goes with the first love of her life, and then the play runs out of emotional moments, rushing to China, New York, Kansas City, California in a whirlwind, in a sense of “trying to get it all in” punctuated by the songs that portray moments in her life and frequent reprisals of Why Can’t You Just Be a Woman? The strongest songs in the show are the rousing Stand Up! which gets the production going; Follow Me and Why can’t She Just Be a Woman?
Be a Woman is reprised by each of Aimee’s husbands and delivers a strange mixed message. The production pretends to admire Aimee’s independence but when one of the kicker songs indicates that it is not a woman’s place to be independent, the audience does not know what to celebrate and is conflicted. Mixed messages are not good in a musical.
Aimee Semple McPherson’s Pulpit at The Angelus Temple. Photo, yahoo.com.
The lyrics by Ms. Gifford are clever and well-turned, but poorly orchestrated with melodies that do not make you hit the street humming. Mr. Pomeranz and Mr. Friedman’s music is workmanlike, not virtuoso uplifting classic full-blown Broadway. A more diversified ensemble would have helped to let us know if the music is better than it sounded.
This a musical about an evangelist.
Carmello’s dominating contralto and brassy pipes do not deliver the emotional charisma to win the audience over on Aimee’s side. If Ms. McPherson really was like Ms. Carmello, she would never have won such a following of gypsys and the Ku Klux Klan delivering gold at her feet (as reported in program notes), and if the casting is true (and subsequent research by WPCNR shows it is not), to what Ms. McPherson was, then there has to be more grace, more emotion, more “Godliness” in Ms. Carmello’s delivery and performance.
Interior of Angelus Temple, showing the great dome. Photo, LNV Website.
I have preached to crowds and been very effective in working the emotions of persons with the Holy Spirit. That ability to reach out is missing here in Carmello’s portrayal. And it is a big miss. This show is about revivals! You have to be able to get an audience going. The revival scenes do not do this except at the beginning of Act II where the God Will Provide number gets the audience in the mood somewhat. The revival music lacks soul.
I mean if you love doing God’s will, you should not be angry about it as Ms. Carmello is at the close of Act I. Carmelo simply fails to inspire the audience to emotion. Admittedly, her actions and atittude on the stage are reflective of her medical problems, which are not explained in the musical’s script.
The human tragedies in this musical did not move me, and there are plenty of themes that should stir the emotions. They evoke sorrow and understanding but no feeling because Aimee’s actions are often unexplainable and disdainfully cast aside by husbands and mother as being selfish, when actually she, I think, is searching for God. There are loose ends. You never understand who takes care of her children for example when she runs away. (But, inexplicable circumstances are permissible in musicals.)
Scenes worth noting:
Aimee rebelling against a controlling mother, (where you start to like her and feel some sympathy, which is squandered by the rapid sequence of events in the rest of the show). There is Aimee experiencing first love, whom she overwhelms in the He Will Be My Home duet with Steve Wilson, the handsome Irish tenor playing Robert Semple then her loss of him, then marrying again; being inspired by the Voice of God in her new baby’s cry, a ghostly well staged scene; Aimee’s time in a sanitarium after a third husband jilts her, where she sings The Silent, Sorrowful Shadows, another production and acting highlight.
McPherson and her second husband, played by Jim Price and Carmello show no electricity. Mike McGowan who plays David, Aimee’s hunk in her religious reenactments lends some electricity as he and Aimee team for her third romance, and his reprise of the strong song, “Why Can’t She Be More Like a Woman” holds his own the best of the three male co-stars who sing it.
After a promising first two songs in the first act, which include the opening Stand Up,the second act, is solid. The stagings of Aimee’s theatrical act-outs of Biblical stories in her AngelusTemple in Los Angeles are amusing, evoking, I imagine her sermon style, and with the gift of a millions of dollars of budget to this production, offer opportunities for the tourist-pleasing special effects staging that brings out the commercial audience on the Great White Way.
There is the Moses bit starring Aimee’s young son as Moses, (the precocious Matthew Gumley in long sleeved robes and with a staff) challenging Pharoah, and the half naked Mr. McGowan in loin cloth cavorting for Aimee’s appreciation as Samson with a sensuous Delilah.
The court room trial in Act Two is the highlight of the show which features Matt Loney as the Prosecutor Asa Keyes in a strong bit of writing here. As the prosecutor, Loney has the Hamilton Berger attitude and florid flamboyance to take your eye off Aimee Semple McPherson for the first time in the show.
Here is where the show lets itself down, after this strong court scene where the audience is up and following the rapidfire dialogue and elaborate staging, (and the big song Payin the Price), Aimee’s denouement follows and simply is not powerful enough in my opinion to send the audience home uplifted, only somewhat inspired.
The new musical with book and lyrics by Kathie Lee Gifford is trying out for Broadway in White Plains. According to the Program Notes this is the 88th rewrite. It needs one more. It has the Broadway length, it has some money and a lot of time sunk into this production, with the best thing about it at WPPAC being the light design by Chris Lee that painted emotions with hues, and transformed the “no tricks” set into a train station, a cabin, a temple, a Kansas City brothel, and a courtroom (not necessarily in that order).
It cut corners on the set and the music, relying basically on keyboards. You need more than keyboards on Broadway. The imposing four column set of four “to-the-ceiling” courtly columns, cast in a ghostly royal blue hue is stationary and achieves all its effects with Mr. Lee’s lighting.
Investors who can throw in bankroll to pay for a mobile set and razzle dazzle can schmaltz up the tentative book and give the special effects infrastructure to support a score that you are not exactly humming when you leave the theatre.
There were production mistakes: There was no overture. You gotta have an overture. (Perhaps because of the lateness of the “virtual curtain.”)
An actor about to be interrogated by a prosecutor appeared to miss a key cue in the first third of the second act when a second actor did not appear for their part in a running narrative bit that helped move the story along.
Three times the audio switcher did not get Ms. Carmelo’s cordless microphone turned on.
You cannot have that in a musical. You have to walk out being uplifted in a musical. This is basic, friends. In Evita, the heroine died but everybody loved that show. In Jesus Christ Superstar, which this musical loosely resembles, you went out with the sense of Jesus’ resurrection. The querying reporters bit, used to great effect in Jesus Christ Superstar, is used extensively through the musical to play up the tabloid sensationalism of the twenties and thirties.
There is no explanation as to the emotional pressures which lead Aimee to take the final action she does. She just does it. Or did I miss something? Is she tired? Is she lonely? Why is she depressed? Or is she inspired to go to her God? The final scene does not stand up to the strong emotional lift the audience gets from the court room scene and shatters the triumph in that court room scene that brought the first genuine good feelings of the evening. Musicals work the emotions, with the songs, the characters, the storyline. This had the elements but is missing the heart.
However, if Mr. and Mrs. White Plains want to see how Broadway is made and see a musical that is “Almost Broadway but may not stay” without the gimmicks, (though the lighting on this show is truly spectacular – the only spectacular part of the physical production) you will be quite happy. Saving Aimee is an educational experience.
Artistic Director Tony Stimac told me before the show, “we’ve asked reviewers not to review the show because it’s a work in process.”
Well, where in the process are we, you might ask? If White Plains Performing Arts Center is indeed to be an incubator for shows where White Plains pays the production freight for possible Broadway vehicles, the shows have to be more ready and concious of what they have than this. If they do not want New York area reviews, if they’re afraid of them, maybe they should not do shows here. They should try out in Philadelphia.
Saving Aimee plays through October 23, at the White Plains Performing Arts Center, tickets and show times are available by calling 888-977-2250.
Editor’s Note: Curious after writing this review, I did a web search and after listening to actual recordings of Ms. McPherson at the National Public Radio website, http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/stories/991126.stories.html, WPCNR is very convinced that McPherson was actually far different from Ms. Carmello’s interpretation. Carmello could give you that sweetness, she has the talent, but that is not the way she plays it.
The real Aimee Semple McPherson’s voice was sweet, gentle, innocent and not the abrasive sharp demanding delivery that Ms. Carmello creates in the role. I heard no dogma, no bombast, just comfort in actual recordings of her. Her music is sweeter, too. Instead of giving audiences the true sound of Aimee Semple McPherson music, Ms. Gifford and her composers have given us pop tunes with none of the whole toe-tappin “country sweet sound” that can be heard on the actual recordings of her broadcasts and her revivals. The audience at White Plains Performing Arts Center has no idea what Aimee and her music really sounded like.
Thousands Gathering for Sister McPherson’s Funeral, 1944, Los Angeles at her temple. Photo, The Funeral Guy Website.
