GRINCH AND BEAR IT
As with Sweeney Todd, the Grinch is bent on revenge, though his motivation is much murkier. He’s your typical green outsider, like Little Shop’s plant Audrey II, the Frog Prince, or Shrek the Ogre, enraged at not fitting in with the Hallmark-carded Whos of Whoville. Perversely, the creature wants to earn in advance the enmity he anticipates. His saga, last produced in Chicago two years ago, remains only 90 minutes long—about one hour longer than the beloved 1966 animated special, and just long enough to finish reading the book by the late Dr. Seuss.
The musical originated in 1995 at Minneapolis’s Children’s Theatre Company in 1994 before being mounted at San Diego’s Old Globe, which has offered Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical annually since 1998. This time, MSG Entertainment is producing a rendition of the 2006 Broadway offering at The Chicago Theatre, but the context remains.
As I noted before, Jack O’Brien’s faithful staging (reprised by Matt August) of the beloved holiday chestnut is suitably stylized. Robert Morgan’s costumes for the relentlessly cheerful, ditheringly addlepated residents of Whoville could have stepped out of the storybook. The score, by book and lyricist Timothy Mason and composer Mel Marvin, is serviceable to a tale we want to remember rather than confront. It also contains original favorites by Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel (lyrics) and Albert Hague (music), including “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” and “Welcome Christmas” (“Fah Who Foraze”).
Seen in Chicago’s second coming, it’s more obvious that Shuler Hensley’s gratuitously misanthropic Grinch is ripe for conversion from the start: His even owning a pooch named Max (Aleksa Kurbalija) shows he’s no bitter recluse. His extended scene with Cindy-Lou Who (Gracie Beardsley, exuding cute), as he robs her house blind, shows he has enough shame to lie (as a more bold-faced villain could do in his sleep). From remorse can come reform: It’s only the discovery that “Christmas doesn’t come from a store” that both melts his heart and enlarges it twofold.
Gilding the lily, this sometimes insistent production leaves no subtext unspoken. Kids, who catch onto adults fairly fast, will get the Grinch a bit sooner than the creators imagined. Like an emerald X-Man, Grinchy-Poo’s anthem proclaims that he’s “One of a Kind,” a boast that turns into a curse. It’s a cute reversal.
Not so clever is how Seuss and this sequel imagine a Whoville that, viewed backwards, smacks a bit too much of 50’s conformity and “togetherness.” (at least it’s not a materialistic morass which has Who service workers expected to toil on Thanksgiving Day, as happens in the non-Seuss world).
Ken Land, playing Old Max revisiting his servitude to a serial stealer, effectively creates a memory in the making. The action that follows inevitably gets steeped in our own nostalgia for the book and cartoon. It’s a territoriality that makes you want to respond to “I Hate Christmas,” the Grinch’s unsubtle confession of the obvious, with, “Methinks the reptile doth protest too much” (two words: Jim Carrey).
As in the cartoon and the book, actions speak louder than the “given” of Grinchiness. Fortunately, John DeLuca’s choreography, here revived by Bob Richard, creates delightful Currier and Ives-style tableaux of Who domesticity and Grinch poutiness. For kids and most adults that’s argument enough. It also helps that the immense snowfall on stage can be withstood far better than the real stuff outside the theater.
photos by Bruce Ogesbly/Bluemoon Studios
Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical
MSG Entertainment
The Chicago Theatre
175 North State Street
scheduled to end on November 29, 2014
for tickets, visit www.thechicagotheatre.com
for info on this and other Chicago Theater, visit www.TheatreinChicago.com
