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Peer Reviews "Thoroughly
Modern" is Thoroughly Entertaining! Entire contents copyright © 2008, Craig Nolan Highley. All rights reserved.
Thoroughly Modern Millie began life as a 1967 motion picture starring Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing. The film was popular enough that in 2002 a Broadway musical incarnation appeared, with Sutton Foster, Angela Christian and Cheryl Lee Ralph in the same roles. The Broadway version scrapped all the songs from the film (with the lone exception of the theme song composed by James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn) and replaced them with a new score by Jeannine Tesori and Dick Scanlan. Notably, the new score is supplemented by songs incorporated from none other than Gilbert and Sullivan and Victor Herbert, among others! The story goes something like this: In 1922, young Millie (here played to the hilt by Melissa Carlile) flees to New York City from her simple Kansas life determined to marry her boss (whoever he might be). Determined to be "modern," she cuts her hair and dresses like a flapper. When her purse (and therefore all of her money) is snatched, she gets a room at the seedy Hotel Priscilla for Women and gets a secretarial job at an insurance company.
Quickly she falls in love with Jimmy Smith (Tyler Bliss), a paper-clip salesman, and makes friends with Miss Dorothy Brown (Jessica Ball), a down-and-out aspiring actress. She also sets out to make her boss Trevor Greydon III (Brian Bowman) fall in love with her, and she also makes the acquaintance of madcap cabaret singer Muzzy van Hossmere (Brooke Aston). The story gets complicated enough to involve a white slavery ring run by Mrs. Meers (Rita Thomas), proprietor of the Hotel Priscilla, and her two Chinese laundry boys (Tony Lai and Mikhail Pontenila). There are lots of plot twists and fun musical numbers, and the performances are first rate. While the lead performances are solid, it's interesting that some of the more memorable moments belong to the smaller characters. Heather Paige Folsom is hysterical in her brief but showy role of Miss Flannery, the head of the secretarial pool where Millie works. Thanks to a colorful costume, bizarre hairstyle, and Folsom's comic timing, the character comes off like she is channeling Carol Burnett by way of Dr. Seuss! Lai and Pontenila are also a riot as the Chinese laundry boys who don't speak English. The show's biggest conceit is that all of their dialogue (even when they are singing) is translated with subtitles on four large-screen TVs positioned above the stage. Surprisingly, this never becomes distracting and is generally very well done. During the Friday night performance I attended, there were a few stumbles during the big dance numbers, and two of the chorus girls couldn't seem to keep their hats from falling off their heads, but these were very minor distractions from an otherwise Thoroughly Engaging Show!
Thoroughly Modern Millie Derby Dinner Playhouse Starring Brook Aston, Jessica Ball, Tyler Bliss, Bryan Bowman, Matthew Brennan, Melissa Carlile, Matthew Chappell, Heather Paige Folsom, Anna Irons, Lem Jackson, Tony Lai, Megan Muller, Mikhail Pontenila, Sandra Rivera, Landy Saavedra, Carly Stotts and Rita Thomas. Posted Apr. 6, 2008
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