Life on the prairie was daunting and not for the faint of heart and that cold reality is brought all too vividly to life onstage in the production of Little House on the Prairie, the new musical now playing at TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall, with music by Rachel Portman, lyrics by Donna Di Novelli and a book by Rachel Sheinkin.
This stage version of Laura Ingalls Wilder's series of books about life among hardy homesteaders in the western United States during the second half of the 19th Century certainly has much dramatic portent and an abiding sense of nostalgic familiarity, yet the musical falls short of its goals, failing to fully engage the audience.
Even the presence of Melissa Gilbert - who so memorably played "Half-Pint" in the Little House TV series of the 1970s and '80s and now is cast as Caroline Ingalls - can't save this musical from mediocrity. Try as they might, Gilbert and her castmates unfortunately just can't get past Sheinkin's overly earnest and plodding book, Portman's completely unmemorable score or Di Novelli's clumsily crafted lyrics. Sheinkin's book does offer some glimmer of hope: There are some lovely moments to be found in the script, but they are too few and far between. Portman's score fares worse, since there is not one melody that can be recalled and all the musical numbers sound alike. Di Novelli's lyrics are even worse. When "I'm sick with wind sickness" is the only lyric you can remember, you know the show's in trouble. And, clearly, the material is not served well by director Francesca Zambello's seemingly uninspired staging (save for some creatively conceived horse-racing sequences).
In many ways, Little House on the Prairie seems an amalgam of other shows and scores, with some snippets of Oklahoma, Paint Your Wagon, Quilters, The Secret Garden, Ragtime and even Wicked (I am convinced that Nellie Oleson is the grandmother of Wicked's Galinda...hey, Kansas ain't that far from the Dakotas...it could happen). Unfortunately, it comes off as so much less than the sum of its parts.
So what happened? The Little House books are beloved by millions of readers and the TV series has just as many (if not more) followers. Perhaps part of the blame can be heaped upon the more than a dozen producers, who apparently hoped to create art by committee - and failed. Their vision of life on the prairie is bleak and full of despair, with only more of the same to underscore the hardscrabble life led by the homsteaders. They almost freeze to death in the frigid temperatures of their first Dakota winter, then almost die in the fires that destroy their first successful wheat crop and they must endure disease and pestilence if they are to keep their claim on the land.
But thank God for scarlet fever! When Mary Ingalls is rendered blind by a particularly virulent bout of scarlet fever, there is actually genuine emotion represented onstage, and the scenes between sisters Laura and Mary are dramatically charged and sweetly moving. Still, there's only so much emotion you can wring from that without becoming maudlin and manipulative.
In musical theatre, characters break into song when their emotions become so big, so overwhelming, that the only way they can adequately express themselves is through music. However, in Little House on the Prairie, so much of what they sing about is mundane that it renders the more dramatic moments weak and ineffectual. Di Novelli's lyrics are so resoundingly and thuddingly dull and inexpressive that you find it difficult to relate to the characters and their plight. In fact, by show's end, you're exhausted by the hard life they've led for two and a half hours.
Little House on the Prairie, however, will probably have a pretty good life on tour. Led by Gilbert, who is still an engaging stage presence (and who looks not much older than you remember from her halcyon TV days), the show has legs - on the road. I can't imagine Broadway audiences taking too kindly to the show (and I can only imagine what New York critics would have to say), but it will have a fairly successful life being licensed to regional and community theatre groups. It's a wholesome story that can be staged easily and creatively and that will make it attractive for companies in the provinces, as it were.
Adrianne Lobel's clever scenic design is very effective, as is the evocative lighting design by Mark McCullough and Jess Goldstein's terrific costume design. Michele Lynch's choreography doesn't make much of an impression, although there are a couple of nice numbers (even if one of them comes after the curtain calls) to somewhat satisfy the musical theatre devotee.
