Trip down Memory Lane more a stumble
“Pretty Woman: The Musical” would be a pretty good show if the cast — all pretty fabulous — had better material to work with.
As is, the Broadway-tized version of the 1990 movie that made Julia Roberts a superstar and gave Richard Gere rom-com cred is a pleasant enough dip into nostalgia, since whole swaths of the film are dutifully cut and pasted onstage ... sans the elan.
But the show, with a national tour playing the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale through May 15, desperately needs something of its own.
Instead, the musical’s book just stumbles around and then occasionally leaps blindly ahead with little logic. Not that the opening night audience seemed to mind, cheerfully laughing at 32-year-old gags and watching love scenes play out with a wistful glaze in their eyes.
The Cinderella-meets-Pygmalion plot from the big screen is almost identical to the the stage musical version.
A hooker with a heart of gold, Vivian Ward, meets a wealthy vulture capitalist, Edward Lewis. Despite being from two completely different galaxies (because “different worlds” doesn’t begin to cover the distance between their lives), in a matter of moments Lewis has swept Ward into his penthouse hotel suite. A one-nighter turns into a weeklong transaction and, spoiler alert, eventually romance. He lifts her up; she reminds him he has a heart.
This iteration is set in the ‘80s, which takes some of the heat off of the un-woke storyline. In the opening number, a character sings, “Damsel in distress or hero on a quest? You decide.” That actually simultaneously dodges the thematic problems and sums everything up rather nicely. Don’t scratch the social politics too hard or the whole thing will flake away like paint on an old barn.
And is that really what you go to a show like this for? Probably
not. More likely, you want memorable music (meh), dazzling dancing (double meh) and theatric spectacle (clearly there was a tight budget).
There are some sequences that try to wow but just never get that Broadway buoyancy. For example, a mini fashion show can’t shake that it’s all rather rote.
On the other hand, in a scene that reveals what this show could have been, a trip to the opera blooms into a charmer with a mashup of “La Traviata” and one of the best songs from the show, “You and I.”
The score by Bryan Adams — yes, THAT Bryan Adams — and Jim Vallance gets
the job done with a rhyme scheme and musicality that would fit quite nicely in several SiriusXM channels, even though nothing particularly sticks despite the cast singing with a vibrant gusto that gives the production its sole soul.
And fans of the Great White Way really need to see the leads Olivia Valli (Frankie Valli’s granddaughter who’s been in “Wicked” and “Jersey Boys”) and Adam Pascal (“Rent,” “Aida,” “Cabaret,” “Something Rotten!”) do their thing. Whatever zing “Pretty Woman” has is largely due to them and not the script. As good as they are, though, Kyle Taylor Parker almost steals the whole shebang playing several characters and serving as a narrator/ emcee/fairy godfather.
One more thing: After about two hours and a 15 minute intermission, you may want to rush to the parking garage or the valet during the curtain call, but resist or you will miss a more-of-this-please performance of the rousing Roy Orbison theme song from the movie.
If you go
“Pretty Woman: The Musical” runs through May 15 at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturdays and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. There are 2 p.m. matinees Saturdays and 1 p.m. matinees Sundays. Tickets start at $35. To order, call 954-462-0222 or go to BrowardCenter.org.