Posted by Louis1989 on 5/9/2006, 10:01 am April 30, 2006 The New York premiere of LESTAT was April 25th, 2006. I’m overjoyed to report that I was there on opening night, stunned and amazed, and I’m eager to tell you just exactly what I saw. But let me say this first: I didn’t really create the character of Lestat de Lioncourt. He lives and breathes in some nine different books that I wrote. But how he came to be is truly something I can’t explain. So if I write here about Lestat as if he was somebody else’s baby, there’s a reason for it. He’s been out there on his own from the start. Yes, he was based on my husband Stan -- on Stan’s vigor and beauty, on Stan’s will and Stan’s courage. And my son, Christopher, has grown up to be Lestat, and that’s a puzzle that commands respect. Yet Lestat is my alter ego, lover, muse and the unabashed hero of my crippled, genderless soul. I’m in love with the guy. I prowl the world looking through his eyes from time to time. For decades, there was nothing I couldn’t express through Lestat’s voice. So when a production captures Lestat perfectly as this unique and thoroughly original musical by Elton John and Bernie Taupin has done, well, I can’t mumble about it, feigning humility. That would be pointless. I’m too enchanted, too intoxicated, too frankly thrilled. Now back to what happened on the stage of the Palace Theater in New York last week. After years of anticipation on my part, I saw the curtain rise, and who should be there but my hero, complete and entire from the first second, so fully realized that I am on the verge of tears. Hugh Panaro was a giant as he moved around the stage with the grace of a panther. His voice was lustrous and immense as he sang Elton John’s rich, melodic and truly glorious music. Bernie Taupin’s brilliant lyrics got right to the point. In essence, Lestat put it out there: I’m young, I’m strong, I’m you! -- and I’m gonna die! Why do I say this when my hero is an immortal? When the “theme” of the musical is that he will live forever? Because we are all both mortal and immortal, creatures locked in time, yet conceiving of eternity, and that is what the play was most certainly about. I knew instantly the production was a triumph; and to the final curtain it never let me down. In those first few moments there was an explosion: here was the bravery, the skill, the power -- to deliver a true adaptation of something I’d somehow managed to unearth in my long and frantic excavations of the mind. Effortlessly and briskly the musical moved the hero into the presence of Carolee Carmello as Gabrielle, Lestat’s mother, and with astonishing power this actress worked a curious miracle, wringing a depth from that character which was beyond what I myself had ever understood. Yet this was Gabrielle -- and this was Gabrielle and Lestat together. At once they transcended the mother and son bond; the alchemy of metaphor was unleashing a muted fury. These were any two people who had loved each other unselfishly and yet with total and consuming need. The heat was white. The audience was spellbound. You could feel the exhilaration in the theater. The great bursts of applause had begun. And we were traveling swiftly into an alternative world in which our most pedestrian concerns and our greatest anguish could be confessed and examined to their very roots. The night went on like that, with surprise after surprise, depths yielding to depths, with members of the audience often in tears. Roderick Hill was vulnerable, seductive and heartbreaking as Lestat’s boyhood friend Nicolas. Allison Fischer brought down the house as the child Vampire Claudia, a woman trapped forever in a little girl’s body, unschooled in compassion, yet steeped in pain. Jim Stanek was the embodiment of Lestat’s tragic grief-stricken partner, Louis. As the arch antagonist, the Satan of Lestat’s trials, Drew Sarich was deeply engaging and mystifyingly sympathetic. Marius, the ancient one, came to quiet strength in the person of Michael Genet, offering Lestat wisdom instead of despair. Every voice in the ensemble was tremendous, flexible and shamelessly gorgeous; song after lovely song broke forth. The plot, direction, story, and staging all moved with irresistible timing thanks to the genius of Rob Roth and Linda Woolverton -- until we were at last awakened by the final curtain from a hypnotic spell. I didn’t want this to end. I wanted to be with my beloved Lestat. A celebratory joy had gripped the theater. I’d witnessed a triumph all right. It was one of the happiest nights of my entire life. Of course the entire concept of the musical is romantic in the finest sense of that word. It’s deliberately over the top. Lestat is the essence of the romantic man of sensibility, privileging his insight and his will to survive over the voices of authority that would relegate him to the realm of the damned. In him, the vampire is a metaphor for the outsider in all of us, the predator in all of us, the alienated one and the rebellious one, the being who wants to live forever and yet be held tightly in some one’s loving and forgiving arms. The show is about redemption because the characters won’t give up on it. It’s about transcending in any way that you can. To create a musical this pure and this committed to the big questions is to fly in the face of the weary world at every turn. How dare you talk frankly about good and evil in an operatic context, one might ask. How dare you mention the name of God? How dare you present characters who care whether or not God exists and what He thinks about us and our suffering? And above all, how dare you affirm that heroes can and do rise to articulate our worst fears and our strongest longings? How dare you do all this in a consummately entertaining and frankly beautiful piece of work? LESTAT makes no concessions whatsoever to cynicism, irony, or camp. The ambition and the achievement are enormous here. The character and the play reach directly for the heart of the audience and will settle for nothing less. Is it any wonder that every song is a show stopper? That cries accompany the exuberant clapping over and over again? That standing ovations greet the final bows? You leave the theater grateful for the nerve that went into this work knowing that you will never be able to fully analyze how and why these strange, eccentric and extreme characters changed your soul. It’s a long road from Epidaurus to the Palace Theater. New dramatic forms have dazzled us and will continue to do so. But only the stage can make the magic I saw in LESTAT. Only living human beings coming together for a certain uninterrupted span of time in which they act, and sing, and pour their hearts out, can achieve this wondrous feat. That’s what I saw and felt on Tuesday April 25th, 2006 at the premiere of this musical. There’s no doubt in my mind that readers far and wide will love it and embrace it, no doubt that Lestat has moved from literature to legend in a divine theatrical incarnation in my own time. Anne Rice, Link: Anne Rice's review
You can read it at her website (link below) and Copying it here:
LESTAT ON BROADWAY: In a word: magnificent!
April 30, 2006
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