Amélie, from screen to stage

Phillipa Soo as Amélie, and Adam Chanler-Berat as Nino. Photo by Joan Marcus

Phillipa Soo as Amélie, and Adam Chanler-Berat as Nino. Photo by Joan Marcus

“Amélie: A New Musical” – a review

Many of us enjoyed the 2001 French film “Amélie” that starred Audrey Tautou. The picture is charming and sweet, and years later Craig Lucas (book), Daniel Messé (composer, co-lyricist), and Nathan Tysen (co-lyricist) thought they could turn it into an equally charming musical. Well, they’ve gotten their show into the Ahmanson so the gamble paid off, at least for them if not for all of us.

The standout performer is Phillipa Soo in the title role, fresh from her star turn in “Hamilton.” The story takes place in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris, with much of it set in the Café des 2 Moulins where Amélie works. She’s a shy young woman who didn’t have a warm relationship with her parents while growing up, and whose best friend was a goldfish (Paul Whitty) that she promptly named Fluffy, as if presciently commenting on this musical.

Phillipa Soo as Amélie, and Savvy Crawford as her younger self. Photo by Joan Marcus

Having left home, having settled into her apartment, one might think that Amélie would be hitting up the clubs and the discos with a sling of new boyfriends. But she’s a homebody, doesn’t date, and doesn’t have a love interest. Of course, as we know, it’s the job of a light comedic musical to change all that.

Fate pushes her to periodically run into a young stranger named Nino (Adam Chanler-Berat), who seems to spend a lot of time crawling around a photo booth that’s in one of the metro stations. It turns out he’s making an art project, a collage of torn-up photos, although we don’t know this until later. At one point he dashes off to catch a train and forgets his notebook, which Amélie retrieves and eventually returns to him at his place of employment, which seems to be a sex shop.

Believability hits a bump at this moment, but hey, this isn’t my musical, and so the story continues with its boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl trajectory, and it ends with two 20-somethings and a big red heart over their heads, metaphorically speaking.

To help us kill the time, there’s some fun and silly stuff, such as Randy Blair doing an Elton John parody, David Andino as a garden gnome, and Tony Sheldon as an aging painter trying to reproduce Renoir’s “Boating Party.” Furthermore, the musical staging and choreography are fine, ditto David Zinn’s scenic and costume designs, as well as the musical direction by Kimberly Grigsby. The show itself is quite colorful, in fact. But the score seems merely serviceable, and with a story that’s so light, there’s just little to hold onto and take home once the lights come on.

Amélie: A New Musical, directed by Pam MacKinnon, is onstage through Jan. 15 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles in the Music Center. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., plus Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Exceptions: There’s a 2 p.m. show on Thursday, Dec. 22; no 8 p.m. performance on Saturday, Dec. 24; no performances on Sunday, Dec. 25; and an early 7 p.m. performance on Saturday, Dec. 31. Tickets, $25 to $125. Call (213) 972-4400 or go to CenterTheatreGroup.org. ER

Comments:

comments so far. Comments posted to EasyReaderNews.com may be reprinted in the Easy Reader print edition, which is published each Thursday.