Alexander Dumas, that lucky Frenchman, belongs to one of history's most select clubs: He coined a cliché. With "The Three Musketeers," Dumas sank a hook deep into the general imagination and its candy bars. You don't have to be a scholar of 19th-century French pop literature to know that D'artagan is a youthful hothead, or that all for one equals one for all.
"The Three Musketeers," the full-bore musical adaptation now playing at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, has a surface to match the cultural heft of Dumas' classic. Generously equipped with flashing swords, handsome men and sumptuous brocade, this energetic show only lacks one thing: iconic pull. It's a fun show, but oddly forgettable, especially given that its characters have already been remembered for hundreds of years.
The deficiency starts at the center, with D'Artagan (Kevin Massey) and the three musketeers themselves. Massey is a skilled performer, but his wide, gooey eyes and boyish voice constitute a type-cast matchy-matchiness. As written, D'artagan is a callow male lead of the blankest stamp. Asked to describe him, you might say "young." The marking traits of his three mentors, Athos, Aramis and Porthos, are dutifully alluded to, but we don't spend enough time with the gang to get a true sense of who they are. Dumas, according to the program, wept uncontrollably after killing Porthos in a later story. For myself, being acquainted with these characters mainly through the musical, I could not say why people love them so much. I can only assume there must be a reason.
Among the non-Musketeers, Milady (Blythe Wilson) stands out as the story's villain, partly because of the delicious way she pulls her knife. (With one brusque motion, she kneels, whips seven layers of expensive petticoat out of the way, grabs at a leg holster, and comes up armed.) Director David H. Bell keeps the uniformly strong supporting cast in constant action that is probably best viewed from the front and a bit back. During intimate scenes, my front row side seats gave ample chance to study the back-lacing on the actors' costumes in lieu of actually glimpsing their faces. The raucous fight set-pieces were a riot if, like me, you enjoy a sense of physical danger during stage combat.
The music, by George Stiles, is always tasteful and often gorgeous, but the lyrics and song concepts tend towards the vanishingly bland: "Gallant as can be, slaying dragons just for me," sings piquant love interest Constance (Abby Mueller), describing her dream swashbuckler. (She later laments "there's only so much you can learn to believe in.") Just one number, "The Life of a Musketeer," demonstrates the full potential of combining Dumas' vibrant pop mythos with the production team's abundance of talent. When the writers finally release the inevitable cliché at the climax of that song, the words are reinvested with all the power lost through overuse: "All for one, and one for all." So that's what the fuss is about.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
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