"Carrie," the musical adaptation of Stephen King's novel, might well be subtitled, "The Cult Musical." It is the kind of non-stop, edge-of-your-seat, thrill-and chill emotional roller-coaster that develops a following that keeps a show running for years, despite what some of the more conservative critics may say. The Royal Shakespeare Company's bold venture, currently at Broadway's Virginia Theatre, has a sly tongue-in-cheek approach to King's first superhit that gives it a universal appeal that has audiences erupting in standing ovations at every performance.
"Carrie" is a story of a teen-aged misfit (Linzi Hateley) whose religiously fanatic mother Margaret (Betty Buckley) keeps her from being accepted by the other kids at school. It's one of those "Your mother dresses you funny" cases, with one major exception. Carrie has telekinetic powers that, in emotional crises, tend to become uncontrollable.
Carrie becomes the laughing stock of the school when she panics at the sight of her own blood in the gym showers, having had no education from her mother about her maturing body. The battle lines are drawn. Carrie against her mother, Margaret against the world that threatens to take her daughter away from her, and the good guys, Sue (Sally Ann Triplett) and Tommy (Paul Gyngell), against the bad guys, Chris (Charlotte D'Amboise) and Billy (Gene Anthony Ray). And, of course there is a referee, the gum teacher, Miss Gardner (Darlene Love) who acts as surrogate mother to Carrie, and tries to help her win acceptance.
To be sure, "Carrie" has its problems. There are unmotivated lines, and the plot takes some lurching unexplained turns' but the production elements are so strong that only minimal suspension of disbelief allows its audience to be swept along with the camp-horror fun.
Terry Hands has given the show a polished dynamics that makes the show glide along as swiftly as Ralph Koltai's high-tech, black-and-white sets that have a cinematic dissolve effect to their moves from the high school gym to Margaret's house and various other locations. Among the most spectacular of these set designs is a three-tiered drive-in movie that is a show-stopper all by itself. As if Hands's direction were not enough contribution to the magic of "Carrie,'' he has also designed the most spectacular lighting seen on Broadway this year. The special effects that he has created during Carrie's telekinetic episodes range from the gently humorous (when her hair-brush and mirror take wing in her bedroom) to the breathtakingly chilling (when Carrie wreaks havoc at the school prom) and are uniformly effective.
The score is the same brand of soft-rock, teeny-bopper music and lyrics that this creative team (Gore and Pitchford) provided for the movie and television productions of "Fame." Also from "Fame" is choreographer Debbie Allen, whose work here is among the best of the season, and a member of the cast, Gene Anthony Ray, whose pelvic gyrations provide much of the pseudo-sexual camp-humor in the big dance numbers.
"Carrie'' is not the show that I would recommend you choose for your Aunt Tilly's first trip to a Broadway show, but it is just the kind of camp, blood-and-guts rock-'n-roll thriller that can attract a whole new generation of audiences to the theatre. I had a bloody good time. "Carrie" is edge-of-your seat all-out entertainment.