In Shrek: The Musical, a feisty princess and her big green ogre leapt from the screen to the Broadway
stage -- and into a swamp of mixed reviews.
With its national tour, though, Shrek: The Musical -- opening Tuesday in
the Ohio Theatre in Columbus, Ohio -- might have a happier ending.
Key revisions in the script, score and staging have helped spark a more
positive response on the road, while a separate remounting for London has
garnered good reviews.
"Each time we've done the show, we've learned something new," said
director Stephen Sposito, an Ohio native.
"Shrek is a big Broadway musical with huge sets, magic, amazing costumes
and makeup, a huge ensemble and some of the best singing you'll hear. But it
also has some off-kilter humor and an ironic sense that makes it feel modern,"
he said.
"Where we're at now is the best version we've ever had."
Author-lyricist David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole, Good People) and
composer Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie; Violet; Caroline, or
Change) adapted the two-act musical from the Dream-Works animated 2001 film,
which in turn came from William Steig's 1990 children's book about a
misunderstood ogre.
Set in a faraway kingdom, the musical focuses on Shrek's quest to
re-claim the deed to his land while befriending a donkey, fighting a dragon
and falling in love with Princess Fiona. Something like the musical, the
princess turns out not to be what she appears to be at first glance.
Shrek: The Musical, Sposito said, has "puppets and fart jokes, so it
straddles many types of comedy, but it's also a romance, a fantasy and a
coming-of-age story about discovering who you are.
"Shrek goes on a hero's journey . . . and realizes that he can love a
woman, a friend and himself. We all go on that journey in our life to find out
who we are, and it's always slightly different than we're told."
Reynoldsburg native Liz Shivener plays Fiona.
"She's a spitfire," said Shivener, 24.
"Fiona has a vision of the princess she is supposed to be but fails
miserably. She can't help but be herself --kooky and clumsy, but a beautiful
soul."
Shivener, a graduate of Reynoldsburg High School and Otterbein
University, was cast after playing Belle in a recent national tour of Disney's
Beauty and the Beast. In September, she began playing Fiona in the non-Equity
tour of Shrek. (The tour uses paid actors who don't belong to Actors' Equity
Association, the national union for stage actors.)
"One of the skills I honed in school is physical comedy, and that lends
itself so well to finding the humor in the princess," Shivener said.
"What's challenging is adding the truth to the slapstick so that people
laugh with you rather than at you."
Even before seeing the musical, millions have laughed along with Shrek
and Fiona in four animated films that have grossed almost $3 billion
worldwide, making Shrek the fifth-highest-grossing movie franchise in history.
Although many fans wanted to see the same characters and story onstage as
in the first Shrek film, others were reluctant to pay Broadway prices for a
musical without getting a fresh take on the wisecracking fable.
"We had to strike a balance between honoring the original and creating
something new that has the feelings and rhythms of a musical, which is very
different from the rhythms of the movie," Sposito said.
"So this is the movie --plus new songs, dancing, puppetry and live
performances."
Yet, DreamWorks' first effort to compete with Disney in the family
musical genre wasn't completely successful at first. Shrek: The Musical ran
for only a little more than a year on Broadway from late 2008 to early 2010.
Nominated for eight Tonys --including musical, book and score --it won just
one for Tim Hatley's costumes.
"Aside from a few jolly sequences, . . . this cavalcade of storybook
effigies feels like 40 blocks' worth of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade,
accompanied by an exhaustingly jokey running commentary," critic Ben Brantley
wrote in his review for The New York Times.
"Shrek, for the record, is not bad," Brantley continued. "But Shrek does
not avoid the watery fate that commonly befalls good cartoons that are dragged
into the third dimension. What seems blithe and fluid on screen becomes
lumbering when it takes on the weight of solid human flesh."
To address such concerns, the musical was revamped for the national tour,
which includes a new story-book-style opening sequence (which introduces Shrek
and Fiona much earlier than before), enhanced effects (including a better
dragon), and a new song.
The tour casting helped.
"Liz has a great sense of physical comedy, plus she's beautiful and has
an incredible voice," Sposito said.
"There's such longing in Princess Fiona, and Liz breaks your heart."
