TribLIVE: You may already know “Carrie” from Stephen King's 1974 thriller, director Brian DePalma's 1976 movie or the 2013 remake. Maybe you bought tickets to one of the 21 performances of the now-legendary 1988 Broadway musical or the reworked version that played off-Broadway in 2012. You may even have met it as the unauthorized spoof “Scarrie! The Musical.”
3 comments:
I personally have never seen Carrie, but I would if I had the opportunity. I think dark/scary theatre is something that often not explored, due to its difficulty. The warehouse would be a perfect environment for a show like Carrie where the audience could navigate around the space as the actors perform and interact with the audience. Bricolages's rendition of of Carrie seems intriguing and I would love to see what they do with it. Foley sounds will be a great addition to the piece, for its something the audience greatly appreciates if done correctly.
I worked on one of the first non-professional productions of the revival, and I was blown away at the weight such an easily camped-up story could have. Parody and satire have their place, and I'm sure SCarrie uses these elements well, but it's hardly original to parody an over-parodied story. Carrie is a dark, moving piece about teens who feel ostracized and scared, who are told that what they feel and how they are changing is wrong. When we grow up we feel alienated from our parents and our friends. Our bodies change, and due to the horrid lack of sex education in some parts of the world, many teens think that they are alone. Teens are told that they are sinful and dirty, they are bullied by their peers, and at some point, every teen, no matter where in the social sphere they occupy, feels completely alone. Carrie can seems a little silly with the pigs blood and it's dated time period, but beneath all of that is a truly heart wrenching story about a girl who broke under the pressures. Parody is fun, but its a lot more interesting to think about what is actually happening to the characters as PEOPLE, rather than as oft and over referenced elements of the cultural canon.
Carrie seems like a rather odd story choice for comedic adaptation to me, just because of the extremely dark nature of the original. I imagine it would be difficult to do justice to the story without seeming overly irreverent towards a subject that might be very sensitive to some people. There's nothing wrong with parodies and dark humor, and a lot of times it's relieving to be able to laugh at subjects that are treated so seriously all the time, but I'm glad that the director is aware of the nature of his task and is treating it carefully.
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