The
Arizona Republic
Millie'
is thoroughly charming
Sept. 17, 2006
12:00 AM
Thoroughly
Modern Millie so perfectly
re-creates the feel of a classic musical that it's hard to believe it's only a
few years old. This Roaring '20s fairy tale is the anti-Chicago, combining innocent romance and comic-book melodrama into one big
ball of cotton-candy nostalgia.
In its season
opener, Phoenix Theatre lavishes plenty of love on this sweet tale of a Kansas
girl who moves to the Big Apple to chase her American Dream (in this case,
landing a rich husband). The flapper dresses are gorgeous, the dances are
charming and the Jazz Age scenery pops out all over the stage.
Most important,
this production has a magnificent Millie in Natalie Ellis, with the perfect mix
of wide-eyed charm and sexy ambition, and pipes that demand applause. She gets
strong support from Kaitlynn Kleinman as the even-more-innocent Dorothy Brown,
in her pink dress and blond curls, and Terey Summers as the nefarious Mrs.
Meers, the faux-Chinese hotelier whose real career is selling girls into white
slavery.
That subplot earns
most of the laughs, thanks to such clever touches as Mrs. Meers' Buddha phone
(rub his belly to call the bad guys). However, director Michael Barnard doesn't
get as much mileage from the workplace comedy: Gina Handy only squeezes a few
chuckles out of her role as the uptight office maven, and Andrew Ragone is
downright annoying as Millie's boss. There's more than enough vibrato in the
singing, thank you - Ragone's overly sonorous delivery is intended to make the
character seem supercilious, but it only makes him ridiculous, particularly
when he's delivering such colloquial lines as, "Tha-a-at's using the old
be-e-ean!"
On the musical
side, one might ask for a little more flash from the tap dancing, but for the
most part the production delivers the goods, with confident singing and
well-timed choreography on the big group numbers.
Like Millie
herself, this show is a charmer.
- Kerry
Lengel