Robert Tanitch reviews Ruthless! The Musical at Arts Theatre, London WC2
Ruthless! The Musical premiered Off-Broadway in 1992. The book and lyrics are by Jack Paley. The music is by Marvin Laird.
The show, which ran for 342 performances and won an award for Best Off-Broadway Musical, spoofs show business and child actors.
Its UK premiere is directed by Richard Fitch.
Kim Maresca and Tracie Bennett in Ruthless! The Musical
A precocious, obnoxious 8-year-old girl wants to play the leading role in a school musical and she is willing to murder the girl who has been cast in the leading role.
Imagine Shirley Temple as a serial killer.
For older theatregoers and older cinemagoers the little girl is more likely to bring back memories of the little girl in Maxwell Anderson’s The Bad Seed, which was seen on stage and screen.
She may also remind you of Baby June (Let Me Entertain You) in Gypsy. She may even recall Flora in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.
The little girl was played by Anya Evans on the press night and very good she was, too.
The script, the songs, the lyrics, the acting, the direction take a sledgehammer approach to satire. Everybody is way over the top; and that includes the audience.
I should have preferred something a bit more subtle.
Reference is made to Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Bette Davis film All About Eve. Now that was really witty.
Ruthless! has an all-female cast; and one of them, a talent scout, is played or rather postured by Jason Gardiner in a broad drag manner. He is not alone. Every character is ruthlessly caricatured.
Tracey Bennett plays a fictional critic, who hates musicals and caused an actress to commit suicide.
Kim Maresca who plays the girl’s mother is transformed out of all recognition in the second half into a diva.
Everything is on the same loud, camp note. Every song is bashed out in a parody of the great Ethel Merman belting out a number across the footlights. There is no let up. It’s exhausting.
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