Thoroughly Modern Millie

When I walked into the Ram’s Head production, “Thoroughly Modern Millie” on Friday night, I had no idea what was in store for me, other than that I was about to see a musical about a girl named Millie, which was supposedly set in the 1920’s in NYC. Thus, I had expected to see stage full of flappers in colorful fringe, dancing in a line to lots of big band music. What I found was something similar to that—the plot cheesy, a cliché tale of romance in the big city, and was almost superfluous, like fluff that settled between the aesthetic aspects of the performance. It clearly wasn’t the intention of the play write to create a thick and complicated plot, as there was already a lot that needed to come together in the first place to make the play comprehensible to the average audience member. People who attend musicals come for a variety of reasons, but commonly, the audience is comprised of those who appreciate music—those want to experience something more than just words and actions. A musical is an emotional experience, or, dare I say journey. The intention of this piece, as I understood it, was to take the audience into this girl’s world. In this sense it was a success. Throughout this journey, the music served as the emotional bookends, and the spoken word as the fluff in between.

The dancing, singing, staging, lighting, costuming, and orchestration were all so technically well executed individually that each could have been taken by itself as an aesthetically pleasing morsel. Though what was most impressive was the way each element meshed together with its counterparts. Every so often, I became conscious of the musicians in the pit. Having played in a musical before, I understand that the musicians in the pit are supposed to play so smoothly that they are practically inconspicuous, even going unnoticed by some members of the audience. In general, everything blended so well I barely noticed those individuals in the pit. In fact, as I said before, the general continuity of the musical was quite remarkable. Choices that the original playwright made contributed to the play’s clean structure and continuous captivation of the audience was the strategic use of the theme reprise.

As I stated before, there were so many elements that needed to work in concert to ensure the continuity of the play—the playwright wrote in several stylistic elements to tie the work together. Things like the main reprise, and the rotation through different scene sets, not spending too much time in one place, helped to keep the audience engaged and to ensure that the overall message of the two hour play was understood. Meanwhile, there were several artistic choices made by the producers, directors, sound crew, lighting crew, the cast, the musicians, and others on set that seemed to contribute to the overall coherence, ambiance and circular feeling—sort of ebb and flow—of the production. Often, I was so intrigued by all of the different things occurring before me, that I was almost overwhelmed (in fact at some points, almost TOO overwhelmed to follow the plot line). I likened my confusion to the feeling I used to get while watching the advertisements during the Super Bowl. What I mean is that, while most of these ads are really entertaining, and quite well put-together, some of their messages seem to get buried beneath all that excitement and cleverness, so that just about half the ads I see I can remember their general structure, but not the actual product. But, as I mentioned, if the intention of the piece was to get the audience emotionally engaged, it succeeded in that.

Each and every character seemed to buy into his or her role; the on-stage reactions between characters seemed genuine, as if they had been fabricated in real time, not dreamed up by the artist in the distant past.