Concordia's 'Ruthless!' featuring all-female cast

By MICHAEL RYDZYNSKI
(Irvine World News - October 30, 2003)

After a heady experience staging the very adult "Cabaret" at Concordia University last fall, questions abounded as to what the supposedly staid, Lutheran-run institution would present next.

And after much deliberation, that honor will fall on ... "Ruthless! The Musical."

"Ruthless"?

"You're asking, 'Why?' The answer to that is, 'Why not,'" said Michael "Mic" Shackelford, adjunct theater professor at Concordia and director and choreographer of "Ruthless!" the early '90s Off-Broadway cult hit about a Shirley Temple-like moppet who will do anything to get the lead of her school musical, including murder the leading lady.

And yet, it's a musical comedy, albeit with some dark overtones.

"Ultimately, there's a message in there, about the effects of greed and getting what you want at any cost," said Shackelford, who has never seen a production or even read it until earlier this year.

"But it's not a preachy musical in any shape or form. It's just fun. When (musical director) Rob Blaney remembered this show and gave me the soundtrack to listen to, I laughed so hard, it's that outrageously funny. It doesn't take anything seriously."

Even its own name, being a spoof on the tendency of turning anything into a musical or movie and appending an exclamation point and the subtitle "The Musical" or "The Movie" to it. This is but one of many things "Ruthless!" ridicules.

"It's a modern-day satire, spoof, melodrama on show business, the life one has in it and the people who work in it. And it lightheartedly pokes fun at mankind's tendency to be ruthless and heartless to get ahead in the world. There, that's the message, a difficult topic done in humorous fashion."

And because Concordia last year presented the large-scale musical "Cabaret," in which Shackelford played the garish-faced master of ceremonies, the theater department thought it should go with a smaller-scale production this year.

"And the message of 'Ruthless!' is not as powerful or strong as that found in 'Cabaret,'" Shackelford continued. "You're not ever crying, as the musical manages to keep the subject matter very light."

And the acting is stylized.

"It requires one to play in a very stylized manner called melodrama," he said, referring to the 18th-century form of European theater - using music to separate, then underscore, the various scenes of a play - which evolved into the 19th-century American moral play of over-the-top acting exaggerating the horrors of a character's journey to show the shining quality of virtue and goodness triumphing in the end.

"This highly stylized art-form needs to be learned and is good for freshmen and other inexperienced theater students to learn, as it's not as demanding as more dramatic roles. Melodrama plays off the audience's response, so there's a certain amount of improvisation and give-and-take and is therefore a lot more casual. "You don't need Shakespearean actors to do this."

And this is one melodrama in which good may not necessarily triumph over evil.

"It's much more ambiguous, as you're not exactly sure who triumphs," he said, adding: "We'll let the audiences decide and judge for themselves."

Having the full range of students from freshmen to seniors, Shackelford said that "they're all doing a great job."

They're also all female.

"That's the way the original was written," he explained, "but as it turned out, a man gave the best audition in one of the main roles and that role has usually been cast with a man in most cases ever since. But we're going back to the original intent and so have nine female Concordia students, from stage newcomers to seasoned veterans."

Instead of casting a real 10-year-old as the 10-year-old Tina Denmark, Shackelford opted for a Concordia student.

"But she'll play Tina legitimately as a child," he said.

Accompanying the nine women will be a three-piece combo of two pianos and percussion, led by Blaney, Shackelford's frequent collaborator.

"We're also working together at the same time on 'Nunsense' for Woodbridge High School in Irvine," Shackelford said, referring to another all-female musical show, which will run the first week in December.

"Why do we like working together so much? It just sort of happened that we began to work together. We both think alike. We're both a little outrageous.

"But we also balance out one another and we rely on each othe's strengths. We can count on each other knowing what the other person doesn't. His background lies more in contemporary and modern music, musicals and pop music, while mine lies more in standard and vintage repertoire."

"Ruthless!" marks "at least" Shackelford's seventh directorial effort for Concordia since joining the faculty in 1998 - he said he has lost count by now - his fifth overall collaboration with Blaney (six, counting "Nunsense").

"Rob and I communicate really well with each other, another reason we get along working together," he said. "And you definitely need good communication when working on musicals.

"Even small musicals such as 'Ruthless!' and 'Nunsense' are so time-consuming, involving a lot of interpretation and communication in the collaborative process, since you're dealing with music, dances and script."

For example, the opening of "Ruthless!," with its primary-color scheme in costumes and sets and its overall "cartoony" look, will present a "Toontown-type theme, full of bright colors and exaggerated acting," according to Shackelford.

"Instantly, the audience will get the idea this is not real but a highly presentational show full of larger-than-life acting, costumes and sets," he said. "The whole show's been a great deal of fun and we all had a good time putting it together."

Shackelford said that although the storyline is original, movie-savvy members of the audience will recognize familiar storylines and characters pilfered by librettist Joal Paley and composer Marvin Laird.

"There are echoes of 'The Bad Seed,' 'All About Eve' - even a character named Eve - and 'Gypsy,'" he said, "plus all the outrageous movie personalities: Ethel Merman, Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson and others, and even spoofs on names of characters.

"So, movie buffs in the audience should enjoy the show in that perspective, while others not in the know will still like 'Ruthless!' because it's so outrageously funny."

A bit of ironic trivia: a pre-raunchy Brittney Spears once played the role of Tina briefly in the original Off-Broadway production of "Ruthless!"

"There's a good example of what fame can do to a person," Shackelford said wryly.


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