Don鈥檛 ever let it be said that Toronto-born director Stafford Arima takes the easy way out.
For his Stratford debut, he tackled placing Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris on the problematic Tom Patterson stage.
For his London debut, he shrank the mega-musical Ragtime into the miniature confines of the Donmar theatre.
And now, off-Broadway, he鈥檚 taking what is largely regarded as the biggest flop musical of all time and trying to give it a new life.
Carrie was originally a novel by Stephen King and then a film by Brian De Palma, both wildly successful, before it became Carrie, the musical, which lasted only five performances in 1988 before closing in infamy, its name synonymous with theatrical disaster.
The 19-year old Arima happened to be in the audience for one of those performances and he had a different perception.
鈥淚 didn鈥檛 think it was a fiasco. What I most remember is that it was like going to a rock concert. I remember the visceral reaction of the crowd. We were in this theatre and something was touching an audience. It was thrilling.鈥
Imagine his surprise when he found out that it went down in history as the biggest of all flops.
鈥淥ver the years, a kind of mythology has been created about the show. The amount of people who claim to have seen it isn鈥檛 possible and their memories are what they think it should have been, not what it was.
鈥Carrie has been a misunderstood show. Just like its heroine, it鈥檚 been prodded, poked and had labels stuck on top of it.鈥
Arima had always dreamt of doing the show. What clinched it was hearing that the original songwriters, Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, 鈥渨ere interested in going back to the drawing board.鈥
The first discovery he made was that 鈥渢he 1988 production stuck very close to the outline of the movie, not the novel. I always thought it would be interesting and a challenge if we created Carrie for the stage in its own form.
鈥淲e went back to the top and asked the question: Whose story are we telling? Whose point of view are we telling the story from?鈥
What they finally came up with was a revelation. In this age when bullying has become a major issue, they discovered that ultimately, 鈥渢his was a story about what it felt like to be an outsider.
鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 matter if you鈥檙e a girl from Maine who has telekinetic powers, or if you鈥檙e from Manhattan and gay, or Asian, or overweight, or whatever, the story can speak to you.鈥
Having realized that, they 鈥済ot rid of the baggage of camp and special effects that were upstaging the human story.鈥
鈥淲e鈥檝e also made it take place today, because characters like (religious fanatic) Margaret White exist everywhere today, they鈥檙e no longer caricatures. They function in daily life and go to Starbucks, then they go home, lock the door and read their Bible.
鈥淪tephen King wrote a novel in 1974 that is still, bizarrely, taking place right now. I wanted to capture that as well as the sense of excitement I felt when I first saw it almost 24 years ago.鈥
Carrie runs at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St., through April 22. For tickets, call 1-212-352-3101.
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