cMSH_6932Musicals take the stage in Boston this spring–and it’s hit and miss. HIT: INTO THE WOODS, Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant, bittersweet musical romp through the thicket of life, and Lyric Stage Company of Boston has mounted a marvelous production directed by Spiro Veloudos which has just been extended through June 29th! We’re talking ingenious sets (including a silvery branched wood), evocative lighting, costumes/makeup somehow whimsical with touch of the forlorn, all of it propelled by an excellent live orchestra, and a cast of Boston’s finest musical performers, beginning with Will McGarrahan’s wise and wily narrator. It’s the kind of part he plays to perfection; he knows a secret you don’t and can’t wait to see the look on your faces when you do!

Sondheim and James Lapine (score and book) have a lot more on their minds than the familiar fairy tales in ACT I. ACT II takes us back into those woods and looks hard at what happens “after” the “after” in”Happily ever…”! These woods are haunted with old hurts and reversals, betrayal, murder, sadness, pain, and diabolical moral dilemmas– all made powerfully funny, tender, and wise by the audacity of the questions asked and the profundity of the answers provided: witches can be right, giants can be good.” Sometimes it’s not black OR white–not “or” but “and.” Never were a pair of conjunctions put to better use.

Or a cast: Nortie winner Erica Spyres’ pristine voice and sweet face make for a disarming Cinderella. Maritza Bostic’s cape-wearing, knife-wielding wolf killer Red Riding Hood is feisty and funny. Gregory Balla is a pleasingly doltish, clear-voiced “Jack” of Beanstalk fame, John Ambrosino’s Baker broke my heart in Act II’s anguished “No More.”  The Baker’s wife, the gorgeous Lisa Yuen is a splendid actress with a voice like a clarion call. Maureen Keiller’s goofy/cruel stepmother cracked me up, and Aimee Doherty works her sassy witch to a frenzy. Only the Princes left me wanting– they need more swagger and sway.

Sondheim’s labyrinthine rhymes (“raiding my arugula and ripping up the “rampion,” my”champion”!) don’t stop at clever. His heart-achingly beautiful “No One Is Alone” is a melody and lyric to live by; this production brought me to tears for all the right reasons.

MISS: “CARRIE the musical” — as horrifying as that sounds. If there’s anything worse than having a bucket of pig’s blood dumped over your head in the middle of your senior prom– it has to be sitting through this show now having its New England premiere at SpeakEasy Stage Company of Boston, directed by Paul Melone. The show’s book based on Stephen King’s bestseller about a repressed Maine teenager with telekinetic powers and a religious fiend of a mother found a wonderful retelling on film in the now classic teen horror revenge fantasy starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. But the stage incarnation is horrifying for all the wrong reasons.

I don’t blame the cast– many of whom are fine here: Kerry Dowling, rang a strong committed performance out of the most primitive material. The beautiful and sweet voiced Sarah Drake is convincing as “Sue Snell,” one of Carrie’s more compassionate schoolmates, and Elizabeth Erardi as Carrie, while straining at the midpoint of her vocal register, nevertheless brought a luminous grace, dignity,  and growing confidence to this bullied teen’s persona.

The musical is nothing if not reductive, stripped of time, place, character, and therefore– relevance. The story is set in some kind of non-specific netherworld, where the girls attend class in high heels and teachers dress like sluts when chaperoning the prom. Someone does pull out an iphone so I gather it’s contemporary?! The characters are one dimensional– the girls with one exception, are all screechy, malevolent teen-girl bitches while the boys act like latter day escapees from West Side Story and may as well be wearing signs that say “juvenile delinquents- beware switchblades,” but for one who minces around in bermuda shorts, recoiling from his “girlfriend”–suggesting (gasp) he might be gay!?*!!

The big terrifying climax in the gym is funny rather than frightening, slack and badly choreographed, with kids miming in slow motion, the results of Carrie’s terrible powers unleashed, while feeble lighting effects meant to suggest flames look more like a few light bulbs burned out.

That the title words “the musical” are in lower case is apt: this is a musical at the lowest rung of musicals, tuneless and melodramatic with breathtakingly uninspired lyrics. I had just come from INTO THE WOODS and Sondheim’s sublimely rhymed, hauntingly gorgeous melodies from INTO THE WOODS, when later that later that evening I barely escaped linguistic shock upon entering the cliched landscape of Michael Gore’s (music) and Dean Pitchford’s (lyrics) score. Don’t hurt yourself stumbling over such pedestrian gems as:

“Your dream just might come true”; “Life may pass you by”;  or “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, it’ll be a night we’ll never forget”; and my favorite: “How those boys could dance/they were demons of romance.” Now that’s scary.

If you dare: CARRIE the musical at SpeakEasy Stage Company through June 7.