STAGE REVIEW
Swashbuckling overpowers lively 'Musketeers'

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Theater Critic

•	'The Three Musketeers' 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday Leeward Community College $15 455-0385

So any new production is an anticipated event.

But sometimes such gambles fail.

Despite its concept and production style, director Paul Cravath's staging of "The Three Musketeers" simply doesn't survive a fragmented second act that becomes a jumble of too many letters, sword fights and convoluted intrigues.

Better to cut the evening short with the splashily costumed masked ball that marks the intermission, when D'Artagnan has defeated the evil Cardinal Richelieu by restoring the missing diamond necklace to the queen and most everyone's path is heading upward. But then we'd miss the battle scenes, the beheading, the poisoning and the throat-slashing that mark the rest of the story.

It's a dilemma.

The big evening at LCC is based on Peter Raby's stage adaptation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas. It was a historical potboiler when Dumas wrote it in the 1860s as a newspaper serial. Set two centuries earlier, it's filled with personal and political intrigues surrounding a young man from the provinces who simply wants to become one of the French king's special forces.

Cravath gives the production a comic-book style that exaggerates the dialogue's romance and violence, and ironically comments on the action — pushing the envelope without taking itself too seriously.

The most memorable production element is the costume plot by Cocoa Chandelier that mixes traditional Japanese style with sexual science-fiction fantasy. The cardinal balances an illuminated headdress that suggests a giant deformed lobster, the evil Milady deWinter is done up as a dominatrix with a leather fetish, and even the queen of France shows way too much leg and bosom for anybody's 17th century.

It's a visually exciting mix that has us anticipating what they will wear next and how gory it might get. But when the swordfight theme music signals yet another duel and the cross-hatched plot line doubles back for yet another reversal, we begin to think about heading out to the parking lot to check the air in our tires.

These productions deserve praise for involving so many students in the cast and production work, and for attracting many more as audience. The young cast does its best with the characters, but mostly we remember their hairpieces and exposed body parts.

Reb Beau Allen is consistently earnest and striving as D'Artagnan, and Dan Furst is at his best projecting melodramatic evil as Richelieu. But Ely Rapoza, JEDI, and Gavin Vinta play the title's Three Musketeers like hung-over fraternity brothers who are beginning to tire of all the binging.

The rest of the supporting cast primarily hold up their costumes.

The production will be popular with a young audience attracted by color, noise and movement, but without plot notes to guide them, the story might just as well be another fracas in a mosh pit.