My Best Friend’s Wedding is that rare movie hit that’s actually improved in its stage musical incarnation. Director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall (Anything Goes) keeps things brisk, but the MVP’s of this world premiere at Maine’s Ogunquit Playhouse are Burt Bacharach (1928-2024) and Hal David (1921-2012), posthumously offering up the choicest hits in their repertoire.
The book by Ron Bass and Jonathan Harvey hews closely to Bass’s 1997 screenplay. Appalled that long-ago college sweetheart Michael is days away from marrying someone else, food critic Julianne (“Jules” to all, one of Julia Roberts’s most notable roles) determines to break up the nuptials. Despite the gentle cautions of gay best friend George, she engages in an increasingly desperate series of improvisations to humiliate much-younger bride Kimmy, eventually pulling off an elaborate e-mail scam to drive Mr. Ex back into Jules’s arms.
The set piece everyone remembers is the rehearsal dinner, in which Rupert Everett’s suavely likable George, impersonating Jules’s fiancé for reasons I never quite caught, engages the bride’s family in a group musical hug to “I Say a Little Prayer for You.” To no one’s surprise it stops the show at Ogonquit as well, with dashing Telly Leung (Allegiance) in the leadership role. What is a surprise is that so many of the two dozen additional songs from 50-odd years ago, when sung by these characters, suit them so perfectly.
For instance, Jules is given “The Look of Love,” from the first Casino Royale movie, as her romantic anthem. This automatically elevates her preposterous quest’s motivation. “How long I have waited / Waited just to love you / Now that I have found you, don’t ever go”: words that warm us, particularly as sung by the smashing Kailey Boyle (the understudy at the performance I attended, in for Merrily We Roll Along’s Krystal Joy Brown). Roberts emphasized the character’s wickedness to the point of neurosis, perhaps to extend her acting range. The equally deluded Jules of the musical is far more sympathetic, and her lyrics help make her so.
“A House Is Not a Home” is right for the heartbroken Kimmy (a delicious Lianah Sta. Ana) in the face of one of Jules’s ruses. “Pretty little darling, have a heart,” she sings outside Michael’s door. “Don’t let one mistake keep us apart / I’m not meant to live alone / Turn this house into a home.” Later, “Promises, Promises” provides Michael with a potent declaration of independence from Kimmy’s wealthy family (“Their kind of promises can just destroy a life”), not to mention charismatic Tony-winner Matt Doyle (Company) with a rousing solo.
So kudos to whoever matched the music to the moments – as a guess, Bass and Harvey – though at least one of the song choices is less than felicitous. Leung, a more flamboyant George than Everett but equally suave and likable, deserves a better showcase than “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” conceived as an unmotivated Gene Kelly tribute with a full complement of yellow umbrellas. But overall, this Wedding is utterly aware of Bacharach and David’s knack for putting their fingers on universal states of mind, particularly those involving loves gained and lost. Most of the lyrics in jukeboxers – I’m looking at you, Mamma Mia! – have nothing whatever to do with character or plot, a charge to which My Best Friend’s Wedding can decisively plead not guilty.
George Dyer’s orchestrations and arrangements remain modern while evoking that familiar percussive, tricky-rhythmical, brass-forward 60’s sound. The music is confidently directed by Andrew David Sotomayor, and you couldn’t ask for better vocalizing from principals and ensemble alike. You could ask for a more congenial set, I suppose. Colin Richmond’s latticework of L O V E ’s, like the backdrop to an ancient episode of Hullabaloo, gets exponentially more distracting over time. No complaint about Richmond’s costumes, however, which are one and all suited to character and mood. Keep an eye out for Jules’s pink bridesmaid dress, which inspires the show’s biggest laugh.
Taking on Broadway is always a crapshoot. But I have a hunch that if they tighten the book (it runs a full hour longer than the film) and include the sort of scenic artistry Broadway budgets allow, such as platforms to free actors from having to move clunky set pieces, this property would have a strong shot. I’d also bet on a virtually certain long life on tour, and in little theaters and colleges. The approach is that fresh, the roles that substantial, the score that delightful.
Oh, and good news for buffs: Nothing’s been interpolated from the soundtrack of Lost Horizon.
My Best Friend’s Wedding opened September 26, 2024, at the Ogunquit Playhouse (Ogunquit, Maine) and runs through October 27. Tickets and information: ogunquitplayhouse.org
