'First Wives Club' Needs More Member Benefits
By Melody Udell in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 18, 2015 6:40PM
Broadway in Chicago's 'First Wives Club.'
Move over, jukebox musicals: Screen-to-stage adaptations now might be my least favorite form of musical theater. Oh sure, there are some that really do work on stage (The Lion King, Matilda, and even Spamalot). But others aren’t quite so successful (sorry, Ghost). First Wives Club, the much-loved ‘90s movie about a trio of best friends who seek revenge on their cheating husbands, isn't quite working as a stage adaptation. Not yet, at least.
While the show, which is vying for a Broadway run, is filled with talent—especially the leads, played by Faith Prince, Christine Sherrill and Carmen Cusak—the premise is a tough buy, especially now. Set in 1992 (thankfully, book writer Linda Bloodworth Thomason opted not to adapt the plot to 2015), three college besties, now in their mid-40s, reunite to mourn for their mutual friend, Cynthia (Michelle Duffy). Reeling from the news of her husband’s affair and a subsequent high-stakes divorce, Cynthia committed suicide, leaving her friends not only stunned by her death but rethinking their own marriages, which all are in various stages of decay. Prince’s feisty Brenda and Cusak’s church-mouse Annie are both stay-at-home moms and the unappreciated driving forces behind their husbands’ successful businesses, and Sherill’s Elise is a Grammy-winning diva who launched a successful record label alongside her husband. Together, the three cook up a scheme to ruin their soon-to-be-ex-husbands and their husbands’ new, much younger (and much-stereotyped) girlfriends. That scheme, though, is convoluted—or at the very least, poorly communicated—and the audience is left trying to figure out what, exactly, the women are trying to pull off.
The songs, by Motown songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, punctuate plot development rather than propel it. Although there are some truly funny one-liners (“You look like a poor man’s Elton John and I look like a figure skating coach from a communist country”), the musical as a whole develops a certain predictable cadence. The stage version also lacks a “You Don’t Own Me” number, which, in the movie, was a memorable scene in which the women sang out defiantly to express their suddenly realized freedom from their foolish husbands. Fans of the movie might be disappointed, of course, but the exclusion of that song, that moment, from the stage show points to a larger, overall lack of purpose.
The First Wives Club’s founding members are talented and tough, but without an established mission, it might be difficult to find anyone willing to join.
The show runs through Sunday, March 29 at the Oriental Theater, 24 W. Randolph, 312-977-1700 or online.