Edition: U.S. / Global

THEATER REVIEW; Both a Sendup and an Embrace, Based on Bergman Again

Published: December 19, 1994

After four decades in the American theater, Harold Prince certainly hasn't lost the power to astonish. This season alone he has generated more than his share of wonder, plying his fabled, high-powered stage wizardry to turn the 67-year-old "Show Boat" into a galloping commercial success on Broadway.

Now with "The Petrified Prince," the musical that opened last night at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, the director is causing jaws to drop anew, though more in consternation than delight. This misbegotten production, with songs by Michael John LaChiusa and a book by Edward Gallardo, poses a searing question not unknown in the annals of musical comedy or, for that matter, in Mr. Prince's own oeuvre: how can so much talent, so much flashy stagecraft and so much conspicuous effort come to so very little?

"The Petrified Prince," adapted from an unproduced screenplay by Ingmar Bergman, is a lumpy, sweet-and-sour stew that seems to have been concocted from a host of clashing intentions. It is chockablock with an ingenious, ever-changing set by the talented James Youmans; elaborate, abrasive costumes by Judith Dolan that suggest Jean-Paul Gaultier interpreting the age of Napoleon; visual gags galore, and a 27-member ensemble that includes reliable pros like Marilyn Cooper and Loni Ackerman.

Yet there is almost no tonal consistency in the book, the score or the direction as the show careers numbly between acrid cynicism and the stickiest sentimentality. One moment it is sending up the cliches of conventional musicals; the next it positively wallows in them. Even Sally Fields's Sybil couldn't manage the personality changes "The Petrified Prince" rings up in the course of two hours.

As a concept, it all must have looked quite enticing. After all, a Bergman screenplay was the source of one of Mr. Prince's most elegant Broadway productions, "A Little Night Music." And Mr. LaChiusa, who made a splash last season with "First Lady Suite" and "Hello Again," was being hailed as the theater's hottest young composer.

Set in 1807 in the sort of Ruritanian kingdom that has always been a part of the American musical's whimsical geography, the show tells the story of young Samson (Alexander Gaberman), a mute, wheelchair-bound prince who inherits the crown of Slavonia when his father dies during rough sex with the evil Queen Katarina (Candy Buckley), a wildly ambitious former prostitute. The country quickly becomes a target for three greedy predators: the mercenary Pope Pius VII (Ralph Byers), the Emperor Napoleon (Alan Braunstein) and the fiery Roberta (Ms. Ackerman), a displaced pretender to the throne living in a Gypsy camp.

This allows Mr. Gallardo and Mr. LaChiusa to dabble in some facile, goofy political satire that is mostly sub-"Saturday Night Live," mixed with the leering sexual content of a fraternity revue. The Pope has a mother fixation. Napoleon is a deluded wimp. And Roberta is a militant, unsmiling protofeminist who says things like, "I hate the fact that I've been victimized by circumstances."

What emotional resonance the play has hinges on the contest of wills over Samson's soul between the power-mad Katarina and the virtuous Elise (Daisy Prince), an unwed mother who has sought refuge in the Viennese brothel where the queen takes Samson to be cured. The outcome is guaranteed, as is Elise's climactic diagnosis of Samson's condition: "The Petrified Prince is petrified by the fear that no one loves him."

The idiosyncratic style Mr. LaChiusa demonstrated in "Hello Again," in which he rang modernist variations on an assortment of musical forms, is scarcely in evidence here. The songs, though caressingly orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick and conducted by Jason Robert Brown, are basic Broadway pastiche, suggesting the inspirational swell of shows like "Godspell" and "Pippin" as well as Sondheim for all seasons. (Lyrics like "If I cry then I'll feel; then I'll hurt, this I know," might be rejects from "Anyone Can Whistle.")

What there is, in abundance, is visually beguiling stagecraft that only serves to underscore the limitations of what is beneath it, which has certainly happened before in Prince productions. Mr. Youmans has created a wonderful miniature Empire-era theater of a set with a painted audience of Daumier-like figures looking on from boxes at the action below. There is a human altar, made up of singing statues; an animal barge with mechanized, Disneyesque cows and sheep and two carnal Punch and Judy-like shadow plays, performed in silhouette behind a scrim to onstage audiences.

The last device, with its confluence of voyeuristic sex and politics as theater, is pure Harold Prince. So is the parade of joyless Viennese prostitutes who strike spread-eagle poses in the manner of the Kit Kat girls in "Cabaret." There is even a little scaffold (shades of "Evita" and "Sweeney Todd") on which the ensemble gathers in Delacroix-like, historical tableaux. Indeed, the show is so full of Prince signatures it could be a textbook for students of directorial handwriting.

None of this, however, camouflages the fact that nearly every emotional and comic punchline goes limp. The actors, trapped between parody and earnestness, all settle for a flat middle ground of performance. Ms. Buckley, in an overblown diva role that should have guaranteed a camp cult audience, plays the Queen in the prosaically nasty manner of a soap-opera vixen. Mr. Gaberman is notable chiefly for his not inappropriate resemblance to the grown-up title character of the Broadway version of "Tommy." And while Ms. Prince, the director's daughter, has a lovely voice, she is never allowed to send up her kitschy Julie Andrews persona.

Given that Garth Drabinsky, the producer of "Show Boat," helped finance "Prince," there may be thoughts of giving it a life beyond the nonprofit environs of the Public Theater. If so, it had better solve its serious identity problems. The most telling parable in the musical is not about an emotionally paralyzed prince; it's about a small musical with overweening ambitions that could never really decide what it wanted to be. THE PETRIFIED PRINCE Book by Edward Gallardo; music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa; based on a screenplay by Ingmar Bergman; directed by Harold Prince; musical staging by Rob Marshall; sets by James Youmans; costumes by Judith Dolan; lighting by Howell Binkley; sound by Jim Bay; musical direction and arrangements by Jason Robert Brown; orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick; barge puppets by Jim Henson Productions Inc.; musical coordinator, Seymour Red Press; assistant to Mr. Prince, Ruth Mitchell; production stage manager, Bonnie Metzgar. Presented by the New York Shakespeare Festival, George C. Wolfe, producer; Jason Steven Cohen, managing director; Rosemarie Tichler and Kevin Kline, associate producers. At the Joseph Papp Public Theater, Martinson Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village. WITH: Alexander Gaberman (Prince Samson), Mal Z. Lawrence (Fernando), Candy Buckley (Queen Katarina), Gabriel Barre (Franz), Timothy Jerome (Cardinal Pointy), Ralph Byers (Pope Pius VII), Marilyn Cooper (Mama Chiaramonte), Loni Ackerman (Roberta), Alan Braunstein (Napoleon) and Daisy Prince (Elise).

Photo: Alexander Gaberman as the Prince of the title with Daisy Prince, who plays a virtuous unwed mother he meets in a brothel. (Michal Daniel/"The Petrified Prince")