The Devil Wears Prada (Play)

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    ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Review: An Adaptation That Needs Tailoring

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    The new Elton John-Shaina Taub musical, based on the popular film about a fashion-world ingénue and her demanding boss, isn’t yet ready-to-wear.CHICAGO — A movie-to-musical that wants to have its cake and eat it, too, and still fit into a sample size, “The Devil Wears Prada,” opened at the James M. Nederlander Theater here on Sunday. With music by the rock god Elton John and lyrics by the Off-Broadway sweetheart Shaina Taub (“Suffs”), it had seemed poised to set a trend or two.Though the show takes place at a fashion magazine, its creative team doesn’t seem to have agreed on a style. Is this a sincere story of a young woman’s education — sentimental, professional, sartorial — or a Fashion Week party? An inquiry into toxic workplace culture or an excuse to put an Eiffel Tower (technically, two Eiffel Towers) onstage? This is a show that has tried on everything in its closet. Nothing fits.Adapted from the 2006 film, itself adapted from Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 roman à clef of her year at Condé Nast, it follows Andy Sachs (Taylor Iman Jones), a recent journalism graduate. Andy has big dreams. The Big Apple quashes them quickly in “I Mean Business,” the show’s efficient opener. After six months of rejections, she somehow lands a coveted job at Runway — a fictional stand-in for Vogue — as the second assistant to its imperious editrix, Miranda Priestly (Beth Leavel.)Andy doesn’t care about fashion. She has the cable-knit tights to prove it. But she needs a job to pay the rent. (Yes, the musical assumes that an entry-level media gig guarantees financial security. How dear.) So she makes what she perceives as the first of many Faustian bargains — to put her dreams on hold and stick it out for a year.“My voice can wait,” she tells Miranda. I mean, Joan Didion got her start at Vogue. But sure.The trouble is, Andy isn’t very good at her job. Certainly she lacks the maniacal perfectionism and bonkers wardrobe of Emily Charlton, the venomous first assistant (Megan Masako Haley, wasted until the second act). For help, she turns to the magazine’s creative director, Nigel Owens (Javier Muñoz), who gives her the makeover she so desperately needs, in “Dress Your Way Up,” a power ballad inspired by the Met’s costume collection and the coffee mug platitude that you should dress for the job you want.But Andy remains ambivalent about her work. And is a hot pink romper and thigh-high boots really anyone’s idea of office wear? (The costumes, which range from the flamboyant — the chorus — to the unpersuasive and oddly wrinkled — the principals — are by Arianne Phillips.) The musical is ambivalent, too. The film, with its sleeker wardrobe and more substantial visual pleasures, seemed grudgingly admiring of the fashion industry, as commerce, as art. The show, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, a serious-minded artist I would not have associated with glitter or caprice, can’t make up its mind.The songs unfold pleasantly enough, with flashes of glam and morsels of wit, but they tend to feel last-season. The choreography, by James Alsop, defers to Broadway vernacular, with glimmers of ballroom. Of course there is voguing. Though Kate Wetherhead’s book makes a few updates — there’s a reference to collagen powder — it doesn’t take a point of view. And in a show with a stated aversion to starches, the jokes are deeply corny.“What should I do?” Andy wails as Miranda approaches.“Find a better exfoliant, for starters,” Nigel says.Javier Muñoz, center, as the creative director of Runway magazine, which is overseen by the imperious editor Miranda Priestly, played by Beth Leavel.Joan MarcusAt times, I wondered what a writer who takes bigger, more trenchant comic swings — Bess Wohl, say, Jocelyn Bioh, Halley Feiffer — might have done with this material. Would a score that acknowledged the last 40 years of popular music have made a difference? This version takes Jones, a charismatic actress with a lithe, flexible voice, and gives her little to do except stress and dither. (She glows, by the way, no exfoliant needed.) And though magazines like Vogue have finally admitted a lack of diversity, the musical never acknowledges that everyone mistreated by Miranda, who is white, is a person of color.“The Devil Wears Prada” wants to impart a vision of luxury and style — which explains the makeover scene, the gala scene, the Paris fashion week scene. Christine Jones and Brett Banakis, the set and media designers, have a lot of fun with Paris. But Andy, a woman with no professional bylines, seems to feel that fashion is somehow beneath her. Even when she comes to appreciate couture on a personal level (“Who’s She?”), she never recognizes it as substantive, rejecting the chance to write about it. It remains frivolous, unserious, girl stuff, which gives the musical, despite the presence of so many women on the creative team, a shade of antifeminism.None of the female characters in the show support one another until nearly the finale. Andy’s two roommates (Christiana Cole and Tiffany Mann) are sketched so thinly I never caught their names. They still make time to judge her. As looks go, it’s not great.Another nervous day at Runway: Jones, left, Muñoz and Leavel, with members of the ensemble.Joan MarcusWhich brings us, of course, to the Miranda of it all. In the film, Meryl Streep played Miranda with sleek silver hair and a voice like liquid nitrogen — an ice queen to sink the Titanic. But Leavel is an actress of humor and warmth with a gift, demonstrated in “The Drowsy Chaperone” and “The Prom,” for arch self-parody. Miranda should have her underlings shaking in their Louboutin boots. Here, everyone stands pretty tall.Has Wetherhead’s book melted Miranda or does Leavel lack the necessary frost? Both, really. The musical gifts her a late confessional, “Stay On Top.” Because if you have a voice like Leavel’s, of course you should showcase it. But Miranda isn’t built for self-reflection. And “Stay On Top” doesn’t offer much anyway.Curiously, the character the musical represents most fully isn’t uncertain Andy or meanie Miranda, but cucumber-cool Nigel. In addition to “Dress Your Way Up,” the musical’s best number, he also delivers the second act’s “Seen,” a poignant song about how fashion magazines succored him as a gay adolescent. Muñoz, a consummate performer, elevates both.The musical’s first act closes with its title song, a suggestion that the fashion world is a kind of inferno. “Hell is a runway,” the chorus sings (with a sound mix so muddy that I had to look up the lyrics later), “where the devil wears Prada.” But nothing in the show confirms this. The worst anguish Andy suffers? Her boss calls too often. “The Devil Wears Prada” isn’t as sumptuous as it should be or as bitingly incisive. If it wants a life beyond Chicago, it could use some alterations.The Devil Wears PradaThrough Aug. 21 at the James M. Nederlander Theater, Chicago; devilwearspradamusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. More

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      Does the Devil Wear Prada in Indiana?

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      Discovering Broadway, a nonprofit founded in 2019, has brought actors and writers to the state for weeklong retreats to workshop movies-turned-musicals.CARMEL, Ind. — What do the performers Christy Altomare and Corey Cott do during a weekend in this midsize Central Indiana city in between workshops for a Broadway-aimed musical?They get cake. And steak.In that order.“I’m pretty sure Corey lived in the Cake Bake Shop this week,” said Joel Kirk, the founder of Discovering Broadway, a nonprofit that brings New York actors and creative teams of Broadway-bound musicals to Indiana to work on their shows-in-progress.On Sunday night, while New York City’s biggest stages remained dark, Altomare (“Anastasia”), Cott (“Bandstand”) and five creative team members of the musical “Ever After” performed eight songs from the Renaissance-era Cinderella story, with sheet music printed just hours before.They were performing for two fully vaccinated audiences at Feinstein’s at Hotel Carmichael, an upscale nightclub named for the entertainer Michael Feinstein, who is the artistic director of the nearby Center for the Performing Arts.The audience members Missy Eldredge and Joel Keating during the opening number on Sunday.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesAmid clinking glasses, soft purple lighting, waiters in black vests over white button-ups and black masks and women in heels — heels! — the musical’s composer, Zina Goldrich, played the piano as Altomare, Cott and the rest of the team sang numbers like “My Cousin’s Cousin” and “Right Before My Eyes” as well as songs written the day before, including a new finale.It was the first time many of them had performed live since March 2020.“It’s so good to see everyone’s faces again,” Cott said.“Ever After” was the second musical to bring its creative team to Carmel for a weeklong workshop. The team for “The Devil Wears Prada,” the musical based on the 2006 film about Anne Hathaway’s aspiring young woman pitted against Meryl Streep’s fashion-world ice queen, visited in February.Except for one very important absentee.Joel Kirk founded the nonprofit Discovering Broadway to bring the creative teams of Broadway-aimed musicals to Central Indiana.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesSir Elton John, the musical’s Tony-winning composer, “was unable to attend,” Kirk said, though his husband, David Furnish, one of the musical’s producers, stood in on Zoom calls from Britain. (Paul Rudnick, who co-wrote the book, was also absent.)It was a missed opportunity for the composer to visit the state where musicals like “The Prom” and “Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” are set.“He’ll just have come back,” Kirk said. “I’d love to show him Carmel.”The Discovering Broadway initiative, which Kirk founded in late 2019, is part of an effort by the 26-year-old New York-based producer and director to bring top-notch talent to his hometown.Kevin McCollum, a producer of “Rent,” “Avenue Q” and “In the Heights” as well as “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Ever After,” said the biggest advantage to workshops in Indiana was their capacity for focused concentration, without people leaving early or arriving late because of other commitments.“It’s like the filet mignon of time,” he told the audience at Sunday’s 5:30 p.m. performance. “The A5 Wagyu $120 8-ounce of time.”Kevin McCollum, a producer of “Ever After,” has brought the creative teams for two Broadway-bound musicals to Carmel for workshops. Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesMcCollum brought the “Prada” team to Carmel for Discovering Broadway’s first workshop in February, ahead of the musical’s 2022 premiere at Chicago’s James M. Nederlander Theater. It was the first time Shaina Taub (“Twelfth Night” at the Public Theater), who wrote the lyrics; Nadia DiGiallonardo, the music supervisor; James Alsop, the choreographer; Kate Wetherhead, who co-wrote the book; and Anna D. Shapiro, the director, had been in a room together.“We were trying to figure out what we needed to do to keep the show going,” Alsop said. “Kevin was like, ‘Carmel, Indiana!’ And we were like ‘What?’ Then we got there, and it felt like a movie set.”After a mutual friend introduced him to McCollum in 2019, Kirk got a call from the producer in late January asking if he could host a weeklong retreat for the “Prada” creative team — in 17 days.Kirk’s answer: Yes.“I wanted to look back on the pandemic and say, ‘Wow, we programmed “The Devil Wears Prada” before Broadway was back,’” he said.Audience members received commemorative programs at Sunday night’s performances.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesSheet music used at the performance was printed just hours beforehand.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesCarmel is home to Michael Feinstein’s Great American Songbook Foundation and hosts a prestigious summer vocal competition based on Broadway and Hollywood musicals.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesBecause the coronavirus vaccine was not yet widely available, the team members wore masks and were regularly tested before, during and after their time in Carmel. Taub said precautions, combined with heavy snowfall and 20-degree temperatures, meant the team essentially stayed in the hotel the entire week — and worked far beyond the typical 10 a.m.-6 p.m. schedule.“I’d wake up in the morning with lyrics in my head and then go to sleep with lyrics,” she said.Three months later, McCollum brought a second team to Carmel to workshop “Ever After,” a feminist Cinderella story based on the 1998 film that starred Drew Barrymore, with a goal of staging a concert performance by the end of the year. And this time, the sunny skies and balmy temperatures meant they could actually explore.Wetherhead, who wrote the book with Marcy Heisler, was taking long walks on the Monon Trail, a 27-mile section of a former rail line — then rushing back to the hotel with ideas. Heisler, who also wrote the lyrics, was writing at the nearby Eggshell Bistro, on a sun deck at Hotel Carmichael and in her own room at 3 a.m.“We were working eight hours a day,” she said. “Just not 9 to 5.” (There was time for steak breaks at Anthony’s Chophouse and Monterey Coastal Cuisine, she said.)The musical already had two out-of-town runs, at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey in 2015 and at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta in 2019. The New York Times critic Charles Isherwood called the Paper Mill production, “storybook-pretty if bland,” with a score that “blurs together in the memory almost instantly.”But Cott, who arrived with Altomare on Friday and taught a master class for local students, said that this version was a “dramatic change” from the previous stagings. Goldrich, the composer, and Heisler, known for their children’s musicals “Dear Edwina” and “Junie B. Jones,” wrote five new songs, and the others on the team, including the director Marlo Hunter (“American Reject”), collaborated to revamp much of the rest of the show, including writing a new finale.Altomare and Cott with  members of the “Ever After” creative team. In the fall, Kirk hopes to host a workshop that mixes leads from New York with a local cast. Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesUnlike in New York, where invited audiences often consist of Broadway theater owners and stakeholders, Kirk said the focus is on sharing the work with the Carmel arts community, which is home to Feinstein’s Great American Songbook Foundation and hosts a prestigious summer vocal competition based on Broadway and Hollywood musicals. (According to Kirk, 80 percent of the audience members for “Ever After” were Central Indiana residents who were not contributors to the organization.)Discovering Broadway also underwrites tickets for young people and funds scholarship slots in master classes taught by visiting artists.“I’m creating opportunities I would’ve leaped at growing up in Carmel,” Kirk said.Kirk, who remains Discovering Broadway’s sole employee, said more than 60 Broadway-aimed productions have inquired about doing residencies in Indiana in the year and a half since he founded the nonprofit, which has an annual budget of between $350,000 and $400,000. His goal is to do three workshops per year in the Indianapolis area.Each retreat can cost Discovering Broadway upward of $50,000. (The organization pays for the team’s travel expenses and housing and also provides a per diem and an artist stipend.)“But $50,000 is nothing for the experience and investment we’re able to provide in the community,” Kirk said.Kirk has lined up two corporate sponsors for each workshop; received five grants, including from the Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation and the Central Indiana Community Foundation; and enlisted more than 50 individual donors, all through relentless hustle. He estimates he had about 628 meetings in the organization’s first four months.In the fall, he hopes to host a workshop that mixes leads from New York with a local cast of six to eight actors, as well as local musicians.“The goal is to create a bridge,” he said, “to bring two communities together to create a third.”Near the end of the performance on Sunday night, Altomare and Cott sang the new finale, grasping hands, their faces almost touching. They crept closer together, their lips inches apart — then they hugged.“I’ll give away they do kiss at the end of Act 1,” McCollum said onstage. “But you’ve gotta pay for that; it won’t happen here.” He added: “Seeing that kiss is worth at least $100.”“Sold!” a woman in the audience yelled. More