NEW YORK — Tarzan, baby, you've come a long way from the days of Johnny Weissmuller — and that's not necessarily a compliment.
Hollywood's most famous incarnation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle hero might have a hard time recognizing the new version of himself, the one unveiled Wednesday at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre. That's where Disney opened a stage adaptation of its 1999 animated film.
And while the elaborate production is visually stunning, the show, directed and designed by Bob Crowley, is emotionally and musically lightweight — almost as skimpy as Tarzan's leather loincloth.
Weissmuller was a beefy guy, and his Tarzan had a distinct personality, something never quite achieved by any of his cinematic successors such as Lex Barker, Gordon Scott or Jock Mahoney.
Josh Strickland, Broadway's Tarzan, is bland, boyish and bulk-free — the Ape Man by way of Abercrombie & Fitch. The biggest thing about him is his voice. It is one of those piercing instruments favored by contestants on "American Idol," where Strickland apparently was once a national finalist.
It's a voice perfectly suited to the pop songs of Phil Collins, who has augmented his "Tarzan" movie score, including the Academy Award-winning "You'll Be in My Heart," with more than a half-dozen undistinguished new songs. The music, while melodic, is not theatrical. It's anthemlike in presentation and, more often than not, stalls David Henry Hwang's straightforward if not terribly involving recitation of how Tarzan came to be and his subsequent identity crisis.
The Disney movie was short on plot and so is the stage version. The evening starts with a terrific shipwreck, tossing father, mother and baby on the shores of Africa. The parents are soon dead, plunging to their deaths after being pursued by a fierce, scary leopard. (Theatergoers with small children be warned.) The youngster is rescued by a female gorilla, who raises the tyke as her own.
We watch Tarzan growing up — a role played at different performances by Daniel Manche and Alex Rutherford — under the watchful eye of his surrogate parents (portrayed by Merle Dandridge and Shuler Hensley). They are suitably grave and majestic.
Crowley's ape costumes accentuate fuzzy, almost feathery bodies and heads, but the faces remain human. They give the performers room to bound and leap across the jungle setting. That movement is the work of several people, most notably Pichon Baldinu, who did the aerial design, and Meryl Tankard, in charge of the athletic choreography. It's exhausting.
Crowley, best known for his Tony-winning sets for the Lincoln Center
Theater revival of "Carousel" and Disney's "Aida," gives his all in the design department. And his work is quite eye-popping.
The dominant color of the vine-tangled setting is green, lush shades that range from dark emerald to Kelly green to almost chartreuse. But the designer doesn't rest with a jungle setting. There's a lovely nighttime rendezvous for Tarzan and Jane, complete with a large moon, similar to the orb he created for "Carousel."
The mammoth settings tend to dwarf the performers, particularly when the intrepid foreigners arrive to collect exotic flora and fauna. Jane, the incessantly perky British botanist, is portrayed by Jenn Gambatese with her cheerfulness amped up to the rafters, while Tim Jerome shows commendable restraint as her kindly father. Their impetuous, gun-toting American guide, played by Donnie Keshawarz, is a pallid villain, and his comeuppance by Tarzan is remarkably anticlimactic.
But then the sparks between Jane and Tarzan don't exactly ignite either. And humor is scarce, too, although a smidgen can be found in the performance of Chester Gregory II as Terk, the most jivin' and incongruously street-wise of the apes. He gets to lead the crew in Collins' jazzy "Trashin' the Camp," the catchiest number in the film and on stage.
In one of the musical's most accomplished bits of stagecraft, a huge butterfly swings and soars over the audience. With a musical as unfortunately earthbound as "Tarzan," you have to appreciate every high-flying moment you can get.
Here are quotes from some other reviews:
Ben Brantley, The New York Times: "Momentous events — from fatal fights with evil animals to Freudian struggles between parents and children of two species — occur regularly in the course of this retelling of Edgar Rice Burroughs' evergreen adventure novel. But any tension or excitement is routinely sabotaged by overkill and diffuseness . . . Mr. Collins' soda-pop songs (expanded from those he wrote for the film) surface and evaporate more or less at random, like bubbles on a pond. The whole experience starts to feel like a super-deluxe day care center."
Clive Barnes, New York Post: "You, Tarzan! Me, Agonized! Disney's new musical swung shakily into the Richard Rodgers Theatre last night, and as far I'm concerned, it can swing right back out again . . . . The talented Phil Collins wrote the music for "Tarzan," and here and there, glints of that talent shone through — although it was all so vastly overamplified that it seemed to be making up in volume whatever it was it lacked anywhere else."
Eric Grode, The New York Sun: "With the exception of an eye-catching opening, Disney's latest foray onto Broadway lands . . . with all the artistic grace of George of the Jungle, Tarzan's cartoon counterpart, slamming into that tree."