Word: ockrent
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. MIKE OCKRENT, 53, British director whose perky retro-musicals, Me and My Girl and Crazy for You, were hits in London and on Broadway; of leukemia; in New York City...
...happens, one model for this Scrooge was not Newt Gingrich but Charles Dickens. "He was a very generous man," says Mike Ockrent, the show's director and co-author, "but I think he viewed himself as a potential Scrooge -- what he might have become had his attitude been different." This Christmas Carol grafts part of Dickens' biography (his days as a child laborer, his father's trip to debtors' prison) onto Scrooge. It makes him less a villain than a victim of his times. "Scrooge is really every one of us," notes the show's composer, Alan Menken...
...Ockrent loved the Christmas pantomimes of his English youth, with their | gaudy costumes and giddy parody. "We have to introduce kids to the theater," he says, "so their imaginations are stimulated intellectually and visually." In his Christmas Carol, children will find plenty to keep them beguiled: high- stepping oranges and pears, the flight of Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Future above the audience, a bountiful snowfall on the expensive seats and, at the end, Christmas trinkets distributed by the cast to lucky theatergoers...
...with a cast of 90 and devilishly elaborate special effects, this very Menken Christmas Carol won't break even for a few years. The producers hope to make it a holiday tradition in New York and other cities. "It's a story that has lasted 150 years," says Ockrent, "and I don't see why it shouldn't last another 150. Hopefully at the Paramount...
...ballads don't pay off. He dances and sings just well enough to remind one of the greats without rivaling them. She is so amplified vocally that she sounds as though she were in a recording studio. The real blame belongs with the show's creators, notably director Mike Ockrent and book writer Ken Ludwig. In their quest for Broadway's past glory, they have forgotten the distinction between music and a musical. Great tunes are fine, and Crazy for You has them. But it takes great words, great stories and above all great feelings to make a great show...