Sunday, January 5, 2003
BY CHRISTOPHER POTTER News Arts Writer

Want to treat yourself to the "premiere" of a Broadway musical that first opened in 1986?

Behold, "Smile," a show based on the 1975 movie of the same name; a show which opened to mostly enthusiastic reviews and mostly sold-out houses; a show which abruptly closed after just 48 performances, for reasons that remain mysterious to this day.

"I saw 'Smile' on Broadway Jan. 3, 1987," recalls director/choreographer Ronald P. Baumanis, whose Ann Arbor Civic Theatre production of "Smile" - perhaps the first-ever staging in Michigan - opens Thursday at Lydia Mendelssohn.

"I thought it was fabulous. I was ready to rave about it, to my friends and in print (Baumanis was a Big Apple resident at the time). And then they closed it down Sunday, Jan. 4. I couldn't believe it, and neither could anybody else."

Indeed, "Smile" rates special attention in Ken Mendelbaum's "Not Since 'Carrie"' - a classic book on classic Broadway musical flops - as the most under-appreciated and under-seen great musical show of the 1980s. Baumanis shares the same enthusiasm: "It was a great show, full of energy, a great song score (by Howard Ashman and Marvin Hamlisch), a great cast.

"Then something happened, but to this day nobody will say exactly what (though rumors of a violent schism between Ashman and Hamlisch abounded). Suddenly, the show was gone, before they'd even had a chance to make an official cast recording of the songs. The lack of a recording is a crucial absence, since 'Smile' never got revived by community and school groups because they had nothing to listen to. It is absolutely a lost score."

Fortunately, the music from "Smile" remains intact on paper, as does Ashman's script. Inspired by Michael Ritchie's satirical film about competition and society, the show is about a teenage beauty pageant titled Young American Miss, set in Santa Rosa, Calif., and likely patterned after the now-defunct Miss Teenage America.

Ritchie's movie proved a schizoid work: It was wickedly funny when probing the surface friendships and subsurface backbiting among the girls competing to represent California at the Young American Miss finals. Yet whenever Ritchie shifted the focus to adults - the local sponsors, judges and parents involved - the film declined into broad caricature.

"The musical softened the adult characters somewhat," Baumanis says, "made them more realistic. And the show is set almost entirely at the pageant itself, rather than digressing into people's living rooms. That puts a lot more focus on the girls themselves and on the ethics of winning, as opposed to the importance of friendship. You can be very lonely when the lone goal in your life is to win something."

"Smile" trains its prime focus on two contestants, Robin and Doria (played by Kristina Thompson and Kristin Ritter), who form a tenuous palship despite differing backgrounds: Doria is a worldly pageant vet determined to rise above her trailer-trash upbringing, while Robin is a suburban-class rookie for whom the contest becomes a crash-course introduction to adult competitiveness. Their story dovetails that of pageant coordinator Brenda Freelander (Elise Stempky), a one-time runner-up who now lives vicariously through the youngsters, and her false-hearty husband Big Bob (David Andrews), an RV dealer whose veneration of America the Opportunistic is starting to unravel.

"It's a very simple, straightforward show," Baumanis says. "If we do it right, members of the audience will find themselves picking their own favorites to win the pageant, and start rooting for them. I've made the cast swear not to tell anybody who wins, but I'll go as far as to say that you won't be expecting what ultimately happens.

"One problem I've had to deal with is the fact that the actresses playing the contestants have bonded so much during rehearsal. I keep having to remind them, 'You're rivals. You're enemies, fake friends."'

Baumanis calls Ashman and Hamlish's song score "a wonderful achievement, and the sad thing is it's still not commercially available. But it's very 'Chorus Line' sounding, very peppy, upbeat. There's an extended 14-minute musical sequence at the end of Act I featuring the girls in the pageant's talent competition, where you get to hear some of the best songs in the show."