For the Record: Scorsese – American Crime Requiem

Reviewed by Neal Weaver
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Through October 16

RECOMMENDED

We’ve been besieged of late by a plethora of juke-box musicals, but the production company For the Record has put a new spin on it. They bring us a soundtrack musical, whose score is derived from the soundtracks of movies by major directors. In the past they’ve paid tribute to Quentin Tarantino, but now they’ve turned their attention to six films by Martin Scorsese: Casino, The Departed, Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and The Wolf of Wall Street. The show was created by Anderson Davis, Shane Scheel and Jesse Vargas, and it combines cabaret with music, drama and a light show.

Scorsese – American Crime Requiem has been given a lavish production, with a talented and vocally strong cast and an enormous and elaborate set by Matt Steinbrenner and Kyle Courter that essentially turns the whole theatre into a nightclub, populated by shady characters derived from the Scorsese oeuvre. The multilevel set provides space on its top tier for the 7 man band, led by music director Jesse Vargas on piano and keyboard. From there staircases lead down to lower levels, where there are nightclub tables for audience members as well as the performers, and an enormous round table which serves as a mini-stage.

The Scorsese sound-tracks contain an enormous and eclectic array of songs, and this show includes a lot of them. They range from the upbeat “Takes Two to Tango,” to “I’m Sorry,” “I Will Follow Him,” “My Way,” “Stardust,” and a potent rendition by B. Slade of “House of the Rising Sun.”

The characters include the murderous bar-tender Travis (James Byous), a variant on the Travis of Taxi Driver, and his unstable dream-girl Iris (Olivia Harris, effectively subbing for Lindsey Gort) who rejects him. Justin Mortelliti plays the arrogant and ruthless Wolf of Wall Street, and Jason Paige depicts Frankie, the quintessential Goodfella. Pia Toscano is the jealous wife who makes her straying husband (Zak Resnick) suffer. And Carmen Cusack is Ginger, who’s seduced by Frankie, with disastrous results. Finally, Dionne Gipson scores as a black performer.

Given the violence-prone nature of Scorsese’s characters, there are a couple of bloody beatings and more shootings than I was able to keep track of. At the end, the stage is more littered with corpses than a couple of productions of Hamlet.                                                                                                                                   

The show’s constantly shifting narrative and busy staging can be confusing till you get the hang of it, and the production values are so spectacular that it sometimes seems to be competing with itself. At times, the elaborate lightshow created by Dan Efros and Michael Berger almost overpowers the performers, but fortunately the cast is strong enough to come through with flying colors.

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles; Fri., 8 p.m., Sat., 2 & 8 p.m., Sun., 5 p.m.; (310) 746-4000 or TheWallis.org. Running time: Two hours with a 15-minute intermission.