Seeing 'Carrie,' the Flop We Missed in 1988

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION Marin Mazzie, left, and Molly Ranson as crazy mother and bullied daughter in the Off Broadway revival of "Carrie."

In Which the Mean Kids Don't Die Nearly Gruesomely Enough . . .

Dear Long-Lost D:

REMEMBER 1988, when Reagan was in the White House, Melanie Griffith had big Staten Island hair in "Working Girl," and we were just kids (relatively)?

Remember when you first heard that "Carrie" was being made into a musical and you thought it was the greatest idea since the casting of Divine as the mom in "Hairspray"? You immediately invited me and ordered tickets. And then the reviews were so colossally awful that the show closed after four days. Before the date we were supposed to see it.

That's why it breaks my heart to tell you this, D. It's back. And because you're not on the planet anymore, you're missing it again.

The reviews are in ("Prom Night, Bloody Prom Night"; "Carrie: Blood Lite & Boring"; " 'Carrie' Is Back, Shock-Challenged and Bloodless"), and no one seems to think this is a production worth reincarnating for. They're doing it at the Lucille Lortel in the Village instead of in a big Broadway theater this time, which seems like a good idea. Apparently the last one ("The Telekinetic 'Carrie,' With Music," Frank Rich's review) was pretty splashy and big on special effects.

O.K., this is the only part of the show I'm going to comment on critically.

As you'll recall, the end of the story is that the mean teenagers who have tormented poor Carrie, the most biologically naive teenager in the world, go for uber-revenge at the prom by arranging to have her doused with blood. But she ends up triumphant by using her newly discovered telekinetic powers and giving them all horrible, much deserved deaths.

But there's no blood in this "Carrie," not even fake blood. It's all done with lighting and projection design. (I'll have to explain about projection design later. It's all the rage in the 21st century.) The evil kids die, but they do it in a stylized way that a modern ballet company or a performance artist at the Whitney Biennial might use, and it looks annoyingly painless. What fun is this story if we don't see the arrogant cool kids suffer?

John Simon was there the night my friend B and I saw it. Simon is not at New York Magazine anymore. He's at bloomberg.com. (I'll explain .com to you later too.) And you know how old you'd be by now, so imagine how mature he is. It was good to see that the great man takes the subway.

But then everybody does these days. Oh yeah, you missed the Great Recession too.

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COMING SOON

More of last week's theater adventures: "Tribes" and "Painting Churches"

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"Carrie," by Lawrence D. Cohen, Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, directed by Stafford Arima, Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, (212) 352-3101, mcctheater.org.