‘Misery’: Stage adaptation misses the mark

‘MISERY’: Bruce Willis as Paul Sheldon. Photo: Joan Marcus

MISERY
Written by William Goldman
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Directed by Will Frears
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West 44th Street
(212-239-6200), www.MiseryBroadway.com

By David NouNou

To see or not to see Bruce Willis in Misery? That is the question.

Anyone can tell you it is far easier to adapt a thriller or mystery to the screen than it is to take an iconic suspense film and adapt it to the confines of the stage. A stage play can be expanded to the screen and sometimes made better. Case in point: Sleuth, and sometimes not, as in Deathtrap. However, when you take a novel written by Stephen King and then adapt it to an exhausting thriller, as Rob Reiner did in the 1990 movie, it is virtually impossible to turn it into a stage play unless you have a brilliant playwright and an equally experienced, visionary director.

In order for a thriller to really work, it needs tension and balance; and if you’re scaling it down for the stage, you need a scene that is totally new and the audience does not see it coming; that’s where the first-rate writer comes in. Recreating iconic scenes from a movie in semi-darkness, inserting cheesy horror music and creaky sound effects, is not innovative direction; it is lazy and unimaginative and borders on tedium. I am a proponent of big Hollywood stars coming to Broadway, it’s great for business and invigorates sales, but in this case, inserting a big movie star and a beloved TV veteran in the title roles just doesn’t cut it.

Misery is set just outside of Silver Creek, Colorado in the winter of 1987. A popular novelist, Paul Sheldon, has skidded off a mountain road in what would appear to be a fatal crash, during a snowstorm. That we see in the movie. In the play, we are told that Annie Wilkes, his “number one fan,” has pried him out of his car and brought him over to her house to recover. She is a nurse and is helping him to recuperate from his multiple injuries. In case you forgot, James Caan and the outstanding Kathy Bates (who won an Oscar for her performance) played the roles. Here, Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf portray the parts of Paul and Annie.

What Rob Reiner did in the movie, which was astounding, was he turned the viewer into Paul. We were experiencing every painful, harrowing ordeal he was going through by the hands of the grotesque Annie. The greatness of the movie also involved the dynamics and the chemistry of the actors: James Caan, who was lanky, and Kathy Bates, who at certain camera angles was huge. That’s where the tension came in, so how was he going to escape the clutches of this behemoth? You know the rest of the story, so why spoil it for you, in case you forgot the novel or the movie?

Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf are both accomplished stars, and one would think they would make a dynamic duo. Wrong. We know Mr. Willis is a great superhero on the screen; unfortunately, he is one-dimensional on the stage. We also know that no one can do crazy better than Laurie Metcalf, but from the onset here she just comes off as demented, and there is no shading to her character, thus there is nowhere for her to go but do shtick. Again, this could be attributed to the absent direction by Will Frears, which does not help either actor. Even the final battle between them, which should be epic and an edge-of-your-seat moment, just comes off as a staged, by-the-numbers fight and evokes laughter from the audience. At this point, the audience should be drained, not laughing as a tension releaser. Once more, this is the fault of lackluster direction.

Which brings us back to paying big bucks to see or not to see Bruce Willis in Misery? That is the question.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 19, 2015
Reviewed at press performance on November 18, 2015

‘MISERY’: Bruce Willis. Photo: Joan Marcus