Playwright: Music by George Stiles, book by Peter Raby, lyrics by Paul Leigh
At: Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand ( Navy Pier )
Contact: ( 312 ) 595-5600; $40-$67
Runs through: Feb. 18
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
The Three Musketeers looks amazing, sounds pleasing and stays true to Alexander Dumas' 18th-century tales of intrigue, romance and derring-do. But peel away the opulent surface and you've got a largely forgettable score and a generically told story. And while The Three Musketeers is certainly not the eye-popping debacle that is the season's other new musical, The Pirate Queen, its heart is similarly hollow. Composer George Stiles, lyricist Paul Leigh and book writer Peter Raby have created a pleasant musical, but not a thrilling one—and thrills are what a swashbuckling tale set at the epicenter of the French Enlightenment demand.
This was a time of continent-wide intellectual and emotional revolutions, and of humans ( the monied ones, anyway ) reveling in their role as masters of the universe and embracing the arts and sciences in great, questing gulps.
In The Three Musketeers, the fathoms-deep backdrop of the Enlightenment is mere shallows, glittery and eye-catching ( with costume designer Mariann Verheyen's work capturing the detailed extravagance of the era gorgeously ) but, in the end, it's so much mere prettiness.
Stiles—who wrote the lyrics and some of the music to Mary Poppins, currently a critical and commercial hit on Broadway—has been working on Musketeers for almost 15 years.
The end product is beautiful and hollow, two words that can also be used to describe the performance by Kevin Massey who, as D'Artagnan, should be the show's anchor. Far more compelling than Massey's generic pretty boy hero is Juan Chioran as Athos, a musketeer with fiercely tormented eyes and a past that includes a horrible, haunting act of betrayal.
But this is D'Artagnan's story. Brash, naïve and as full of himself as only a young man can be, he manages to cross each of the three musketeers in one day. A trio of duels is scheduled between D'Artagnan and each of the Musketeers.
An all-too-convenient appearance by a gang of bad guys leads the musketeers and D'Artagnan to vanquish the menacing enemy rather than each other. Once that's accomplished ( and fight coordinator Kevin Asselin's fast-paced and complex swordplay is terrific ) , it's 'all-for-one and one-for-all' among the musketeers and their new-found protégé, D'Artagnan.
Director David Bell makes the ensuing elaborate morass of a plot clear as a fine diamond. Episodes involving missing gems, damsels in distress and the fates of nations are resolved with near-scientific efficiency.
The trouble is, you don't much care about how the adventures turn out. The Three Musketeers mines the same themes as Shakespeare—war, revenge, betrayal, love and painful coming-of-age are all contained in the story. But they're presented as glossy rather than deep, and that makes the Three Musketeers a sparkling bauble and little more.