There’s salvation in music. That’s the message in – and of – Sister Act, the Musical, now in the Pasadena Playhouse leg of a co-premiere with the Alliance Theatre. It closes here December 17, picking up in Atlanta after the holidays with hopes of an eventual Broadway run.
Based on the 1992 Touchstone film starring Whoopi Goldberg, the tired story at the core – an independent spirit awakening ordered conformists – is refreshed with a stylistic hybrid of soul music and show tunes: a kind of Sound of Music meets Sound of Philadelphia. The culture clash is between the lead singer of a floundering trio (Dawnn Lewis) and the Mother Superior of a foundering convent (Elizabeth Ward Land). Despite the story’s lack of originality or drama, a winning cast and a new Broadway score that sounds like ‘70s R&B hits promise to keep the box office collection plate brimming.
At the mix is composer Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin). He is joined by lyricist Glenn Slater, his third collaborator since the death in 1991 of the brilliant Howard Ashman. This is not an evening of disco music — which would be a very tough sit. The source sound here is the soulful raw material that went into that dance craze: ballads from power singers like Pendergrass and Vandross (David Jennings’ CD-ready “I Could Be That Guy” and Harrison White’s Shaft-leaning “Dress to Kill” – the latter echoing Gap Band’s “Burn Rubber” hook); the great choreographed guy groups like the Spinners and Temps (Melvin Abston, Danny Stiles, and Dan Domenech put some bad steps to “Lady in the Long Black Dress,” after a seeds-of-rap intro a la The Floaters’ "Float On”); and the obvious homage by Lewis and her back-up singers to Donna, Chaka, and Patty, and such girl groups as The Emotions and Three Degrees.
That great tradition, however, is reserved for the secular sets. Once we get to the nunnery, it's show tunes, with “The Life I Never Led” coming the closest to a showstopper. This soaring ballad is delivered by Beth Malone, and made more powerful by the fact that Malone’s character, a diminutive novice with Audrey Tautou eyes, has the only subplot that comes close to grabbing our interest. “How I Got the Calling,” an ensemble piece for all the nuns, lets Slater show off his word play, creating another highlight that is the descendent of “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria,” sprinkled with “A Little Priest.” The music climaxes with “Mirror Ball,” a happy-ending production number that Slater uses to spin some nice metaphoric imagery.
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