Theater Review : ‘Fall of Ceausescu’ Musicalizes Romanian Revolution

A new musical, “The Fall of Ceausescu,” has just arrived at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Don’t expect to see Eleana singing “Springtime for Nicolae and Romania” while a chorus line of Securitate agents goose-step in unison behind her.

Writer, composer, lyricist, producer and co-director Ronald Conner has provided no kitsch here at all. Instead, he has produced a very earnest, insistent musical. Conner retells the documented facts of the 1989 Romanian revolution that culminated with the execution of the stupendously cruel Communist dictators Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, ending a 24-year rule that had seen the nation’s starving citizens left to sing hosannas while the pair lived extravagantly and sold their country’s food abroad.

For most of the evening, “The Fall of Ceausescu” is as primitive dramatically as its two remarkably unsubtle protagonists. Even worse than Elena (Merri Sugarman) and Nicolae (Norman Large) is their slick henchman Vlad (Craig Wells), their chief of security. Here Vlad is depicted as the man who helped along the overthrow of the Ceausescus so that he could then become a henchman again for Nicolae’s successor, Ion Iliescu.

In a scene as grueling as it is predictable, Vlad interrogates an angelic single woman named Magdalena (Janet Metz), who has ignored the dictator’s order to produce little communists for the country. He rapes her and then, as Nicolae watches approvingly from a window, shoots her on the street. Nicolae then carelessly pops a grape into his mouth, further signifying his casual disregard for human life.

Director Greg Holford can do nothing to lighten the thick gloom of this script. We watch soldiers shoot into a peacefully demonstrating crowd. The stricken actors then roll on the floor, as if being bulldozed into a pile. We hear the people sing dirges that repeat and repeat how “For 24 years/Romania has been bled by the razor fangs of Dracula.” Much better is a song in which something happens: A dissonant quartet called “Everybody Wins” shows Nicolae and Elena insulting Vlad and Defense Minister Milea (David Engel), while the two men display the enduring patience and secret conniving it takes to live successfully under these two masters.

Musically, the drama is at its most interesting, and it boasts some very good musical actors in the cast. Janet Metz’s powerful voice, with its fragile vibrato, is perfect for Magdalena, who rises from the dead in the street to wear a hooded cape and become the symbol of her battered country. Her song, “I Believe,” is reminiscent of Fantine’s “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserables,” and it features a lovely counter-melody on flute and piano. Magdalena becomes the prosecutor at the trial of Elena and Nicolae. Her scruffy, long-haired brother (Kirk Mouser) becomes an agitator for social justice, looking very much like Che Guevara from “Evita.” He roams around the stage handing out pamphlets to babushkas and staring maniacally in the time-honored tradition of Charlie Manson. When he takes over the state-run TV newsroom, the two anchorwomen hear him sing about feeding “the starving mice that cry out from their hunger pains” and instantly embrace him and join his fight.

A more subtle song is delivered by Elena, and it is very well handled by Sugarman. “Mother of Romania” is the musical’s only glimpse into the incomprehensible thing that was Elena Ceausescu. On the eve of the 1989 massacre of civilians by troops at Timisoara , Elena steels herself by imagining she is the just and strong mother of a country, a mother who knows best for her children. “And if they cry, mother will silence them,” she sings sadly. This is a rare chilling and simple moment.

As Nicolae, Large later delivers a similar but less effective “My Romania” with an impressive voice. He looks a little too much like a Western news anchorman, though, with his square jaw and perfect Tom Brokaw haircut. As Vlad, Wells also sings his slimy henchman song with finesse.

While one wants to applaud ambition, writer/lyricist/composer/co-director/producer Conner seems to have bit off a bit more than he could chew, or at least sink his razor fangs into.

* “The Fall of Ceausescu,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 4, 514 S. Spring St., Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 24. $23-$25. (213) 485-1681. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.