It’s Easy-Listening Nastiness

Memo to producers bedazzled by the twinkling dollars over “The Producers”:

If it were easy to invent a musical-theater language with which to translate an iconic film, the recycling bins of Broadway would not be heavy with Hollywood dreams that refused to sing and dance.

So it goes with “Sweet Smell of Success,” the ambitious but inert attempt to turn that 1957 demi-classic about gossip-driven New York ruthlessness into a dark and edgy musical. The show, which opened Thursday night at the Martin Beck Theatre, has John Lithgow as a deliciously, creepily duplicitous J.J. Hunsecker, the character Burt Lancaster created from the destructive power of columnist Walter Winchell.

Lithgow’s J.J. is matched, old slime for new, by Brian d’Arcy James as Sidney, the young press agent and toady whose smarmy depths were first crawled by Tony Curtis.

But Lithgow, James and the rest of the hard-working cast are all dressed up with nothing to play. There’s the acrid whiff of desperation in this “Sweet Smell,” not to mention a dullness that suggests compromise among the creative team’s high-powered mishmash of sensibilities.

For example, while Nicholas Hytner, the distinguished and edgy British director and new head of London’s Royal National Theatre, works Sidney into an inky froth of incredulous self-love and flop-sweat for what’s meant to be his big “My Turn” number, lyricist Craig Carnelia pulls the plug on momentum with such pap as “It’s time to tear through that door/It’s time now to soar.”

And while that master of woozy absurdity, John Guare, is trying to develop complex relationships and adding bits of witty dialogue to the best of the noir zingers from Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman’s movie script, composer Marvin Hamlisch is soft-pedaling the hard heart with repressed sentiment.

It is hard to imagine a less likely soul mate for this gleefully nasty material than Hamlisch, the easy-listening expert behind the simple, ingratiating tunes of “A Chorus Line.” When his ‘50s jazz-popsy music here is not being incongruous, it is nondescript--monotonous grinding rhythms in lieu of commentary about J.J.’s reign of slander, phony patriotism and proxy violence.

We know this is a dark musical because nobody turns up the lights. Bob Crowley surrounds the story with a fairly static, ominously glittery Manhattan skyline. Think Tim Burton’s Gotham in “Batman,” with drop-in set pieces for nightclubs that look depressingly alike, and with lights, by Natasha Katz, finding beautiful new variations of garish reds and blues in the night sky.

Her purples in the clouds before dawn say New York more authentically than any moment by the self-serious Greek chorus of swarming pedestrians and/or journalists. This is a ludicrous cliche, with men in fedoras and women in hourglass dresses clumping and glaring with stock alienation while mock-whispering, “What you gonna do, Sidney?” and “Better be careful, Sidney” and “Do it, Sidney!”

The group also dances at the clubs in Latin-inspired, snaky-arm ballroom combinations by Christopher Wheeldon, the acclaimed young resident choreographer of New York City Ballet, in his none-too-auspicious Broadway debut.

Could the underbelly of the city ever have been this boring? The show is conscientious about fleshing out the movie’s lean and hungry characters. J.J. doesn’t just use Sidney as a loser; the boss likes and mentors him. J.J. is not just overly protective of his nubile princess of a sister, played with a bit of Grace Kelly confidence by Kelli O’Hara. This time, he is more the jealous lover who, in one of the stronger scenes, drags her around his penthouse living room in a grotesque waltz and slaps his own face while pleading, “Everybody wants me except you.”

Lithgow is a formidable, wily presence, his expressively bland face a canvas on which to make mischief. As the commie-baiting star-maker, he keeps a mean tongue in his cheek. But this J.J. started in vaudeville, so manipulation is still a bit of a dance. In this version, he is asked to reprise his old routine by a caller at a telethon--don’t ask. He’s fun, but Hamlisch rips off his own “One” from “Chorus Line.”

As Sidney, James proves that his breakthrough performance in “The Wild Party” was no fluke. Less pretty than Tony Curtis, this Sydney is a more pathetic loser--hungrier, even more craven, with a smile too scared to survive. Jack Noseworthy does what he can with Dallas, the sister’s down-market boyfriend, a pianist this time, and a crooner who looks like Ray Liotta with a James Dean attitude. Stacey Logan makes the most of a big, torchy blues number for Sidney’s girlfriend, Rita, but her grit is undercut with lame lyrics that rhyme “wine” and “shine.”

J.J. still gets a shiver and a laugh when he says, “I love this dirty town.” But on commodity Broadway, sigh, you can take it home on a T-shirt.

*

“Sweet Smell of Success” at the Martin Beck Theatre, 302 W. 45th St., New York. $25-$95. (212) 239-6200 (Tele-Charge) or (800) 432-7250.

Linda Winer is chief theater critic at Newsday, a Tribune company.