Val Kilmer in The Ten Commandments: Now without the Jews
Stage review: The Ten CommandmentsKodak Theatre, Los Angeles
November 2004
First commandment of Val Kilmer's Ten Commandments: Don't see Val Kilmer's Ten Commandments.
Like filing a Freedom of Information Act Request, finding out the other perpetrators of the Kodak Theatre's execrable Ten Commandments requires needless hoop-jumping: one must fork over 12 bucks for a program. If my mother was in the habit of always saying something, she would always have said, "If they were proud of it, they would have let you know for free."
Luckily, we were able to pick up a program someone had left behind after the first act, as if the waste of twelve dollars was worth avoiding the taint of having "Val Kilmer IS Moses" promotional literature on or near your person. We wanted the program because the Kodak's version of the Moses/Pharaoh/God triangle was significantly different from the one we learned long ago, at the business end of some nuns, and we hoped we'd find some explanation therein.
All having the program yielded was that Curly Sue was in the show, too.
This Ten Commandments was bad on two levels. The first was poor production. Kilmer sang like Jim Morrison in the third act of The Doors, a passionless and often slurred monotone the only benefit of which was to make the other singers sound much, much better. Why Val Kilmer as Moses? Is he close to the Moses story (not counting The Prince of Egypt)? Did he lobby for the part like an Old Testament-crazy Sean Young? Did this production need a name bigger than Curly Sue (Alisan Porter did the best she could with Miriam's slim character pickins) to bring in the crowds (the production is now giving away huge blocks of tickets)? Val Kilmer was so wrong for this role that our row was surprised that G-d didn't take out the Kodak Theatre and the California Pizza Kitchen with it. Why not just have Peter Riegert BE Moses? Why not Jake Busey?
Scenes like the burning bush, the passage of the Red Sea, and Moses' infantile journey through the bullrushes were realized like the handiwork of a well-funded junior high. The Red Sea's parting looked like a slo-mo shot of the stirring of a gin and tonic, and (back to Moses again) Kilmer's box step was so bad - or the actor was so lazy - that a be-turbaned, shorter stand-in blatantly took his place while Kilmer went offstage for dance sequences.
Tom Cluff's projected images made the show almost worthwhile, and the performances of Porter, Kevin Earley as Ramses, Nita Whitaker as Zipporah, and Nicholas Rodriguez as Aaron made us wonder what those talented singers are up to when they're not perpetrating someone else's crime on stage.
The second level of badness was the story. French clothing designer-turned-producer Max Azria brought Elie Chouraqui's er, vision of Moses to America.
In this Ten Commandments, both God and the Jews are systematically removed from the Moses legend, leaving nothing but props and set pieces that could have come from anywhere. Yahweh and Judaism aren't mentioned, the Burning Bush doesn't speak, and Moses carries the Ten Commandments from offstage - not saying where they came from. Instead, the Kodak's audience is treated to a tale of dueling brothers who chose different paths (Moses and Ramses), a girl gone bad in the want of another man (Pharaoh takes his brother's sloppy seconds, and Nefertari resents it; her song "Can You Do That for Me?" would be a fun number in a musical where having a JAPpy vamp would be the least bit appropriate), and the universal sorrow of mothers.
Sucking the blood from this rock of a tale dear to two billion or so people and reducing it to a melodrama with sand is, at best, dopey. What's more, after cleansing the story of its burdensome Jewishness, we are left with a musical that doesn't quite fit together. Prior to Moses showing up from the green room with his tablets and righteous wrath (the Commandments themselves are read/sung/horribly paraphrased by a boy castrato, for some reason), the Israelites were in the middle of shrugging off the misery of desert wandering with a half-hearted orgy. Other than the lights coming up, that was the best part of the show. And Moses had to come and fuck it up.
One argument for the utter absence of God in this piece might be that if everyone knows the story already, then dramatic license can be taken with the more mundane elements. This would make sense if there were even the faintest, olive-oil-sprayer sheen of God in this production. Instead, Moses speaks of conquering fear and believing in yourself. Everybody knows God ain't about that; you don't conquer fear - you fear God. You don't believe in yourself - you believe in God.
Other than the abysmal reviews The Ten Commandments will undoubtedly get and the meager box office BCBGMax Azria Entertainment will reap, this show backfires in another way: though the cast is populated by people like the blonde, dreadlocked chorus member Spring (there is a glut of single-named performers in this show), leading an unlettered theatregoer to believe the Jews had nothing to do with this guy Moses, even the most ridiculous anti-Semite can't deny the Holocaust unfolding onstage.
Whatever you do, don't let your people go.
Labels: stage, val kilmer
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