This new play may be better than a baseball game.

FOXNEWS.COM HOME FOXLIFE

Elton John?s 'Brokeback' Vampire
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
By Roger Friedman

Here?s something only Max Bialystock, the hero of Mel Brooks? "The Producers," could come up with if he were planning a new Broadway disaster: ?Let?s take many of the creative people who made the children?s musical fable "Beauty and the Beast" into a hit, and let?s have them turn Anne Rice?s homoerotic 'Interview With the Vampire' into a musical of its own.?

Well, that?s exactly what many of the people from "Beauty and the Beast" have done. The result, called "Lestat," is in previews; I saw it last night. It is hilariously bad. I don?t mean just awful, I mean, like, "How in the world this thing is playing to audiences is a complete and utter mystery" bad.

And to add to the disaster, because the songs are written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, "Lestat" ? and I?m guilty of it myself ? is going to be known as an ?Elton John musical.?

Almost nothing can prepare you for "Lestat." For one thing, imagine Gaston from "Beauty and the Beast" ? pompous, puffy-chested and baritone-voiced ? transformed into a vampire, for not much reason at all. Then think of him falling not for pretty Belle, but alternately for many handsome young men and his own mother as well.

Imagine Gaston ? albeit one with fangs ? approaching a bed where a young man sleeps innocently and belting out a number about his imminently being ?taken.? The lead actor Hugh Panaro does this with such erotic ferocity you?re a little nervous about how far he?s going to go.

If you?re thinking ?Yikes!? then you?re on the right path.

Of course, the hugely campy and gay part of "Lestat," especially in the first act, is only countered by a lovely subplot of suggested incest between the vampire and his mom. You?ve got to hear and see their scenes together, professing eternal love and cooing like blood-drenched love pigeons. Creepy? Oh yes, and even more so since Lestat and his mother each sport Michael Bolton?s famous long locks for hairdos.

?Lestat? would at least have something to recommend it if the sets were dazzling. But the designer seems to have had about 10 cents to work with: Most of the sets look they were made from leftovers from Kate?s Paperie.

In the second act, set in New Orleans, the vampires appear to be living in the foyer of the Ziegfeld Theater. The only difference is that popping out of the center of a circular red velvet-flocked divan is inexplicably a large, phallic arm topped by a hand. Is it waving? What does it mean? (I think ?stop,? but that?s subjective).

Reading the notes in Playbill was some help, indeed. It seems that "Lestat" was supposed to be based on the first three of 10 (there were 10???) of Anne Rice?s vampire novels. Then the playwright scrapped the third book and reversed the order of the first two. This means that the second act is a Readers Digest-condensed version of what you may know as "Interview With the Vampire."

The first act, which feels like it has no beginning, is from "The Vampire Lestat." The two pieces don?t mesh. The seams that connect them are more obvious than bite marks.

My favorite moment: when Claudia, the child ?adopted? by Lestat and Louis (and played in the movie by a young Kirsten Dunst), is literally burned at the stake. The actress is so convincingly vile as a 40-year-old in the body of a 10-year-old that you can only hope she will reprise the moment for ?Scary Movie 5.?

And then there?s the music. Somehow, Elton and Bernie have managed to write an entire show without any songs. Maybe they?ve left them for another show, or a new album. But there are no songs in "Lestat," just lots and lots of words ? unfathomably multi-syllabic, hard to sing or rhyme words that are jammed into well-constructed unmelodic ruminations.

I always thought Elton John dreamt in ?hooks.? But "Lestat" is not a show from which you leave whistling anything, except for a taxi.