'Hood' wink
Yes, there’s really a Robin Hood musical
ABOUT a year ago, Douglas Carter Beane was enjoying a posh lunch with An
drew Lloyd Webber, who asked him what his next project was. Beane smiled and said, “A musical about Robin Hood!”
Lloyd Webber nearly choked on his Dover sole. “Good God, it’s cursed — don’t do it!” He then regaled Beane with the story of “Twang!!,” the 1965 London flop that destroyed the career of Lionel Bart, who wrote “Oliver!”
Rattled, Beane later found the opening number from “Twang!!” on YouTube.
“It’s enough to make you swear off not only musical theater but the English language,” Beane says. But he and his husband, composer
Lewis Flinn, decided to go ahead anyway.
“Hood: The Robin Hood Musical Adventure” opened last week at the Dallas Theater Center and, judging from the reviews, the curse has lifted.
“Intoxicating,” “joyful,” “witty,” “sunny” and “charming,” said the critics. Beane and Flinn have hit the bull’s-eye.
“The expectations were sub-low, especially since I was also directing,” says Beane, who wrote Broadway’s “The Little Dog Laughed” and the book for “Xanadu.”
Beane decided to do the show after reading the old classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
“They’re merry adventures,” he says. “They’re funny and whimsical. They’re not some dark action movie with Russell
Crowe chopping off somebody’s hand.”
Flinn’s contemporary score is “a bit like Mumford & Sons,” Beane says. It incorporates some English folk songs and gives its leading ladies — at least one of whom sword-fights — power ballads.
Beane set his show in a barn and has his 12 young actors play their own instruments. There are also several puppets, molded from bits of garbage.
“I’m stealing from every director I ever worked with,” Beane jokes. “I’ve gotten e-mails from many of them saying, ‘I’ll see you in court.’ ”
“Hood” runs through the first week of August. Several Broadway producers are cutting short their stay in the Hamptons to head down to Dallas. Meanwhile, Beane’s putting together a “sizzle reel” for YouTube: “Once it goes up, look out Shuberts, here we come!”