On screen, Ann-Margret has proven enduringly appealing, from her young and innocent days in “Bye Bye Birdie” to her more mature, more telling work in “Carnal Knowledge” and “Twice in a Lifetime.”
Even the best film performers, however, do not necessarily flourish on stage, as Margret proved vividly Friday night at the Paramount Arts Centre in Aurora.
Though her fans clearly were delighted to see her in person, and though she tried strenuously to entertain her audience, Margret never so much as hinted at the glamour, mystery and magic that have defined her best film work. Quite the reverse, she seemed ill at ease in an antiquated show that would have undone stage performers far more gifted than she.
Nowhere was the gulf between her screen triumphs and her stage woes larger than in the most self-celebratory segment of the evening, in which Margret watched admiringly as some of her famous film clips were projected on a large screen on stage. To see her dancing joyously with Elvis Presley on screen, and then to see her performing leadenly on stage, was to appreciate anew the power of the camera lens.
Of course, many of this evening’s problems concerned the nature of Margret’s stage act itself, which amounted to a re-creation of the TV variety-show format of the ’60s and ’70s. A few creaky “dramatic” sketches, a bit of forced patter between star and back-up players, even a lineup of male dancers who followed Margret around the stage-all the cliches were there, a generation after they had expired on TV.
The choreography, too, owed more to the go-go dancing ’60s of Margret’s heyday than anything remotely related to the ’90s.
So, too, the sex-kitten wardrobe, the gawdy disco colors of the backup lighting-almost everything about this show wreaked of another, less liberated era.
Because Margret has a meager singing voice and minimal interpretive talents, she was not able to overcome these trappings. In fact, whenever her first-rate band and accompanying vocalists were going full tilt, Margret barely could make herself heard.
Perhaps the deepest disappointment of this show, however, was in Margret’s soliloquies. Considering that she has worked with the likes of Elvis and Jack Nicholson, that she was severely injured years ago in a Las Vegas stage accident but heroically recovered, she surely could tell some riveting tales. Instead, she spoke of her idyllic childhood, her upcoming film projects, her picture-perfect life.
Like most everything else about this show, the conversation proved artificial and dull. One had hoped for much more.
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Ann-Margret plays the Paramount Arts Centre in Aurora, presented by the Hollywood Casino Aurora, through Sunday; phone the Paramount box office at 708-896-6666.
