STAGE : Horrors! The Royal Shakespeare Stages ‘Carrie’

The Royal Shakespeare Company has temporarily abandoned the Bard for Stephen King.

It has staged a controversial big-budget production of a musical based on “Carrie,” King’s horror novel about a high school student with supernatural powers. The book was the basis for the 1976 Brian De Palma movie that launched Sissy Spacek’s career. The musical, which is destined for Broadway, has triggered heated discussion in the British press.

Terry Hands, the RSC artistic director and the director of “Carrie,” has responded that the show “seemed a suitable conclusion to our season of American works.” He was referring to the RSC productions, preceding “Carrie,” of “The Great White Hope,” “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” and a musical based on “The Wizard of Oz” film.

The RSC admits that “Carrie,” which involves several Americans who are responsible for the film and television show “Fame,” is aimed at cashing in on the recent rage in the United States for British musicals such as “Phantom of the Opera” and “Les Miserables.”

Beyond the debate in the British theater world over whether the classics-oriented RSC should be doing a popular musical at all, critics are disgruntled about the show’s scheduling. “Carrie” having concluded its scheduled three-week run in Stratford, moves directly to Broadway’s Virginia Theatre for an April 27 opening. British theatergoers, whose taxes help fund the RSC through government grants, won’t get to see the show in London until at least 1989.

The Daily Mail judged it “disgraceful that the famous Stratford theater should be used as little more than a provincial tryout for Broadway.”

Hands said the company has had to put up only about 10% of the $6-million production. The rest was raised by West German producer Friedrich Kurz. Hands said the RSC is guaranteed a profit of at least $350,000 beyond its original investment and is in for a 10% share of the Broadway profits.

If the show is a hit, he said, those royalties could wipe out the RSC’s nearly $2 million operating loss last year--and help pay for future Shakespeare, noting that only one-third of the company’s annual funding is derived from government support.

Financial troubles last year forced the RSC to lay off 22 of its 97 full-time, salaried actors, and cut back the number of productions from 37 to 27. There was also talk of closing one or more of the RSC’s five theaters--three in Stratford and two in London--until an insurance company came in with a $1.8-million bailout.

“(The RSC) is on a shoestring,” Kurz said, “and they’re being criticized for doing commercial ventures! They’re vital for the RSC’s survival. (The criticisms) make no sense when (Margaret) Thatcher is cutting subsidies.”

Val Sampson, a critic for the British newspaper Today, conceded that “Carrie” could be a moneymaker. “But if it turns out to be a flop,” she said, “it could severely damage the RSC’s artistic reputation in America as well as Britain.”

While focusing on the financial aspects of the show, Hands has been quick to defend it from an artistic viewpoint, beginning with praise of King.

“I consider him to be not just a good but a great writer,” Hands said. “He’s in the American tradition--the tradition of Steinbeck--which deals with small-town life, rather than the life of the big cities.”

Hands compared “Carrie” to the classic myths about Cassandra and Oedipus, spiced with bits of the Cinderella fairy tale and the Samson biblical story. He said other high school students in the class serve as a modern version of the Greek chorus.

“You could say this is the first serious music drama since ‘West Side Story.’ ”

Acknowledging that Americans make up more than 17% of the annual RSC audience, Hands expressed the desire to return something to them, in the form of new American-style musicals. “We’re putting on an American work because we want to learn from and grapple with a different and rich cultural heritage. A great gift of that heritage is the musical.”

Two Yanks wrote the show, composer Michael Gore and lyricist Dean Pitchford, who wrote the film “Fame.” Other key American contributors to the show include book writer Lawrence D. Cohen, who wrote the screenplay for “Carrie,” and Gore and Pitchford’s “Fame” collaborator, choreographer Debbie Allen (see accompanying story). Linzi Hately, an unknown 17-year-old English schoolgirl, will play the title role of the misfit who wreaks telekinetic havoc on her classmates at the school prom.

They’re following the musical to Broadway. However, another American involved in the Stratford production, Barbara Cook, is not. Cook, who was in such landmark Broadway shows as “Candide” and “The Music Man,” but has performed more recently in cabaret and solo shows, told Hands after the first preview of her intention to leave the show.

Contacted in New York, she said she was dissatisfied with her role as Carrie’s fierce, disturbed mother and “wanted to give Terry plenty of advance notice. The way the part evolved, it didn’t show me off to my best advantage.” She felt the role wasn’t right for her first return to Broadway in a musical since “The Grass Harp” 17 years ago.

For Hands, who stressed his admiration for Cook, “it was clear that the part wasn’t going to exhibit her soprano-legato voice, and her ability to break one’s heart.”

Hands and Cook said they parted on good terms, though producer Kurz “was not amused,” he said. “I read about her decision in the (British) press, about 10 days before the end of the run. She could have potentially jeopardized the show.” (Hands said he didn’t inform Kurz before Cook’s press announcement, because he didn’t “want to unduly add more pressure on Fritz’s end than there already was.”)

Cook’s replacement is Betty Buckley, who recently appeared on Broadway in “Cats” and “Drood.”

As the result of an agreement between the British and American actors unions, “Carrie’s” lead and supporting roles are split 50-50 between both nationalities. Ordinarily, union rules prohibit British actors without special “established star” exemptions from performing on Broadway, and similarly lesser-known American actors from performing in Britain.

Andrew Lloyd Webber last year threatened to withhold “Phantom” from Broadway until U.S. Actors Equity reversed a decision that the role played by Webber’s wife, Sarah Brightman, should go to an American because she was not an established star.

“Hopefully,” Kurz said of the unions’ pact, “this meeting of the minds will lead away from the protectionism of the past.”

Robert Koehler contributed to this article.