'Carrie' is played for laughs, but the joke falls flat

The

yikes!!!

factor for

Carrie

should be very high. Brat Productions' Halloween show(!) adapts the scary novel by Stephen King(!), which was scarily adapted for the screen by Brian De Palma(!). But despite

yikes

expectations, the show turns out to be distinctly unscary. Nor is it funny. This is where campy meets infantile.

Another yikes factor needs to be acknowledged. The recent terrible news about a Rutgers student's suicide makes this the wrong moment for a jokey show about the sexual bullying of a misfit teenager that ends in death, especially when Carrie is played by a guy (Erik Ransom) in drag. Because of this very unfortunate coincidence, what was conceived as a bold rethinking comes off as tasteless - despite the show's tacked-on after-school-special plea for understanding of outsiders.

I did my homework and watched Carrie on DVD a couple of nights before the show's opening, so it was fresh in my mind - fresh enough that I was surprised to hear and see much of the movie's dialogue, scenes, and devices duplicated, nearly word for word, in Erik Jackson's script.

Except that it doesn't mean it: All the terrifying religious fanaticism mingled with sexual repression, all the teenage cruelty and the mob mentality and social ostracization, combined with grotesque violence and apocalyptic revenge, all become just a way to be cute.

There is quite a lot of winking at the audience. The horror-show closet that Carrie's mother locks her into to pray invites the drag line, "I'm tired of being in the closet." Carrie's comment on going to the prom is, "It'll be a nightmare."

Some great material is wasted, and so are some very talented actors. Especially impressive are Bethany Ditnes as Chris Hargensen, the gorgeous, slutty, would-be prom queen, and Leah Walton as Margaret White, Carrie's loony mother. Colleen M. Corcoran as the gym teacher (Glee before the fact) has a great throw-down exercise scene with the girls. Michael Alltop directs.