'The Spitfire Grill' serves up folksy music

Too many musicals based on feature films fall short of their celluloid models. But now and then, a stage adaptation of a movie actually outdoes its source material.

That was reportedly the case for a small-scale countrified show called "The Spitfire Grill" when it opened Off-Broadway; it's now having its Northwest premiere at Taproot Theatre.

The 1996 movie of the same title, with Ellen Burstyn and Marcia Gay Harden, considers a young woman called Percy, who comes to a rural Maine town after serving a prison sentence for a major crime.

In tiny Gilead, she finds a job in a cafe run by the stern, elderly owner Hannah. There Percy encounters suspicion and prejudice from the townsfolk — but also sincere friendship, and romantic interest from a local sheriff.

Though it won an audience prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the movie was lambasted critically. Roger Ebert's kiss-off was fairly typical: He called it "an unabashedly manipulative, melodramatic tearjerker with plot twists that Horatio Alger would have been embarrassed to use."

But that did not deter Fred Alley and James Valcq from crafting a musical that's based on Lee David Zlotoff's film, yet also departs from it in key ways.

"The film was more maudlin," says Taproot artistic director Scott Nolte, who is staging the Seattle debut. "It really played up Percy's loneliness. Ultimately, in the film she comes to a tragic end, which pushes the town to the point of recognizing its collective rejection and destruction of this girl."

The Alley-Valcq musical version excised some of the more melodramatic incidents in Zlotoff's scenario. The locale was changed from Maine to Wisconsin, and the cast was winnowed down to seven.

What most pleased critics who welcomed the show, in its initial run at George Street Playhouse in New Jersey and later at Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons, was the folksy music. Writing in New York magazine, the famously hard-to-please reviewer John Simon praised "the amiable country-flavored score," rendered "with the kind of conviction and expertise that make (the songs) transcendent."

Elysa Gardner in USA Today also admired it for "some of the most engaging and instantly infectious melodies I've heard in an original musical in some time."

But despite winning a 2001 Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the homespun little tuner was not a Big Apple hit. Part of the reason, notes Nolte, was timing: "It opened in October 2001, just after the World Trade Center disaster. That was a horrible time for any show to make it in New York."

Moreover, influential New York Times critic Ben Brantley was not a fan. He agreed the music "has a gentle American vernacular charm," but found the production "sterile" and lacking in real emotion, "a dry-eyed wonder."

Having presented a slew of upbeat, twangy shows ("Appalachian Christmas Homecoming," "Radio Gals"), Nolte was intrigued with "Spitfire Grill," despite its modest New York run. (It has since been done in many regional theaters.)

His mounting of the piece is informed by recent chats with the show's original director, David Saint. (Saint, now head of George Street Playhouse, was formerly an associate artistic director at Seattle Repertory Theatre.)

"David and the show's authors wanted it to be a touch gritty, without too many soft images," explains Nolte. "There are no real dance numbers. And they tried to keep the story as honest as possible and not too predictable."

To play the lead role of Percy, Nolte hired Francile Albright, a graduate acting student at the University of Washington: "She has an extraordinary singing voice with a bluesy or rock edge, which really serves the outcast, ex-con aspect of her character."

He also tapped frequent cohort Edd Key as musical director. "We have a four-piece band, with people on keyboards, violin, cello and Edd on guitar, mandolin and other instruments. The score has a folk-meets-Nashville sound, with no electric guitar. There's a different kind of lushness to it that's quite lovely."

When people ask Nolte how much the musical is like the film, he is quick to respond.

"I tell them, if you liked the movie, the musical is better," he says. "And if you didn't like the movie, the musical is a lot better."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com