The whole plot of “Unlock’d” revolves around a sheltered young woman who’s so obsessed with her hair that she refuses to cut even a small piece of it to give her suitor.
This may have worked if the Prospect Theater Company’s new musical were about Rapunzel or Crystal Gayle. Or even a cross-dressing Bret Michaels.
But the show centers on a sweet dingbat — blond, of course — who has a very close relationship with her tresses. You can pile on all the fairies, gnomes and star-crossed lovers you want, but the stakes are going to be pretty low and uninvolving if you lack satirical bite.
Drawing from Alexander Pope’s 1712 poem “The Rape of the Lock,” along with Shakespeare and fairy tales, the story takes place “back then-ish, across the Pond-ish,” that is, 18th-century England. The smart, spunky Clarissa (Jennifer Blood) has great affection for her stepsister, Belinda (Jillian Gottlieb), even though Belinda has given names to her locks, and sings to them.
“Christina is long, and Georgina is not,” she trills. “Lotty and Letty get knotted a lot/Meandering Beatrice cannot be bossed/So Beatrice often gets lost.”
You keep waiting for Belinda to bust gospel moves and belt “Praise the Lock!,” but Sam Carner and Derek Gregor’s score sticks to a traditional musical theater template, with at least three power ballads too many.
The women are courted by a pair of equally mismatched brothers: Roderick (Sydney James Harcourt), a dashing officer in tight pants, and bookish nerd Edwin (A.J. Shively, last seen as the strait-laced son in “La Cage aux Folles”).
Surrounding them are three sylphs and three gnomes who keep meddling in the romances and have some of their own — we end up with a whopping eight couples.
The dreadlocked gnomes look like hobo Phish fans and speak as if not quite all there mentally. The sylphs are perky and want to recruit Belinda, though you wonder what they see in her. “She may be radiant but she’s not that bright,” Edwin says — then falls for her when she reveals a well-hidden sensitivity.
Director/choreographer Marlo Hunter makes everybody wildly overplay the goofy antics, so both humor and emotion feel forced.
Still, some of the cast members make an impression — the show is a good calling card for a few promising young faces, especially the female leads. Blood infuses the sensible Clarissa with a sly sexiness, while Gottlieb’s vain, vapid Belinda handles her soprano swoops with confidence in a role that might have been written for Kristin Chenoweth. Let’s hear it for curl power.