Daily News from New York, New York • 597

CO en Mr 1 DRAWING THE LINE Disney looks over shoulder as studios toon in. MOVIES Page 39 DOC PLAYS HOUSE CALL Dr. Hecht answers letters from Daily News readers. HEALTH Page 50 1 jj a i 'CDC CD if. m- 0 (DO QO1 tog 6 QOGO-GftQC? 0 iff Vl 1 iff 'Pimpernel' cuts with a dull blade3 though musical's star shines 5 By F1KTAN OTOOLE Daily News Drama Critic DROPPING THE BALL: The show does a big disservice to Its talented star.

sense of time and place is limited to the hilariously bad novel on which it is based. A dash of the absurd Baroness Orczy's 1905 exercise in reactionary chic may have worked well enough as an action movie. But even the fluffiest stage show needs to be more than a camped-up version of an already campy burlesque of history. Taking the story on its own terms, though, it ought to be at least a good yarn. The Pimpernel is an English aristocrat who dashingly rescues victims of The Terror from the guillotine.

The tension comes from his romantic dilemma. He has married a skills of its star. Nobody goes to a musical for a history lesson. But successful musicals on historical subjects "Evita," "1776," "Les Miserables" do have some real relationship to great events. Even if they distort the past, they still draw on it "The Scarlet Pimpernel," though, has as much to do with the French Revolution's reign of terror as Pocahontas Barbie has to do with the conquest of the Indians.

At times, even when it would be easier to be accurate, it seems to have its heart set on a parade of ignorance. The revolutionary Robespierre, for instance, was famously severe. Why trick him out in a golden coat and periwig? Because, presumably, the show's to 5 THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. Musical based on the novel by Baroness Orczy. Book and lyrics by Nan Knighton.

Music by Frank Wildhorn. With Douglas Sills, Terence Mann, Christine Andreas, Gilles Chiasson, Elizabeth Ward, David Cromwell and others. Sets by Andrew Jackness. Choreography by Adam Pelty. Directed by Peter Hunt.

At the Minskoff. YOU MIGHT EXPECT, li "The Scarlet Pimpernel" is fj full of mystery and sus-I pense. The mystery is that LJ a sophisticated culture should lavish so many resources on such nonsense. The suspense lies in the close-run contest between the fatuous nature of the show and the great See STINKER page 38.