Theatre Review: A Stranger in Town

A Stranger in Town. Written by Christine Croyden. Directed and designed by Alice Bishop. Inspired by the original musical diary of Otto Lampel. Original score and musical direction by Matt Lotherington. Lighting design by Richard Vabre. With Amanda LaBonte, Sophie Lampel, Jamie McDonald and Drew Tingwell. Presented by Essential Theatre. fortyfive downstairs, Melbourne. Until Sunday 13 November.

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.” ― Mark Twain

Precious memories are at play in this eloquent and involving memory play – imaginatively, impeccably, lovingly, and often quite beautifully, delivered to the stage by Ms Bishop and performed by a uniformly excellent cast, who handle their challenging multiple roles with pure theatrical instinct and immense skill.

As the ghosts of journeymen and women – past and present – take their places on the side of the stage (both shadowed and illuminated by Mr Vabre’s excellent and always atmospheric lighting design), Otto Lampel (Drew Tingwell) begins his journey across the Atlantic on a boat bound for Canada. It is the late 1940’s – and Mr Lampel, a Czechoslovakian Jew – is beginning an immensely personal and equally dangerous journey to discover the essence of his humanity … and what remains of his identity.

Having fled Prague at the start of World War II – the only member of his family to survive Nazi-led genocide – Lampel is haunted by wartime horrors (quite brilliantly realised in an ingenious mountaintop scene) and the extent to which his spirit has been so rigorously interrogated that he has become an unreliable witness of his own life’s values and accord.

Mr Tingwell captures – perfectly – the introspective, layered, studious and dramatic reach of the fascinating Mr Lampel, while Ms Lampel (the real Otto Lampel’s granddaughter), Mr McDonald and Ms LaBonte shine in their roles including fellow travellers, a lion in the zoo (Mr McDonald works wonders here), a statue in the park (Ms Lampel), and restaurant owners in Montreal (Mr McDonald and Ms LaBonte).

The highlights of Ms Croyden’s multi-layered, cryptic, symbolic and richly-allegorical script are many – with the stakes at play powerfully underlined when one of Mr Lampel’s earlier travelling companions collapses into the restaurant he has been frequenting. It’s a heart-breaking moment of stark realisation (and breathtakingly well done), which brings sharply into focus the risks our fellow human beings are prepared to chance in order to flee persecution with something akin to blind optimism and indefatigable hope for a brighter future.

While it certainly resonates with our nation’s own asylum-seeker dilemmas and their attendant perverse lack of fundamental regard for humanity and personal history, A Stranger in Town never feels like it is trying to be worthy and earnest issues-based theatre. It dances, instead, with artful and poetic adventurousness – and is grounded by Ms Bishop’s gorgeous and evocative costumes into which the cast change on each darkened side of the stage, having plucked them from within a motley collection of suitcases. It is a brilliant theatrical device – perhaps no more effortlessly incorporated than when Otto’s frosty, strident wife (Ms Lampel rising to the occasion again) arrives in Montreal from London to determine for herself whether her husband intends to return with her to their son in London. The cryptic contents of the satchel she brings with her are, under Otto’s orders later, to be burned. It’s an incisive moment entirely lacking in sentimentality – one of the many fine qualities A Stranger in Town boasts.

Mr Lotherington’s pre-recorded original score (which was certainly not helped on opening night by a stubbornly recalcitrant speaker) could do with a judicious prune – particularly some of the underscoring which, in the presence of such fine performances, occasionally tends to rather unsubtly underline the fact that this is a ‘musical’ fable as opposed to serving the text and the performances of it as insightfully as the stagecraft does.

The original songs (based on Otto Lampel’s musical diary which was recorded in Canada) are fine and engaging, however the duet between Otto’s new lover and his English wife only serves to spark an surprisingly discomforting comparison with an identical moment between Miss Saigon’s Kim and Ellen. (It is, in fact, so completely jarring that the show would be none the poorer for its loss altogether.) Mr Tingwell does, however, prove himself to be a fine pianist and the cast acquit their musical responsibilities in fine form.

Ultimately, A Stranger in Town’s profound, overriding sense of optimism for a life of love, happiness and understanding is thoroughly engaging – and Essential Theatre should be encouraged to refine it further and set sail with it to the European festival circuit where, I suspect, it will be even more of an absolutely unqualified success.

Pictured: Sophie Lampel in a publicity still from A Stranger in Town. Supplied.

Theatre Review: The Boy From Oz

The Boy From Oz. Music and Lyrics by Peter Allen. Book by Nick Enright. The Production Company, State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne. Returning 5 to 16 January, 2011.

Before Bette Midler performed the final song of her “Kiss My Brass” concert in Sydney in 2005, she told us that Australia had been responsible for the gift to the world of some of the best songs she had ever sung. Then, as the stage became awash with pink, Ms Midler sang Peter Allen’s Tenterfield Saddler. Ms Midler is always at her best with a thoughtful and considered ballad, and her performance of this iconic Allen tune was perfection.

And on Wednesday night, as we filed out of the State Theatre having witnessed the opening night performance of the Production Company’s The Boy From Oz, I overheard someone say “just perfect” … and how right they were. Great performances of theatre sometimes appear to take place inches above the stage, not on it – such is the unquestionable dynamic certain ensembles of performers bring to the presentation of their craft.

Blessed with an amazing script by the great Nick Enright, Nancye Hayes’s direction is all pure theatrical animal instinct and the tableaus that meld her vision of the show together are stunning. The fluidity and precision with which this enormous undertaking moves across the huge State Theatre stage is seamless, and Ms Hayes fills the stage with immensely beautiful stage pictures, painted with people, that – at times – are just breathtaking. Andrew Hallsworth’s sensational choreography is faultless and delivered with great vigour and passion by the never less than outstanding cast.

And what a cast! Christen O’Leary and Fem Belling have the unenviable task of bringing Judy Garland and Liza Minelli to life, respectively, and both manage to do so with considerable impact. Robyn Arthur was divine as Allen’s mother Marion Woolnough, and her show-stopping, tear-inducing performance of Don’t Cry Out Loud was magic. David Harris, was equally divine as Allen’s lover for 15 years Greg Connell, owning I honestly love you with a show-stopping interpretation that was so good and so beautifully performed, that it was as though the song was existing for the very first time. Fletcher O’Leary (one of the two boys who will play Young Peter throughout the season) gave the performance of a seasoned veteran, and his melding with the older Peter in the recreation of the famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes kick-line was yet another show-stopper. Wonderful support was provided by the razzle-dazzle trio of Claire George, Samantha Morley and Sun Park who, apart from being very handy with moving the white grand-piano, also conquered the vocal demands with artful precision and flair.

Musical Director John Foreman championed the big, challenging score into one dazzling unit and his band, including members of Orchestra Victoria, was the best it is possible to be. In Music Theatre, there’s an unspoken anxiety in the relationship between the music, the work and the audience. It’s that moment when an instrument slips out of tune or off the beat. It’s that tempo that trips over itself or drags. It’s that startled cringe when the magic and slippery bond that unites great ensembles of musicians falls away. But not here. Mr Foreman and his band were in complete command, and the result was electrifying, particularly much of the tempi which showcased not only Mr Allen’s fantastic tunes, but powered the work of the entire company. From the complete Broadway tuner When I Get My Name In Lights to the intricacy of every heartbeat of Quiet Please, There’s a Lady Onstage, Mr Foreman and his band were pure trust, and more perfect than the greatest expectation.

Shaun Gurton’s impressive and marvelously versatile set design served the work at every turn and Trudy Dalgleish’s lighting of it was brilliant. Kim Bishop’s wonderful costumes brought the showmanship and the pizzazz to life beautifully, but also served to reinforce the era in which Peter Allen lived – a life of such immense passion, dedication and total commitment to the pursuit of his dreams.

Some performers are simply perfect for a particular role – and Todd McKenney brings Peter Allen to life as though they share every piece of one another’s DNA. McKenney’s is a must-see performance of music theatre fire, passion, artistry, flair and great intelligence. Quite apart from the fact that he rarely leaves the stage (and only then to change into another of Mr Allen’s signature outlandish shirts), Mr McKenney reads every beat to perfection and is so alive to every nuance of his character’s journey through this thoughtfully structured show, that at times, it becomes quite overwhelming. When the archival footage of Mr Allen playing the piano and singing Tenterfield Saddler is projected onto a large screen that descends from the fly tower, Mr McKenney sits on a step and watches him with such admiration and understanding that it becomes an incredibly powerful moment of pure pathos – the kind that is only possible in the theatre when ‘theatre people’ are doing what they do best.

And it’s hard to imagine a better example of it than this.

This review was commissioned by Stage Whispers magazine @ www.stagewhispers.com.au

Theatre Review: The King and I

The King and I. Music by Richard Rodgers. Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The Production Company, State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne.

Truly great musicals – of which Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I must be close to the most perfect example – set every creative team who takes them on an unenviable set of obstacles. The first one is the audience’s experience of the show that has gone before. (One of mine was a disastrous performance in London’s West End when, suffering from laryngitis, Susan Hampshire – who was playing Mrs Anna – had a go at I whistle a happy tune, and then they just cut the rest of her songs. It was, as you might imagine, appalling. Strangely, however, the show is so good that it still managed to shine through the hapless attempt at its presentation.)

I also have exceptionally fond memories of Melbourne’s Arc Musical Theatre Company’s production (many, many moons ago!) – starring Sylvia Picton as a glorious Mrs Anna and Tony Kentuck as The King. And then there is the 20th Century Fox film – the indisputable and most perfect account of this musical there has been, and will ever be.

And while I’m not predicating that every attempt at staging The King and I is measured against the resources of a major motion picture studio, I am certain that the overall experience of a production of this musical (similarly to The Sound of Music – which 20th Century Fox, fighting their way back from financial and artistic oblivion on the back of the troubled (and expensive) Cleopatra, threw everything they could at, resulting in similar perfection) must offer something else other than just a serviceable account of the material.

The Production Company has consistently provided its stars every opportunity to shine in their staged concert performances of some of the great, mostly American, musicals. For some inexplicable reason, this is the first of their productions I have seen – and, in her welcome piece in the program, Production Company Chairman Jeanne Pratt is entirely correct: it won’t be my last. This opportunity to see and hear Rodgers and Hammerstein’s gem almost had me booking to go back and see it a second time. Almost.

The most exciting news is that a star was born in Melbourne’s State Theatre on Wednesday night. Her name is Emily Xiao Wang, and her ‘Tuptim’ was sensational. So too, but less consistently, was Adrian Li Donni’s doomed Lun Tha, and their duets I have dreamed and We kiss in a shadow were the musical highlights of the evening. But nothing either before, or afterwards, compared to Ms Xiao Wang’s absolutely perfect rendition of the early ballad My Lord and Master. Silvie Paladino came close with her sterling rendition of Something Wonderful – but something was missing. Ms Paladino had yet to make the necessary connection to the number: she just didn’t seem to believe it. Yes, it’s a great song – a standard. But within the context of any kind of performance of The King and I, it becomes a great love song, not an anthem – and Ms Paladino’s handling of it was masterful, but a little too efficient.

Chelsea Gibb appeared ill-at-ease as Anna Leonowens, and I never imagined I would hear I whistle a happy tune performed as a big broadway belt. Frankly, I hope I never do again. It’s the first big, instantly recognisable moment – and it served to set a series of alarm bells ringing in my head. I need to declare that I am a R&H traditionalist – and if this was going to be a post-modern interpretation of one of the great acting/singing/dancing leading ladies of the music theatre canon, it was going to be a very one-sided affair. Fortunately, Ms Gibb warmed up as the evening progressed and revealed (to me anyway) a strong upper register that she would do well to instinctively trust a great deal more. Having thoroughly adored her Roxy in Chicago (where the big ‘Broadway belt’ belongs), the revelation of a vastly increased range was exciting.

The King and I, without the famous polka, just isn’t The King and I – and the supreme disappointment resulting from the fact that Kathryn Sproul’s otherwise perfectly versatile central structure didn’t get out of the way so that the most famous sequence in this musical could happen on the huge State Theatre stage was quite palpable.

Musically, Orchestra Victoria – under the direction of Peter Casey – handled the score beautifully. My only reservation was the decision to split the orchestra in two (with the strings on one side of the stage and the brass, woodwind and percussion) on the other. I found this reduced the impact of the sound considerably – resulting in a less than satisfactory over-amplified sensibility. The lack of cohesion also took its toll on The March of The Siamese Children – where it seemed, for an instant, that this wonderful piece of music just got away from them. The choice to split the orchestra like this seemed to also make something of a statement about how much more important the staging imperatives were to the musical ones. Unhappily, even though Terence O’Connell’s direction was beautifully handled, it didn’t illuminate anything particularly new and invigorating about this work that might have meant the splitting of the orchestra was a wise or valid idea.

Alana Scanlan’s choreography (with the exception of a half-hearted polka) was perfect – and the long, troublesome The Small House of Uncle Thomas ballet in the second act was spectacularly imagined and brilliantly danced.

But at the heart of The King and I, is the King – a sensational role for the right performer. And Juan Jackson is precisely the right performer. His near-complete command of this fascinating and entirely unconventional leading man was superb, and one can only imagine that as the season progresses, he will become more comfortable with the many complexities of the role. Further down the track, it’s not at all difficult to imagine Mr Jackson making something of a signature role with his future performances as The King in The King and I.

The death of the King is the death of a wide-eyed, amazed, bewildered child/man who is on the precipice of achieving great things for his country. I cry every time I see the film. I was not moved in quite the same way by this performance. There is a big heart beating in The King and I – that is its monumental power. And when that heart stops beating, it is an immense tragedy. I hope that this wonderful company, through each performance that remains, discovers something more of that heart.

This review was commissioned and first published by Stage Whispers Magazine www.stagewhispers.com.au

Review: High Society

High Society, Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter, Book by Arthur Kopit, Additional Lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, CLOC Musical Theatre. Directed by Chris Bradtke; Musical Director Bev Woodford; Choreographed Movement by Tailem Tynan; Set Design by Brenton Staples; Costume Design by Nancy Matthews; Lighting Design by Stelios Karagiannis; Audio Design by Alan Green. With Kelly Windle, Trevor Jones, Richard Perdriau, Rachel Juhasz, Peter Dennis, Peter Smitheram, Anne Pagram, Pip Smibert and Madeleine Corbel. Alexander Theatre, Melbourne until 17 October.

In our precious world of Music Theatre, there are people who really know what they're doing and people who don't: and from the moment you set eyes on Mr Staples' stunning (and magically transformational) set and Mr Karagiannis's utterly flawless lighting of it, you will rightly anticipate that CLOC Musical Theatre's production may just well set a new benchmark. And so it does, eventually, to become a wonderful achievement of which the company should be incredibly proud.

Which only leaves the bit about the people who don't know what they're doing.

Watching and listening to High Society on stage is like watching a grave being robbed: a sorry mess of a show that somehow manages to take theatrical and cinematic icons (Philip Barry's stage play, and then film, The Philadelphia Story and Sol C Siegel's film High Society), add some trusted, then obscure and then some even more obscure Porter tunes to a leaden, and (surprisingly given the wit and prestige of the material's sources and original casts) humourless 'book' to come up with a compilation musical of the worst kind. It's as though people without any creative ideas of their own sat around the kitchen table, opened a well-thumbed "Cole Porter Songbook" and went "I know! Let's make a musical! A really, really long musical!" Cole Porter's terrific and efficient songs for High Society (the film) are considered to represent his last truly great score … and one might have expected them to be delivered, unaltered, to the stage. What did Mr Kopit and Ms Birkenhead think was missing? Unfortunately, we soon get to find out … and we're only left to wonder what Mr Porter would have thought if he'd been alive to witness it.

The lumpy Ridin' High (lifted from Red, Hot and Blue) becomes, in this context, a pointless piece of fluffy exposition which seems to exist only to have our heroine, Tracy Lord, run around in jodhpurs for some inexplicable reason. Regrettably, it also gets the additional burden of having to open the show … after a mannered and unengaging nod to the title song. Songs that open shows (just stop for a moment and think about some of them) have to be really good. Ridin' High just doesn't cut it. I Love Paris and It's All Right With Me (both from the much better Can-Can) are also jammed in, and the Porter classic – Just One of Those Things (from Jubilee) – also gets a run. Now, True Love is a wonderful song … a standard … but it ain't no end of Act One number. Instead, Act One just stops … as though someone who meant the world to us suddenly dropped stone cold dead right before our very eyes. It's a very uncomfortable moment to which the audience appeared to have no idea how to respond. The experience of witnessing this extraordinarily beautiful production, performed by a uniformly excellent cast, orchestra and crew and yet still suspecting that something important was absent, was truly difficult to comprehend.

Mr Bradtke brings a skilfully crisp guiding hand to the proceedings, and even though the pacing on opening night was uneven, it's impossible to determine whether there was anything further he could have done or if it was the musical's inherent dead weight that kept dragging it down. Ms Woodford's orchestra, with the exception of some rogue strings and uneven sound mixing, acquitted what passes for a score beautifully – even if the orchestrations are, mostly, deadly dull.

In the end, I realised I wish I'd been at the company's recent production of Miss Saigon: a piece of music theatre equal to their incredible talents and abilities.

Pictured: (L to R) Trevor Jones, Kelly Windle and Richard Perdriau in a publicity photograph from CLOC's High Society. Photographed by Richard Crompton.

This review was commissioned and published by Stage Whispers @
www.stagewhispers.com.au

Review: Life's a Circus

Life’s a Circus. Presented by Magnormos Prompt! Musicals Program, Artistic Director/Producer: Aaron Joyner. Composer/Lyricist/Musical Director: Anthony Costanzo, Book by Peter Fitzpatrick, With Chelsea Plumley, Glen Hogstrom, Cameron MacDonald, Shannon McGurgan, Annabel Carberry, Vaughan Curtis, Stephen Williams. Directed by Kris Stewart, Choreography by Kate Priddle, Set Design by Christina Logan-Bell, Lighting Design by Lucy Birkinshaw, Sound Design by Lo Ricco Sound Studios. Theatre Works, St Kilda. Until August 15.

The alluring, hypnotic and contradictory world of ‘Circus’ has been excavated many times throughout the Music Theatre canon: Barnum, Carnival! … and the great grand-daddy of them all, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel – spring to mind. Cinema, too, has mined the artform’s layers of emotional, death-defying performance excess to (mostly) memorable effect. Unlike its siblings, where the themes and the environment from which they emerge meld quite magically, the multiple ‘Circus’ analogies and metaphors throughout Life’s a Circus provide it with, almost equally and at once, great service and disservice. And it is a structural fracture that never heals.

Life’s a Circus tells the story of the traveling Grand Illusion Circus troupe, and in particular, three of its members: Vivien (Plumley) and David (Hogstrom) who are best friends and partners in the tightrope-walking act, and Alex (MacDonald), the Clown. With increasing urgency and desperation, Vivien and David make various plays for the affections of the young Alex – who, in a bitter sweet denouement, flawlessly delivered by a red-hot Mr MacDonald – declares that neither of them offer him anything more desirable than the joys of his journey through life as a Circus Clown. Problematically for the overall effectiveness of Life’s a Circus, it’s not that difficult to see why. MacDonald’s ‘Alex’ is a lovable, joyful character – and MacDonald connects truthfully with the abandon and sensitivity of the role of Clown … not only in the way he chooses to journey through life, but also in the snippets we witnessed of his exquisite clowning skills. That Vivien and David’s lives, in stark contrast, contain such little real joy (Vivien shops and David cruises for sex online), is a measure of the only credible way in which the Circus environment contributes meaningfully to the story’s primary arc.

The three principals are, without exception, superb. Their reading of, and obvious respect for, Mr Costanzo’s big-hearted and harmonious score is spot-on. They are more than ably supported by the production’s gold-plated pedigree, including Music Supervision by Wicked Musical Director Kellie Dickerson; a stylish, functional and fantastically versatile set from Christina Logan-Bell; exquisite lighting design from Lucy Birkinshaw and an illuminative soundscape from Lo Ricco Sound Studios.

Director Kris Stewart’s otherwise compact, super-charged and tightly-packaged direction couldn’t quite join the seams that connect the trio of principals and the four circus performers (McGurgan, Carberry, Curtis and Williams). More often than not (with the exception of the clever Walking the Tightrope), their ‘voicelessness’ (particularly in the opening number) began – and ended – as a dislocated and unsatisfying distraction … unlike their skillful, acrobatic artistry – which was simply breath-taking. Frustratingly, they seemed to belong in a completely different show.

The essential structural conflict is that Mr Costanzo’s score is vastly more accomplished and often superior to his chosen construct – and it really comes into its own when it discards the increasingly literal, and ultimately repetitive, ‘Circus’ metaphors and instead embraces the landscape of interpersonal relationships, as he does to devastating effect with The Olive Tree, Midnight, the Sondheim-esque Something on the side, the show’s haunting (but sadly, later abandoned) motif Time will tell, and the showstopping ‘11 o’clock number’ Fly Away.

It’s an extraordinary thing when a Music Theatre performer quite literally ‘stops the show’. Afficiandos of the form crave ‘showstoppers’ – that moment when the massive emotional and musical machine that is a piece of Music Theatre turns on the head of a pin – stopped in its tracks by the absolute perfect performance of the perfect song at the absolute right time and place of the night: which is precisely what Chelsea Plumley did at this Opening Night performance with the ‘anthem’ of the show: Fly Away. Why Miss Plumley is not a major star on our Music Theatre stages remains an unqualifiable mystery.

Ultimately, however, Magnormos, under the Artistic Direction of Aaron Joyner, are to be celebrated, treasured and prized for their work in Australian Music Theatre. The privilege of being present at this rare and special performance of a piece that, with more work and development, should shed its skin to become a serious contender for that constantly elusive creation: The Australian Musical.

Pictured: Chelsea Plumley as Vivien in Life’s A Circus

This review was first published by Stage Whispers @
www.stagewhispers.com.au