Review: Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday in the Park With George
Watch This
10 August 2019
Whitehourse Centre
to 10 August 2019
Geelong: 15–17 August
gpac.org.au
Melbourne: 21–24 August
mtc.com.au

Nick Simpson-Deeks, Vidya Makin. "Sunday in the Psrk with George".. Photo by Jodi Hutchinson

"White. A blank page or canvas."

The cliche of an artist opening a work of art by contemplating a space of nothing should feel as condescending as it is – but it doesn't. Bloody Sondheim; even his most indulgent work feels real.

Sunday in the Park with George is Stephen Sondheim's 1985 personal plea for theatre-goers to understand the process and importance of art. It's the sixth show Melbourne-based independent Sondheim-only company Watch This have brought us and one that looks at the work with their own perspective.

The original production starred Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, with the book by James Lapine. It won Tonys and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is especially well known because it was filmed and released on home video (it's easy to find in YouTube; it's awesome). It was the show that Sondheim was never going to make because he declared he was quitting theatre following the heartbreak-cum-disaster of his Merrily We Roll Along, which closed after 16 Broadway performances in 1981. (If you haven't seen the documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, it's on Netflix; it's also awesome.)

Sunday is an imagination of artist George Seurat in the two years he was painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884) in Paris, and his great grandchild George's reimagining of the work 100 years later with the super-cool computerised art of the 1980s.

It's a work that can feel difficult to sink into. In act one, the stories and characters have limited connections; there are discussions about pointillism, colour and art theory; and the protagonist is difficult to like as he connects more with a dog in the park than with his mother or his pregnant lover and model, Dot.

But even the best-worst name pun ever – his painting is a series of dots – is overcome as the act ends with an ensemble number that's as affecting as anything Sondheim has written. It brings all the disparate elements together musically and dramatically with a demonstration of "order, design, tension, composition, balance, light and harmony" that can't explain why it pokes emotions that you may not have known were there.

With a orchestra of four – four! –, Ned Wright-Smith's musical direction and Dominic Woodhead's orchestration focus on the transcending dissonance to harmony and supporting the singers to find the emotion inherent in every note.

Watch This don't have the resources to create the sort of design that productions of Sunday are known for, but Sarah Tulloch's design (with Rob Sowinski's lighting) looks at sections of the painting as it develops and has lots of fun with the 1980's version. And Rhiannon Irving's costumes let the characters feel like they really did come off the painting as the fabric is also coloured with dots.

Directors Dean Drieberg and Sonya Suares ensure that character leads everything on the stage and that the performers let the characters feel personal. This production isn't a deconstruction of a man able to spend his days making art that he thinks will change the world. It's not about the finished piece. It's about what he leaves out of the canvas (score/book/review), what he changes, and what he distorts to fit his idea of perfection.

Representation is far more than being peeved because your image is out of proportion.

The gaze of an artist rarely reflects reality.

As George's model, Dot is as much inspiration to him as she is irrelevant. He might love her but is far more passionate about her standing still or letting him finish that darn hat. Vidya Makan shows how easy it was for George to choose her, but she is confident enough to know that she can't get lost in her love for George. She doesn't resort to spite and knows that she's making the best choices for her, even if they hurt.

However, a production of this musical rests with George and George, who are played by the same person. The Georges aren't easy men to like unless you love them. Nick Simpson-Deeks's George is personal. He holds George 1's emotions so close that George barely knows they are there and George 2 is tightly wound and determined but open to being so much more. As he holds back the emotions, his performance shines as he lets the music and song show everything that George 1 would never say and what George 2 learns to express.

We sing what we can't say; that's how great musicals work. When George and Dot sing, we see who they really are; we see the flecks of light and dark. And parasols.

Watch This don't make us stand in the middle of the gallery and look at the work of a "genuis". This Sunday in the Park with George moves us to the corners and behind the crowds where the view isn't as clear and perfect. It's a production for us and for now.

They open tonight in Geelong and this weekend might be your only chance to see it because their Melbourne season is all but sold out because Sondheim fans know not to miss it.

Review: West Side Story

West Side Story
Opera Australia and GWB Entertainment present
the BB Group production
9 April 2019
State Theatre – Arts Centre Melbourne
to 28 April, then touring
westsidestory.com.au

Opera Australia, "West Side Story". Photo by Jeff Busby

In 1957 West Side Story changed musical theatre. It made an old story feel new in contemporary New York. It used the language, movement, sound and issues of 1950s America and set a new level of everything that musical theatre aspires to be. It's so rare to have new work come near the same cultural impact; maybe Hamilton. The West Side Story by Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim sits on the top of "best musicals ever" lists because it is.

And Opera Australia are bringing it to us 62 years later. This revival production has been touring and reproduced since 2000 and was originally directed by Joey McNeely, who was taught the 1957 choreography by director/choreographer Robbins. It's chorey so connected to the work that a finger click is all that's needed to make fans put their arms out like a cross and spiral with their knees together.

It's a big-budget production with an imposing design of crowded metal fire escapes against giant photos of 1950s west-side New York. The easy highlight of the budget is having a 31-piece orchestra (Orchestra Victoria conducted by American Donald Chan) and it's an absolute joy to hear the complexity of the score with such a big orchestra.

It's also awesome to see a full cast who look like the teenagers they are portraying. Many are making their professional theatre debuts. Some nail it.

Still the show feels emotionally flat. Holding itself so close to being a recreation of a recreation of a 62-year-old show strangles any originality and authenticity. With even the most simple gestures looking choreographed, little action comes from character, let alone from personal interpretation. This is the same Maria, Tony, Riff, Doc and Anybodys that have been on stages since 1957.

A work that was so about rejecting the past and being about right here and now, Daddy-O, has become a production stuck in the past. It's not like the story about racism, poverty, immigration, young people, gangs, police, misogyny, violence, rape and guns is nostalgic. The dream ballet is dated, the content isn't.

West Side Story is still one of the greatest musicals ever made and this is close to seeing the original production. But it's a safe show that doesn't take any risks that would dare to bring it into right here and now.

Review: Merrily We Roll Along

Merrily We Roll Along
Watch This
30 June 2017
The Lawler, Southbank Theatre
to 15 July
watchthis.net.au

Nelson Gardner, Nicole Melloy & Lyall Brooks. Merrily We Roll Along. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

My review is on The Music.

Review: Passion

Passion
Life Like Company
5 November 2014
The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 8 November 2014
lifelikecompany.com

Photo by Ben Fon

I'm still having trouble believing that 1994's Passion is a Sondheim–Lapine creation, let alone that it won a small pile of Tony Awards. As it's so rarely performed, I'm not the only one who thinks so. New Melbourne company Life Like chose it as their debut piece. There are enough Sondheim diehards in town to ensure a sell out, but will it ensure anticipation for their next work?

It's 1863 Italy and soldier Georgio is having a happy secret relationship with married and pretty Clara. When transferred out of the city, he finds himself at an outpost where the only woman is Fosca, who's plainness hides her mental illness. She falls in love with Georgio at first glance and behaves with stalker-like obsession. Will he fall for her unquestioning, pure love or shoot her for being a freak?

Based on a film that's based on a book, Passion does away with subtext and complexity and delivers a passionless melodrama.

Of the many things I love about Sondhiem, his women fascinate me the most. The women in A Little Night Music, Company, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods are complex and real. Fosca and Clara are women whose actions and thoughts are only those seen through the eyes of the man they are both obsessed with; they are creatures who exist only for him. And this reflection of the world isn't helped by the minor female characters played by men in hats in this production.

Life Like's design and direction are close enough to the original production (thank you YouTube) to please fans who have never seen Passion. But they don't bring anything new or exciting to this piece. It may as well have been a concert performance there was so little risk or real passion brought to the stage. It's not rarely performed because it's controversial, it's rarely performed because it's boring.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Assasins

Assassins
Watch This
13 April 2013
fortyfivedownstairs
to 21 April
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Sondheim fans don't need anyone to convince them to see a production of Assasins, and they are selling out fortyfivedownstairs every night to see new a company, Watch This, take aim and fire.

Assassins was first produced Off-Broadway in 1990 and at London's Donmar Warhouse in 1992, the MTC showed it to Melbourne in 1995 and the Broadway revival was set to open in 2001, but was postponed in the light of the September 11 attacks and the nature of its material. It's a show about people who assassinated or tried to assassinate US presidents.

With a book by Tony Award nominee John Weidman, it's a bitter and darkly funny look at American culture and how the American dream can go so wrong that some need to blame and punish. By presenting characters before the moment that assassination/attempt marked them as insane and unAmerican, it presents people who are not asking for sympathy or even empathy, but are simply seen as more than just the act of violence they are remembered for.

Watch This is Sonya Suares's (who was General Manager of Red Stitch) new company and this debut has assured that Melbourne's music thearte lovers are already looking forward to their next production.

With a rehearsal time that was counted in days, not weeks, their Assasins is assured and complex and deserving of its full houses. While there's an inconsistency among performances and voices, this doesn't take away from the production and leaves us imagining how amazing they will be with the support and funding to rehearse for a reasonable amount of time.

Musically, well it's Saint Stephen Sondheim so it captures the inner turmoil and emotions of its characters in ways that are felt more than heard, then hangs in your head until you buy the CD, know the work backwards and find yourself singing it at inappropriate moments. The small orchestra can't grasp the intricacies of his composition, but again all this does is wish them the support to have a bigger orchestra.

Without a central character, it's a story that takes some work to engage with because each scene is about someone new, but there's a balladeer who connects them all and reminds us how history's truth is easily distorted and a small ensemble of everyday people to reflect on the events. This production suffers slightly in its focus on the individual tales and hasn't dug that little bit deeper to find the connections that make it one story that's about us as much as the people who chose to pick up a gun. Then towards the end "Something just broke" beautifully brings the stories into our lives and hearts as it forces us to remember hearing about an event when something in us just broke.

It also doesn't seem certain about it's opinion about guns. Most people on the stage have a gun that they play with and shoot, and too often their guns are clearly light props. I'd love to see the menace turned up and to have the guns treated as if they were real – heavy, dirty beasts that can kick back and burn their holder. I wanted to feel more unsettled when the guns are pointed at the audience.

Sondheim fans, don't wait to get a ticket for Assasins because there might not be many left. It's not a perfect production, but it captures the mood and power of the work, asks questions that resonate, introduces some terrific new talent (and reminds us why we love some of the old) and as this is Watch This's first show, I'll be first in line for their next one.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 
John Frost
27 October 2012
Her Majesty's Theatre
to December 15
funnything.com.au

After the degustation of emotion, politics and confrontation of the Melbourne Festival, what better than a mouthful of fluffy sugar and an almighty fart? A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum has no pretentions about being serious art.

First performed on Broadway 1962, it's ancient Rome, where slaves were whipped, women were bought and political correctness meant wearing the right toga to the senate. Giving a finger to the romantic gentility of musical theatre at the time and celebrating the ancient-Greek influences on vaudeville, there are tit, eunuch and fart jokes galore, as it asks the timeless dramatic question, "Who gets to de-virgin the teenager: the virgin boy, his dad or the stranger who bought her from her pimp?".

I've really tried to like this show.

                                                                    From the original recording LP

It was Stephen Sondheim's first score (music and lyrics; his previous work was the lyrics for West Side Story) and the book was co-written with Larry Gelbart (the dude who wrote the best episodes of MASH). If you're expecting dark and biting satire with music that stains your soul, remember that it takes time to hit your stride as an artist. Musically it's forgettable, but hints at the glories that followed, and book-wise there's jokes and structure without a hint of depth or complexity. It's a simplified world where men are manly or limp, and women are lovely and stupid, vejazzled and bendy, or old and sexless.

So why do it? It's as satisfying as a bucket of fairy floss.

Geoffrey Rush wanting to play Pseudolus the scheming slave is the lines-at-the-box-office answer. It's an old-school, star-led romp – and who can resist a romp with our-Geoffrey in a toga? Looking like he's having more fun than he dreamed of, this is Geoffrey's fart-in-the-general-direction to anyone who forgets that it's meant to be fun.

And throw in the commercial-dream cast of telly and theatre must-sees who have earned their first-name recognition because they are all damn good and totally watchable.  There's Shane Bourne, Magda Szubanski and Gerry Connolly for the oldies; Hugh Sheridan for the youngies;  Mitchell Butell, Christie Whelan-Browne and Adam Murphy for the theatries; and Bob Honery for everyone (Bob was in the original Australian production in 1964).

It may be the best that a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum can be.

Director Simon Phillips turns the serious to 0 and the giggle-and-hoot to 11. And Gabriella Tylesova's design of cardboardy houses and tassled-togas is as witty as any of the jokes. Like her design for Love Never Dies, it's an eye-orgasm to look at with detail that creates the world and the characters in an instant.

It's a show where the cast are applauded before they open their mouths, corpsing is compulsory and anyone daring to question its politics or guts will be scoffed at.

This appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

Film review: Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 

Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street will continue to upset some musical theatre purists, but they can wait for live productions. This Sweeney maintains the integrity of the stage version while telling the story with a tension and darkness rarely captured live.

Adaptation from stage to screen is a dangerous art, as it simply may not be possible to recreate the complexity and impact of a live production on film. Many incredible examples of musical theatre have made dull films (A Chorus Line and Rent come immediately to mind), but others have been translated to the screen in ways that almost re-created the genre. Fosse did it in Cabaret and Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

When future theatrical historians dissect 20^th Century American Musical Theatre, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd will rarely be ignored. Premiering on Broadway in 1979, it tells the story a barber who kills his customers and his landlady who uses the bodies to make meat pies. The show fuses comedy with a classical tragic structure and tells the story through the eyes of a modern chorus.

So how does Burton tell this tale? Firstly, he removes the chorus. This instantly means the loss of some of the most memorable music. Sadly, filmgoers may never hum the “The Ballad of Sweeny Todd”, but there is no place for a chorus in this film.  It’s no longer a story about many; it’s the story of Benjamin Barker (aka Sweeney Todd).

We see London from Todd’s perspective. The CGI city is magnificently grey and miserable. Action and characters are viewed through distorted windows or reflected in broken mirrors and shining blades. Todd is unable to see his world (or himself) clearly, until the inevitable moment when it’s too late.

Burton supports this with a stunning use of colour and light. The symbolism is obvious, but the greys and sepias of Sweeney’s world compared to the bright floral of Benjamin’s past show more than any dialogue could manage. Then there’s red – lots of red. (It may be the best use of red on a screen since Spielberg used a little red coat in Shindler’s List.) The squeamish be warned – there’s blood in this film. Blood that oozes, drips, spurts and gushes life, death, love and hope.

Burton favourites Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter head the cast. Depp’s Todd is enticing and I cannot imagine a better choice. He creates a sympathy, and even empathy, for a character who we still clearly see as a monster, but feel every moment of his pain.

The casting of Bonham Carter as pie maker Mrs Lovett has split opinions. In musicals people sing. Burton’s principal cast are not singers, but the roughness in some of the voices adds an unexpected authenticity to their characters. Bonham Carter is clearly not a singer. Hearing “Worst Pies in London” sung by one of the worst singing voices around is deliciously ironic, but somewhat distracting. Marni Nixon made us believe that Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn could sing, so I have to wonder why there wasn’t some dubbing to support Bonham Carter’s voice. Even on the stage, it’s common for a homely chorus member to stand in the wings ensuring that the ingénue’s high C is perfect.

Vocal ability aside, Mrs Lovett is traditionally played by a more mature singer, who is embracing comic roles. (Angela Lansbury was the first Mrs Lovett.) Bonham Carter’s younger Lovett was surprising. However, her performance has brought such a unique depth and poignancy to the character, that Mrs Lovett may never be cast in the same way again.  She is no longer the comic sidekick. Her obsession with Todd is as distorted as his need for vengeance but she make’s their love seem feasible. There are moments when we hope that their murderous rampage can lead to them living happily by the sea.

It’s an odd thing to believe a world where people regularly burst into song, yet musicals can tell the most epic and tragic stories so effectively. Perhaps it is because music can reach ours souls instantly. Words have to go though our brain first. Images are similar – they show us the emotion and feeling, without the need for words. Buton’s film combines the visual and aural with some fine structuring to create an emotionally rewarding film that I’ve already gone back to see again.