Review: West Side Story

West Side Story

The Production Company

11 July 2015

State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne

theproductioncompany.com.au

to 19 July

West Side Story. The Production Company. Sean Mulligan and Jets.

The Production Company was formed in Melbourne in 1999 by Jeanne Pratt AC. Still supported by individual and business sponsors, they present three short-run musicals a year with the ongoing goal to "provide professional opportunities for local artists and to entertain Melbourne audiences with the best shows from Broadway and beyond".  They usually sell out the State Theatre and chose to celebrate their 50th production with the show that changed how Broadway, and beyond, saw and made  music theatre: West Side Story.

.It's hard to imagine just how mind blowing West Side Story was when it opened on Broadway in 1957. An opening-night critic from the New York Herald Tribune said: "The radioactive fallout from West Side Story must still be descending on Broadway this morning." Here was a story about teenagers, gangs, back streets, sex, racism and violence. Its music was influenced by opera and its dance by ballet but it felt and looked like the streets it was set on. This was Broadway without grinning showgirls and high kicks. This was romance without a happy ending. This was a story about New York and about the real anger, pain and love that wasn't far from the comfy seats and flashing cameras of the opening night.

And it was created by Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Burnstein and Stephen Sondheim: artists who had no idea how loved they were to become.

This production is as close to that 1957 production as we can get, being based on Robbins's original direction and choreography that was re-created by Gale Edwards and Michael Ralph. Thanks to the 1961 film, its familiarity – I almost expected the audience to finger click along – is immediately welcomed and loved and it was pretty amazing to see just how wonderful the school dance scene looked like on a stage.

The cast ooze their love for this show. They know how important this piece is; most of them would have been singing and dancing along to the film for as long as they could remember. Even if their accents are a bit dodgy, they are all stunning and their dancing is an tribute to Robbins.

The vocal highlight is Anna O'Byrne's astonishing singing of Maria. On opening night, laryngitis left Deone Zanotto playing Anita karoke style with Amanda Harrison singing and Natalie Gilhome, the assistant director, providing the dialogue off stage. The theatre is big enough for most people to not really notice, but it does question why there weren't covers in the ensemble.

In all, the show was kind of like being there in 1957, except it's no longer mind-blowingly new. Even Tim Chappel's costumes, which capture the 50s and hint at the decades since with super-bright colour and nods to trends like acid wash jeans and ra-ra skirts, don't bring it out of its time.

The expectations, familiarity and determination to be 'that' West Side Story takes away its edge and doesn't let it find its own voice.

It's a story of racism and anger about immigration in a big city where young people are unemployed and first generation immigrants despise the next generation of immigrants because of where they came from. It could be our story. But it's not. While in 1950s and 60s it was a story of the city and world its creators lived in, this one is a piece of history.

Which is exactly what this company aim to do. And they do it well. Sold out theatres really don't care if anyone disagrees. I loved seeing it, but I'd love to see the next Australian telling of the extraordinary West Side Story as a show about us and now (like Barrie Kosky's re-told the piece as  Berlin's story at Komische Oper Berlin). I want to see one that blows our minds all over again.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Gypsy

Gypsy
The Production Company
10 July 2013
State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 14 July
theproductioncompany.com.au

Caroline O'Connor stars as Rose in Gypsy. Is there anything else you need to know! If you've seen Connor perform, you know you have to see her; if you haven't seen her, you've probably been told that you have to see her; if you have no idea who she is, have a google and you'll know you have to see her.

Caroline O'Connor is an old-style, belt it out with heart and guts super star and the State Theatre erupted for her last night.

Gypsy is the story of stage mother Rose, whose life is managing and creating the vaudeville act performed by her daughters Baby June and Louise. Abandoned by her own mother and three husbands, Rose holds on to what she loves most, refusing to marry the man who adores her (Herbie) and not noticing how much June wants to leave. When June abandons her family, Rose focuses on the less-talented Louise, finally convincing her to perform in a burlesque show. It's loosely based on the memoir of the 30s famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee (called Louise).

Gypsy (Jule Styne, music; Arthur Laurents, book; Stephen Sondheim, lyrics) was first seen on Broadway from 1959 to 1961 with Ethel Merman as Rose. It was nominated for a pile of Tonys, but didn't win any. Revivals made up for this. Other famous Roses include Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti Lupone, and not to forget Rosalind Russell and Bette Midler in screen versions. Rose is the role that women of a certain age look forward to playing, written in a time when women of a certain age were loved and adored and written for.

O'Connor might have her name above the title, but the rest of the cast as just as super and starry. Matt Hetherington nearly grounds Rose as sensible and love-struck Herbie, Gemma-Ashley Kaplan brings guts to Baby June and Christina Tan transforms from downtrodden Louise to powerful Gypsy. And not to forget the scene-stealing cast of young performers, and Chloe Dallimore, Nicki Wendt and Ann Wood as the three strippers who show Louise that you gotta have a gimmick.

And the design team of Adam Gardnir (set), Tim Chappel (costume) and, Paul Jackson and Robert Cuddon (lights) create a stage that feels and looks as great as a multi-billion dollar show with a background of twinkling stars for the nostalgia-inspired back drops and the gorgeous, extra fun era-inspired costumes.

Now in their 15th year, The Production Company continue to produce the musicals that we'd never see from commercial or professional companies. With limited resources and rehearsal time, they give us the old-style shows we've only ever seen on film or ones that haven't been produced in Australia. They are more than concert versions, but less than a full production, but always made with a love of the work that makes them soar.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Belinda Strodder

Reveiw: Promises, Promises

Promises, Promises
The Production Company
3 October 2012
The State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 7 October
theproductioncompany.com.au

The Production Company finish their 2012 season with 1968's Promises, Promises and, for all its promise, it seemed to leave its audience perplexed. This is the first time I've been at Production Company opening night that didn't end with a standing ovation.

Promises, Promises opened on Broadway in 1968, the West End in 1969 and only came back to Broadway in 2010. Based on Billy Wilder's film The Apartment (written for Jack Lemmon and staring Shirley Maclaine and Fred MacMurray), it's a one-off collaboration between Burt Bacharach (music), Hal David (lyrics) and Neil Simon (book); names that should righty leave any theatre lover drooling.

Simon had four shows running on Broadway in 1966 (Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple, and Barefoot in the Park), and the book (the action is all in the text) is as witty and observant as any of his award-winning plays. Hal David's lyrics are fautlessly funny and still able to break hearts (the show's most famous for "I'll never fall in love again") and I don't believe anyone who says that they don't like Burt Bacharach. Many try and copy his sound, but no one sounds like Bacharach better than Bacharach, and Orchestra Victoria capture his distinct dissonance, ear-melting harmonies and the 60s brass and big orchestra sound that ensures that even the show's lesser numbers are wonderful.

Set in 1962, it's a story about young no one accountant Chuck Baxter who lets middle-aged executives use his bachelor pad to have sex with young women, based on the promises that he'll get a promotion. Meanwhile he's in love with fellow no one Fran Kubelik, not knowing that she's one of the women in his apartment.

The gorgeous design captures the time, the ensemble ensure that "Turky lurky time" brings the house down, Chelsea Plumley's Marge MacDougall is a comic highlight with "A fact can be a beautiful thing", but the night belongs to wonderful Matt Hetherington as Chuck Baxter. Dismissing those who have been before him (Lemmon, Jerry Orbach, Sean Hayes), his Chuck is impossible not to adore (even with some lyric hicoughs and a sound mix that sometimes lost him in the band) and Hetherington is the heart of this production.

Production Company favourite Marina Prior is Fran, the object of Baxter's love and a young woman who naively sees no option but to be treated like she's worthless. Sure Matt and Marina's aren't 20, but vocally Marina's voice is too full and emotionally she brings too much maturity to Fran, missing her lightness and frustrating innocence. I would have loved to have seen Marina play the older and far funnier Marge.

But casting isn't what's holding this production back.  Promises, Promises is a product of its time;  a time of amazing clothes and music, but a time of attitudes that we hope not to see anymore. In his 1996 memoir, Rewrites, Neil Simon described the "enormous temptations" of their out of town run and says, "We were in a pre-AIDS world where all you had to worry about was your conscience and your discretion." It's not hard to see that the attitudes on the stage were the attitudes of the time.

Choosing to present this story is already a choice to comment on these attitudes.  By making one of the young women a man, director Nadia Tass makes a clear statement that we are looking at this story with a contemporary perspective, but this tone and directorial voice is inconsistent and confusing.

It's story about a woman who believe's she's nothing because she's treated like nothing, but playing the executives as buffoons and their 'girls' as drunken idiots supports the idea that what they are doing is harmless fun. It's this contradicting attitude to the time and the characters that leaves the production feeling awkward and flat. Of course, theatre is not tv, but Mad Men is set at the same time in the same city and world, and presents the misogyny of the time without demeaning the women (or the men).  Jilted secretary Miss Olsen (Hester Van Der Vyver) grasps the tone perfectly – nearly as well as Mad Men's Miss Olsen – and more of this subtle tone would give the show the guts it's missing.

As Promises, Promises is a show that's rarely produced (despite its pedigree), it's a wonderful choice for the season and subscribers won't be disappointed. There are issues, but I still enjoyed it more than the raved-about Chess and The Producers. It's a piece that lets story and character lead and any Bacharach is better than no Bacharach.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens
The Production Company
24 November 2011
The Playhouse, the Arts Centre
to 4 December

The cult fascination with Big and Little Edie Beale doesn't resonate as it does in the US, but it doesn't leave this pair any less fascinating. The Production Company present the Australian premier of the 2007 Tony-winning musical and with Pamela Rabe and Nancye Hayes cast, expectations were high.

The recluse and impoverished Beales were revealed in a 1975 documentary about the mother and daughter living in their filthy East Hampton mansion with raccoons, 50-plus cats, a metre high pile of empty cat food tins and endless fleas. Being the aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy-Onassis added to their notoriety and cousin Jackie soon paid for the cleaning of her relatives' house.

The original documentary is still uncomfortably irresistible in its welcomed exploitation, so the decision to re-tell it as a musical could be odd. Why re-tell a story that has already been told perfectly? But such eccentricity and dark sadness must be shared and Grey Gardens creates complexity by including a first act. Set 1941, Act 1 is a fictional afternoon leading up to Little Edie's (Liz Stiles) engagement party to Joe Kennedy (Alex Rathgeber where, cousin Jackie (Ariel Kaplan) runs about, Edie's daddy shows his colours and Big Edie (Rabe) sings and decides her daughter's fate.

For all the genuine affection of Act 1, its ending is played from the beginning, leaving little to draw the audience beyond the veneer of their world.   As it's known that Joe died in WW2, that Jackie nabs his little brother and how the Edie's end up, this act could filled with unfulfilled hope or be so dark that every note is a cruel stab at Act 2.

But it matters little, as Act 2 is what everyone wants to see. Taken directly from the documentary, Big (now Hayes) and Little (now Rabe) are as they will always be remembered. The music is forgettable, but their songs allow the subtext of the documentary to literally sing.

Hayes and Rabe are two of the best around and they surpass all expectations as the Edies bicker and fight for attention and try to find love in their bitterness and regret. It's easy to laugh at the quirks of old-lady eccentricity, but their story isn't easy to laugh with, as it's too close for anyone with parent problems or aging issues or a belief that two cats isn't enough. It's the honesty that Rabe and Hayes find that makes their Edies their own and so much more than remembered images from a tv screen.

With tiny budgets and short rehearsals, The Production Company always create something so much more than expected. Grey Gardens doesn't always grasp the tone and cultural impact of this story, but it's still a great night out and you'll not see better than Hayes and Rabe.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jeff Busby