Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
✭✭✭✭✩
music by Allen Cole, lyrics by Ann-Marie MacDonald, book by Ann-Marie MacDonald and Alisa Palmer, directed by Alisa Palmer
tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
May 1-June 6, 2001
“A New Canadian Musical That’s a Hit”
With "Anything That Moves" we have that grail that has seemed so elusive over the past two years--a hit Canadian musical. Even in its first incarnation as part of the du Maurier World Stage Festival, this work with music by Allen Cole, book by Ann-Marie MacDonald and Alisa Palmer and lyrics by MacDonald won a Dora for Outstanding New Musical. This newly revised version, a co-production by the Tarragon Theatre and Nightwood Theatre, proves that the show is still "outstanding". Conventional wisdom in New York and Toronto has it that new musicals should be based on well known material to attract an audience with "name recognition". But, as was painfully clear with both "Outrageous" and "Larry's Party" earlier this season, a well-known story can hamper creativity. A major source of "Anything"'s freshness is a brand new, funny, complex story we actually have to follow. Anyone familiar with MacDonald's play "Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)" or her libretto for Nic Gotham's chamber opera "Nigredo Hotel" will find find the same mixture of whimsy and wisdom here that made those works both hilarious and intriguing.
The plot is like the inverse of "La Cage aux Folles" without the drag. Joel, a self-effacing florist, meets Jinny, a researcher in an animal lab, and falls in love with her at first sight. In the first of a series of misunderstandings, Jinny assumes Joel is gay because he is introduced as the friend of the promiscuous Tyrone. When Joel points out Jinny's habit of subconsciously going after the wrong men, she simultaneously vows chastity for a year to get over her habit and friendship with Joel, the first man she can really talk to. To hold onto the relationship, the straight-arrow Joel finds he has to play at being gay and gets caught up in an ever-growing web of lies. The action climaxes in an hilarious dinner party involving Tyrone, a black lesbian undertaker, Jinny's mother and Joel's father as more truth than anyone was expecting comes out.
MacDonald's dialogue and lyrics are consistently literate and clever. In how many musicals today would characters use terms like "atavistic' or "semiotics" and discuss "Peer Gynt" or "A Streetcar Named Desire"? There's no dumbing down here and (surprise!) the show is all the stronger. "Anything" is rich with humour because it derives from so many sources--witty language, satire of modern mores, unexpected situations and, most of all, believable characters. She has us rooting for Joel and Jinny right up to the end. The one main flaw lies with Arthur, Joel's distant, kilted father. Arthur is not so much a character as a collection of symbolic functions. He is there primarily to create symmetry with Jinny's mother, Fleur, and his confession of a secret in Act 2 is used to motivate Joel's own confession of truth, but it also brings the giddy pace of the show to a halt and undermines the potential buoyancy of the finale.
Allen Cole has set MacDonald's lyrics to a wide variety of musical styles--from Latin to blues, from Sondheim to rock--yet all, given the piano and bass accompaniment, within a lounge framework. The unamplified accompaniment has the enormous advantage of allowing unamplified singing. While you don't necessarily go out humming the tunes, you do go out wishing to hear them all again, a much better gauge of a good show. A number of the songs are standouts like Jinny's enlightened/wistful "Because I'm Not in Love", Joel's declaration of love "There's Someone on His Way", Jinny's mother's rockin' "Menopausal Mama" and the send-up of Higgins's song in "My Fair Lady" in "Why Can't a Straight Man (Be More Like a Fag)".
The show could not be better cast. Glynis Ranney, who has been a major asset in the Shaw Festival's musicals, plays Jinny as a cross between Constance of "Goodnight Desdemona" and Amalia from "She Loves Me". Besides her pure-toned singing, always alive to the nuances of the lyrics, she is a fine actress who immediately creates a bond between the audience and her vulnerable, off-beat character. Tim Howar, in a thankful change from the psychotic Martin in "Outrageous", is a strong singer and makes the sensitive and literate Joel an appealing character. He captures the undercurrent of desperation in this ordinary guy who realizes that Jinny is his one chance at happiness. In the unintentional competition of straight WASP florist musicals, there is no question that Joel is more rounded and real that the vague and ethereal Larry of "Larry's Party".
In secondary roles, Juan Chioran is perfect as the superficial, self-obsessed lawyer Tyrone. After his singing Don Quixote and Dracula at Stratford, it's about time he had the chance to use is characterful voice unshrouded by an accent. Sandra Caldwell, as Alberta the lesbian undertaker, has a great sense of comic timing and a rich voice. She lets us glimpse a person who longs for something more than her façade as a tough-talking materialist would suggest. George Masswohl plays both a flirting waiter and the dour military historian Arthur. He does his best to make the wooden Arthur come alive, but is more at ease as the waiter. The most vibrant character of the show is Jinny's mother Fleur played so delectably by Judy Marshak. Fleur, a former alcoholic now 15 years sober, is a grief counsellor given to every form of New Age cant going. The scene between mother and daughter trying to outdo each other in postfeminist correctness is, in its finely observed human comedy, the most unforgettably funny scene of the show.
Director Alisa Palmer prevents the show from drifting into the world of sitcom buy keeping the action focussed on human concerns. Except for the Arthur problem of Act 2, she keeps the complications of the plot clear while building up dramatic tension though a good sense of pace. Astrid Janson has managed to design a set with seven entrances for the small Tarragon stage that because it is so muted never shouts "farce". Under Andrea Lundy's sensitive lighting the space is easily transformed from interior to exterior. Janson has the freest rein in her designs in Tyrone's clubwear and especially in the nouvelle Earth-goddess outfits for Fleur. Valerie Moore's ballroom-influenced choreography makes excellent use of the triangular stage area. The composer himself is at the piano.
While the character Arthur requires a rethink or excision, the show's merits are so abundant I heartily recommend it. Ann-Marie MacDonald's talent has so far flitted from genre to genre producing success wherever it lands. Let's hope music theatre experiences another visit of its invigorating touch.
Photo: Juan Chioran, Tim Howar and Glynis Ranney. ©2001 Tarragon Theatre.
2001-05-14
Anything That Moves