Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✩✩
by Jerry Herman, directed by Molly Smith
Shaw Festival, Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 12-October 28, 2007
"Singing Silents"
The Shaw Festival is currently presenting the first fully-staged Canadian production of the Jerry Herman musical “Mack and Mabel”. It flopped badly on Broadway in 1974 and only after its book was revised in 1995 did it achieve a more respectable run in London. The Shaw Festival is renowned for rediscovering unjustly neglected works, but this is not one of them. This is not even top-drawer Jerry Herman, who wrote “Hello, Dolly!” (1964), “Mame” (1966) and “La Cage aux Folles” (1983). Even with the revised book it does not tell its story clearly accurately and its entire second act and finale are limp. Yet, it does provide a fine vehicle for the actors playing the title roles and Shaw production itself is a pleasure.
“Mack and Mabel” purports to tell the story of the decades-long on-off relationship of director/producer Mack Sennett (1884-1960) and actress Mabel Normand (1892-1930) set against the boom in silent movie making in the 1910s and ending just after the advent of sound. Michael Stewart’s book as revised by Francine Pascal gives such a heavily fictionalized version of the events that one can’t expect actually to learn anything about the characters or the period from the musical. We see how Sennett makes a star on the spot out of a deli delivery girl. (In fact, they met when both were acting in movies.) We see how he turns newspaper boy Frank Capra into a writer. (In fact, Capra gained his background in university.) Contrary to the musical, Capra had nothing to do with the script “Molly O.” that he tries to tempt Mabel with. We see how Normand becomes the greatest comedienne in silent movies and becomes addicted to drugs to keep up the hectic pace of filming. True, she made 228 films in 1910-27 years. But oddly for the 1970s (or 1990s) the book is intent on depicting Normand as totally dependent on men, first Sennett, then William Desmond Taylor, for her success, and never suggests, for example, that she was one of the first female directors in silent movies with sixteen films to her credit. The book shows how the pride of both characters keeps getting the way of a relationship, but in the end it does not really make us care about either of them.
The production of American director Molly Smith has both strengths and weaknesses. The book has Sennett act as the narrator of his own story, at least in Act 1. If Smith could make it clear that what we’re seeing is warped by Sennett’s perspective or that it is somehow his formulaic film version of what happened, that would help explain and even make interesting the show’s historical inaccuracies and idealized ending. But Smith does not do this. She gives us the idea that the show is set on a sound stage, but not necessarily on the sound stage of Sennett’s mind.
Her most remarkable achievement in coordination with designer William Schmuck and lighting designer Jock Munro is in suddenly turning colour scenes before us into the shaky, black-and-white silent movies they become. We first see this when Sennett and company arrive in Los Angeles as a parade is taking place. Sennett decides to use the parade as part of one his so-called “instant movies” with Mabel in it. As soon as she enters the scene the entire procession and Mabel become drained of colour and seem to become a silent film come to life--a real coup de théâtre.
Smith directs the spoken and purely sung scenes with vigour and drive, but Baayork Lee’s choreography is never inventive enough. This is especially noticeable in the big Keystone Kops dance number when Lee never makes full use of its massive comic potential. There is also a crucial miscalculation from Smith when in the midst of the big tap number “Tap Your Troubles Away”, she shows projections on either side of the stage of newspaper headlines blaring accusations against Mable and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle accusing them of involvement in separate murder incidents. We need to know this information to understand subsequent events in the show, but reading headlines naturally distracts us from watching the dancing.
Herman’s score has highs and lows. “I Won’t Send Roses” is a great song for Mack and Mabel’s “Time Heals Everything” could be a cabaret standard. On the other hand, “Also Called Mack and Mabel” and “Hit ‘Em On the Head” are poor in both music and lyrics and “When Mabel Comes In the Room” is an obvious attempt to recreate the “welcome back” scenes of “Hello, Dolly!” and “Mame”.
The cast is excellent. Ben Campbell has sung before but here his vocal strength and fullness of tone are truly impressive. He is just the right person to play the blustering, driven character of Mack. Glynis Ranney is also an ideal Mabel, combining the pertness of a comedienne with the fragility that leads to her downfall. Her character has the greatest emotional arc tin the musical and Ranney makes every moment believable.
Of the secondary characters only one, Lottie Ames, Sennett’s secretary is given a chance to shine. Gabrielle Jones does the trick and picks up the saggy second Act 2 with the perky pseudo-‘20s number “Tap Your Troubles Away”. Neil Barclay is a good Fatty Arbuckle but the book oddly gives him little chance to show why Arbuckle so renowned as a silent film comic or why he and Mabel were paired in so many films. Jeff Madden is an intense Frank Capra, Jay Turvey and William Vickers are Sennett’s semi-comical backers Mr. Kessel and Mr. Bauman. Peter Millard first plays an archetypal Simon Legree-style villain before becoming the supercilious William Desmond Taylor, whom the musical accuses of hooking Mabel on cocaine. (In reality, he tried to cure her of her addiction.) Shaw musical stalwart Patty Jamieson has the thankless role of Ella, who spends more time accompanying scenes on the piano than singing. Of the eleven-person ensemble, special mention should be made of Kawa Ada and Devon Tullock, who burn up the floor with style and precision on either side of Gabrielle Jones in the big tap number.
Paul Sportelli, as usual, leads his own arrangement of the score, this time for a band of thirteen. He puts so much energy into Herman’s pastiche, you can’t help wishing he were conducting an authentic score from the 1920s. The conclusion of “Mack and Mabel” has the two walk off into the distance together when we expect Mack to return as narrator to comment on the woman he outlived by thirty years. The “happy ending” (literally called that in the final song) feels tacked on and false just as all forced happy endings do. Here as elsewhere I wish the musical would face up to the facts. The Shaw Festival mandate includes the Golden and Silver Ages of operetta plus the rise and the Golden Age of the American musical--everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Rodgers and Hammerstein. With all this bounty, why is the Shaw spending its resources on recent, resounding Broadway flops like this and last year’s “High Society” when there are so many great works to revive?
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Glynis Ranney and Benedict Campbell. ©David Cooper.
2007-08-30
Mack and Mabel