Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
✭✭✭✩✩
written and directed by Allison Beula
Allison Beula Productions, Next Stage Festival, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
January 4-15, 2012
We’re in the midst of winter here in Toronto but if you need to escape to a place where it’s always sunny, just head down to Factory Theatre for The Tiki Bikini Beach Paradise Party a-Go-Go! In this homage to the teenage beach musicals of the 1960s it’s sunny not just in climate but in outlook. It is an hour of gleefully silly fun where adolescent is a time of innocence, not angst.
Allison Beula, who had written, directed and choreographed the show, has a detailed knowledge of the beach movie genre best known for such stars as Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. In jukebox musical style, she has taken seven “hits” from the period like “Blue Muumuu” (1957), “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini” (1965) and “Pineapple Princess” (1960) and had composer Jeffrey Straker add three songs written in the same style including the incredibly catchy title song. Straker has the style down so well that his new songs blend in perfectly. The groovy musical accompaniment is performed live by a nifty five-man combo, the von Drats.
Leading a cast of fourteen, the Frankie Avalon equivalent Freddie (Thomas Duplessie) and the Annette Funicello equivalent Jeannette (Sarah Kuzio) are faced with a terrible situation--there is only one week left of summer before they all have to go back to school. What should they do? Well, the answer, of course, is to have a party! But there is one problem: Bikini Beach, the best beach in Hawaii (where the show is set), is controlled by the mean-spirited Harvey Lembeck equivalent Big Tuna (Evan Dowling) and his henchman Mini Minnow (Stephan Dickson).
Freddie’s solution here is to have a surf-off with Big Tuna and if Freddie and his gang win, Big Tuna will have to let them use the beach.
Along the way Beula gives us glimpses into the love life of Freddie and Jeannette--no sex, of course, just a quick kiss now and then. We also follow the super-nerdy, cartoon-voiced Slim Melvin as he attempts to woo the super-perky muumuu-wearing Widget (Amelia Sirianni) and the sultry Sugar (Rory Bray) as she tries to get the attention of the eternally preoccupied Professor (Stan MacDonald), who is apparently conducting scientific studies on adolescent mating behaviour.
For a cast of young people likely born around 1990, it’s amazing how Beula has drawn the eager style of line delivery that so exactly matches that in the ‘60s beach movies. Except for Dowling, the individual singing voices tend to be weak, likely because music theatre school students are used to singing with a microphone, not without as here. Luckily, nearly all the songs feature choruses and the company’s choral singing is excellent. The best element of all is the dancing. Beula is a teacher of “vintage dance” and here she shows great imagination and lots of loving attention to detail in recreating the choreographic styles of the period, all enthusiastically executed by the energetic cast.
Most writers if faced with this type of material would be tempted to send it up to or to make the dialogue too self-aware or camp. The charm of Beula’s approach is that she does not do this. The depiction of teenaged life in 1960s beach movies is so idealized and so hypocritical with so much young flesh on display yet no suggestion of sex, that there is no need to send it up. The boys’ only concern is surfing. The girls’ only concern is looking cute. Their mutual concern is finding perfect partner--for marriage--but only when they finish school. These are solid conservative values portrayed as cool, and that in itself provides humour in abundance. The show is such a delight that I know I was not the only one smiling as I hummed the title tune to myself as I left the theatre.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Stan MacDonald, Christopher M. Johnston, Ashley Arnold, Stephen Dickson, Stephanie Hope Lawlor, Thomas Duplessie, Rachelle Ganesh, Kevin Clarke, Amelie Sirianna, Nicky Nasrallah and Evan Dowling.. ©2011 Allison Beula.
For Tickets, visit www.fringetoronto.com.
2012-01-06
The Tiki Bikini Beach Paradise Party a-Go-Go!