Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✭✭✩
by Sarah-Louise Young, directed by Russell Lucas
David Mirvish and James Seabright, Panasonic Theatre, Toronto
October 2-19, 2014
Maria: “Somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good”
Julie Madly Deeply is billed as “a love letter to Julie Andrews”, but it’s difficult from that description to know what kind of show it is. British actor Sarah-Louise Young, who has a voice very similar to Andrews, traverses the star’s greatest hits interspersed with facts and anecdotes about her life. But rather than being reverential and dull, Young’s show is incredibly funny. This is because Young knows there are peculiar aspects to being a Julie Andrews fan and her adulation is tempered with a comic self-awareness.
The show begins with Young’s indefatigable piano accompanist Michael Roulston playing a medley of Andrews’ hits from various eras. Following a grand fanfare, Young enters wearing an outfit reminiscent of Andrews as Maria Trapp and launches into her own medley of tunes. At this point we don’t know what to make of the show until Young stops in mid-song to tell us, “I’m not Julie Andrews”. The implication that we must be thinking she is some Andrews-obsessed nutter sets the tone of comedy immediately. To reinforce this Young tells us that when Andrews had to be absent from the Broadway production of Victor/Victoria for two weeks, Liza Minnelli was her understudy. This leads to an utterly hilarious imitation of Minnelli and an example of what an Andrews classic would sound like if Minnelli had her way with it.
It turns out that telling Andrews’ life story gives Young an excuse to indulge her other talent besides singing – namely a real gift for satiric voices and impersonation. We learn that Andrews was born Julia Elizabeth Wells in 1935 to a singer and an unknown father. Her mother later married a Canadian vaudevillian Ted Andrews and the pair put her on the stage with them when she was still a child. This gives Young occasion to impersonate a female vaudevillian commenting on the young Andrews as well as give a terrible impression of a Canadian accent (which she acknowledges as terrible) for Andrews’ step-father.
Though alcoholic and abusive, Andrews’ step-father was responsible for sending her to have voice lessons and encouraging her to go to America to be in her first Broadway show, The Boy Friend. Young gives a great impression of Andrews’ eccentric voice teacher Madame Lilian Stiles-Allen who is so impressed with Andrews’ fully formed larynx and four octave range that she tries to encourage Andrews to become an opera singer. And, indeed, Andrews would make her professional debut singing an aria from Ambroise Thomas’s Mignon.
Luckily for everyone, Andrews knew where her strengths lay and became a great success as Polly Browne in The Boy Friend in 1954. That role led to My Fair Lady in 1956 and that to the television musical Cinderella in 1958. This history leads Young not only to a series of songs from all three, but to impressions of the rasping smoker’s voice of Cy Feuer of The Boy Friend and a deliberately exaggerated Russian accent for Moss Hart, original director of My Fair Lady. It also leads to the first time I’ve ever heard anyone impersonate Audrey Hepburn, which Young nails completely, so we can hear Hepburn’s explanation of why she got the role of Eliza Doolittle for the film version.
Though Young would like to skip over Camelot (1960), because she doesn’t like it, her accompanist won’t let her and gets a chance to show off his pleasant voice by singing “How To Handle a Woman”. Young is only interested in Camelot because of Richard Burton and because it led Walt Disney to cast Andrews as Mary Poppins in 1964.
Young thus ends Act 1 on a cheery note and begins Act 2 on an even cheerier note with tales of Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965). There’s no fourth wall in this show, so Young has the lights go up and asks for audience members’ favourite moments from the film and favourite costumes for attending sing-along showings of the film.
After a quick tour through Andrews’ other film work – The Americanization of Emily (1964), Hawaii (1966), Torn Curtain (1966) and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) – Young steels herself to recount Andrews’ transition from box office gold to box office poison starting with Star! (1968) and culminating in the film fans are most embarrassed about, S.O.B. (1981), in which Andrews bared her breasts, a fact that Young dwells on in lovingly comic detail. Victor/Victoria (1982) a least helps redeem her from that desolate period and confirm her status as a gay icon, Young says glancing meaningfully at her accompanist. This period allows Young to explore songs we don’t know well, like “Whistling Away the Dark” from Darling Lili and “Could I Leave You” from the Sondheim revue Putting It Together (1993), in which American premiere she starred.
Young also does not shy away from Andrews’ disastrous surgery on her vocal cords in 1997 which left them permanently damaged. Young comically re-enacts the surgery while singing “The Physician”, a 1933 Cole Porter song used in Star! Young, who frequently refers to seeing her idol at her 2010 concert at the O2 Arena in London, gives us a sample of what Andrews sounded like then singing “Edelweiss”.
Julie Madly Deeply is an unusual tribute show that celebrates the heights but does not ignore the lows of its subject. Both are imbued with Young’s delightfully improvisational humour. Much humour is also lurking in Michael Roulston as is evident in the rare moments when he gets to share the spotlight. In singing Andrews’ songs Young gets the singer’s impossibly prim upperclass pronunciation just right. Young is fully aware of the strange implications of being a fan of the embodiment of Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp, knowing how hard and unsuccessfully Andrews fought to avoid the typecasting those roles led to. But it is Young’s awareness of the comic ironies of life that that make this such a strong show and so much more than merely a tribute to a single star.
Julie Madly Deeply can be seen either alone or as a package with The Boy with Tape on His Face. For a full schedule see www.mirvish.com/enews/2014/Edinburgh/edinburgh.html.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Michael Roulston and Sarah-Louise Young. ©2013 Steve Ullathorne.
For tickets, visit www.mirvish.com.
2014-10-03
Julie Madly Deeply