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music by Jeanine Tesori, book & lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire, directed by Susan Ferley

Grand Theatre, London

November 28, 2014-January 3, 2015

Shrek: “My future looked bleak but the freak has turned out just fine”

The Grand Theatre’s production of Shrek the Musical is a great success.  The musical is based on the 2001 movie Shrek, which in turn was based on the 1990 children’s book of the same title by William Steig.  If, like me, you did not particularly like the movie, don’t worry.  This is one of those rare cases where the musical based on the movie is actually better than the movie. 

The movie had musical numbers but they were all pre-existing pop and rock songs.  The musical has a high-class pedigree.  The new score is composed by Jeanine Tesori, who won the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for the musical Caroline, or Change written with Tony Kushner.  David Lindsay-Abaire, who wrote the lyrics and the new book, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Hole.  The combination makes for a musical where the music is memorable and varied, the plot tight and the lyrics witty and very funny.

The movie Shrek made by the young company DreamWorks was conceived as an anti-Disney animation film.  William Steig’s story had an ogre as a hero, not a beautiful prince or princess.  The hero had an animal sidekick as in Disney, but one he doesn’t like.  The villain is more comical than scary.  And the songs were pre-existing oldies.  Changing to a purpose-composed score for the stage musical is a step towards making Shrek more like a Disney musical thus letting it fall to Lindsay-Abaire’s lyrics to maintain the satirical thrust. 

The show begins by skewering storybook conventions, with characters stepping out of an oversized storybook, when we see the parents of the 7-year-old Shrek (Zoë Brown) kick him out of the house in ogre tradition to live his life in a swamp.  Immediately after wards, we see the parents of 7-year-old Princess Fiona (Skylar Serafim) send her out of their castle to live in the top of a tower surrounded by molten lava and guarded by a dragon waiting until her prince comes to rescue her.

Then we fast-forward several years to find the older Shrek (Steve Ross) living alone in the patch of swamp he has staked out.  The problem is that a host of fairytale creatures – Pinocchio (Robert Markus), the Big Bad Wolf (Matt Alfano) and the Sugar Plum Fairy (Callandra Dendias) among others – begin arriving and asking to stay on his land.  The reason is that the evil ruler of Duloc, Lord Farquaad (Liam Tobin) has exiled them from the kingdom as freaks to return only on pain of death.  The major irony is that Lord Farquaad, who, as we discover later, is the son of one of Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs, is a “freak” himself, since he is severely vertically challenged. 

Shrek sets off to complain to Farquaad about the situation, not because he cares about the creatures’ plight, but just to get his privacy back.  Along the way he rescues a Donkey (Troy Adams) from Farquaad’s guards.  For this, the Donkey insists on being Shrek’s friend, although Shrek is not interested.  Meanwhile, Farquaad is looking for a princess to rescue so that he can become king.  He is too cowardly to do it himself so he wants to find a substitute.  When Shrek arrives, Farquaad makes a deal that if Shrek rescues Fiona he can have his swamp back.  Thus, Shrek reluctantly sets out on what in most stories would be an heroic quest. 

The show has an ideal cast.  Steve Ross, who is far too often cast as a sidekick (Sancho Panza to Don Quixote in Stratford’s Man of La Mancha), finally gets the chance to play a title role.  He relishes the opportunity, not that he lets it show since his Shrek is as grumpy and embittered as he is supposed to be.  What Ross does especially well is show how Shrek begins to fall in love with Fiona while realizing all the time how hopeless it is for a princess ever to love an ogre.  Ross is in fine voice and well brings off such songs as the introductory “Big Bright Beautiful World” and the reflective “Who I’d Be”. 

Elicia MacKenzie, Maria in the Mirvish production of The Sound of Music, is now thoroughly at home on stage and reveals a talent for comedy that previously had remained hidden.  Tesori has written a great introductory song for her, “I Know It’s Today”, where the imprisoned princess keeps her hopes up that one day her prince will come.  The song is introduced by the Young Fiona (Skylar Serafim), continued by the Teen Fiona (Alexandra Grant, who has a beautifully rich voice) and then the adult Fiona, concluding with a trio of the three Fionas all together.  MacKenzie conveys Fiona’s disappointment that her rescuer should be an ogre, but as she, Shrek and the Donkey journey back, MacKenzie subtly indicates how Fiona falls in love with Shrek despite his looks.  Fiona and Shrek even engage in a burping and farting contest (courtesy of sound designer Jim Neil) that ought to reveal to Shrek how perfectly suited Fiona is to him and his crude sense of humour.

The most important change from the movie is the softening of the character of the Donkey.  In trying to make the Donkey annoying, the writers of the screen version succeeded all too well so that we wished the motormouth beast would shut up just as much as Shrek does.  In the musical, however, Lindsay-Abaire only suggests the Donkey’s tendency to garrulousness and instead focusses on the character’s common sense.  Shrek is blinded to his own virtues by his unhappy childhood and the stigma of being an ogre, but Lindsay-Abaire’s Donkey sees through all that and helps Shrek appraise his situation more clearly.  Troy Adams, last seen as the male nurse Belize in Soulpepper’s Angels in America, brings his wonderful combination of snappy comic repartee with an undertone of real concern from that role to this, thus lending Donkey a depth and importance the character never had in the movie.  Adams is also a fine singer as proved by his vital rendition of “I Won’t Let You Go”.  

Other standouts include Alana Bridgewater as the Dragon.  Bridgewater gets to unleash her powerful voice for the rousing song “Forever”.  Layton has created a fantastic dragon whose face alone takes up a third of the stage.  Director Susan Ferley wisely has Bridgewater, clad in the Dragon’s colours, stand next to the dragon puppet to sing.

Robert Markus is a comically helium-voiced Pinocchio both singing and speaking and actually does have a nose that grows.  Stratford regular Matt Alfano is a hoot as the Big Bad Wolf, who dons grandma’s clothes not because he ate her but because he’s into cross-dressing.  Callandra Dendias is a charming Sugar Plum Fairy, but is especially funny as the voice and puppeteer of Gingy the Gingerbread Man, whom Lord Farquaad is in the midst of torturing when we first meet him.

The show is filled with surprises from a chorus of the Pied Piper’s tap-dancing mice to the Three Blind Mice as Supremes-like backup singers.  Layton’s set and costumes designs rise to the shows manifold challenges and achieve the look of a beautifully illustrated children’s book come to life on stage.  Ferley has an unerring sense of how to pace the show and remembers to slow down for reflection between the show’s many exuberant numbers.  For all its gags and satire, the Lindsay-Abaire gives the show a clear uplifting message about diversity in the song “Freak Flag”, where the cast-out fairytale creatures defiantly band together to sing: “All the things that make us special / Are the things that make us strong”. 

If you already live in the London area, make sure a visit to see Shrek is on your list.   If you are outside the area and habitually take your children’s to see the family shows at Stratford, consider strongly making a trip to London for Shrek, because the show is much more enjoyable and kid-friendly and than most of the so-called children’s shows that Stratford has mounted so far.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (from top) Steve Ross as Shrek and Elicia MacKenzie as Princess Fiona; Troy Adams as Donkey and Steve Ross as Shrek; Liam Tobin as Lord Farquaad. ©2014 Chris Montanini.

For tickets, visit www.grandtheatre.com.