Review - The Bodyguard - David Mirvish, Toronto

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by Alexander Dinelaris, directed by Thea Sharrock

David Mirvish, Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto

February 15-May 14, 2017

Frank: “You’re too old to be this naive!”

The musical The Bodyguard, now having its Canadian premiere, would be a great tribute concert to the late Whitney Houston. The trouble is that the phoney plot keeps getting in the way. The musical is based on the 1992 film of the same name starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, a film nominated in 1993 for seven Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Film and Worst Screenplay. Alexander Dinelaris adapted the book for the musical from the screenplay and added in several songs associated with Houston not in the original movie. While the show is slickly directed by Thea Sharrock and handsomely designed, you can’t help wishing that Dinelaris had ditched the movie adaptation idea entirely.

The fundamental problem with the show stems from two opposing purposes. On the one hand, Dinelaris wants to stay true to the original movie, including its Swiss cheese style plot and its crashingly dull dialogue. On the other, Dinelaris wants to make the show a Whitney Houston jukebox musical. Compilation musicals like 42nd Street (1980) or ABBA’s Mamma Mia! (1999) are based on songs written by songwriting teams, whether Harry Warren and Al Dubin or Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. This allowed the adaptors to distribute the songs among the cast of the musical. In Mamma Mia! part of the fun was hearing songs originally sung by the female members of ABBA assigned to male singers.

Whitney Houston was not a songwriter. Of the 16 songs in the show she is a contributor to only one. Her greatest hits were written by other people. Dolly Parton wrote and recorded “I Will Always Love You” in 1973 and George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam of the band Boy Meets Girl wrote “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” in 1986. Because Dinelaris has filled the musical with songs associated with Houston, but not written by her, he has felt the need to assign the songs, with one exception, only to the singer playing the pop diva Rachel Marron and secondarily to the diva’s sister Nicki. This leads to two situations unusual in

musicals: first, most of the large cast do not sing and, second, most for the songs are presented as songs sung in concert to an imagined audience rather than as part of the drama. Thus, although the show presents a love story there is no duet for the two lovers.

The show rises in mood only during the musical numbers. Otherwise, the clunky dialogue and clichéd plot repeatedly bring the show crashing back to earth. The story focusses on fictional reigning pop diva Rachel Marron. She has been receiving threatening messages by someone who has bypassed her security team. They hire former Secret Service agent Frank Farmer as her bodyguard. This leads to predictable but nonsensical anger from Rachel when Fred insists she curtail her activities for her own safety. Meanwhile, Frank happens into a bar where Rachel’s sister Nicki is singing. He learns that she has grown up but still remains in her sister’s shadow. Apparently, because Frank is a good listener, she falls in love with him.

Spats between Rachel and Frank continue until she insists on singing at a venue he deems unsafe. Sure enough, her stalker attacks her on stage and Frank saves her. That incident apparently leads Rachel also to fall in love with Frank. Frank responds to Rachel and, breaching all professional protocol, sleeps with his employer.

Events move to a critical point when it appears the stalker has infiltrated Rachel’s household security. One of Rachel’s songs has been nominated for an Academy Award, the highest honour in this pop culture-centric show that any performer can achieve. She has to perform the song at the awards show, but can Frank protect her at the event and catch the stalker? Earlier in the show it was made clear that the stalker did not want to kill Rachel but protect her. For unexplained reasons his motives have radically altered by the end.

The show is an awkward mix of thriller and romance, neither of which is successful. The stalker is known from the very beginning so there is no mystery to be had. He is portrayed mostly through film projected on a scrim and his presence underscored with cheesy “scary” music unrelated to any Whitney Houston songs. At the same time the romance between Rachel and Frank is undercut by Rachel’s domineering personality and by Frank’s choice of Rachel over the more sympathetic Nicki. Dinelaris has managed to write an uninteresting thriller combined with a romantic story where we care almost nothing about the central couple and much more about the neglected Nicki.

Added to this are numerous plot holes. Frank may be good at defending Rachel at the last minute, but he and his team are no good at preventing attacks on her. The worst example is when Dinelaris makes a big point of the stalker stealing the security pass to the Oscars from Rachel’s son, Fletcher. The next thing we know, Fletcher is somehow at the Oscars without his security pass and no one, including Frank has noticed. Meanwhile, the white stalker has managed to get into the auditorium with the pass of a ten-year-old black boy and carrying weapons. How the musical ever went into production in 2012 with such an obvious slip-up is a mystery.

The star of the show is Beverley Knight, but she does not sing at all performances. Tuesday nights and Wednesday matinees Carole Stennett takes her place and she was the one performing the night I attended. Stennett did not seem quite inside her character in the knock-‘em-out opening number “Queen Of The Night”, but steadily grew into the role so that she was bold and confident in the nightclub medley that includes “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”. Stennett has a strong, open voice that can take on grit when required. Yet, she is noticeably more comfortable with the slower songs like “I Will Always Love You” that she shapes beautifully.

As Rachel’s sister Nick, Rachel John wins the audience over immediately with her first song “Saving All My Love”. All of the roles in the show are underwritten, but John is able through her fine acting to make Nicki the show’s one well-rounded and most sympathetic character. John’s voice is brighter toned than Stennett’s but equally expressive and it is impossible to say who is the better interpreter of the music.

Except for a scene in a karaoke bar, the only humorous scene in the musical, all the songs are sung by the Rachel and Nicki characters. Had Dinelaris chosen to include any of Houston’s duets with other singers, like “We Didn’t Know” with Stevie Wonder (1992) or “If I Told You That” with George Michael (2000), or if he simply broke from the notion that only female singers can sing Whitney songs,

he could have spread the music more fairly among the other characters. As it is, he gives us three chorus members mangling “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” at the karaoke bar and then has Frank sing his only number there, a comically dull rendition of “I Will Always Love You”.

As Frank the bodyguard, Stuart Reid is thoroughly wooden. We know that he is supposed to be a no nonsense “just let me do my job” kind of guy, but that doesn’t mean he has zero personality. Why a nice woman like Nicki should fall for him is unknown. Rachel seems to falls for him simply out of gratefulness. But in both cases there is absolutely no chemistry. The women may communicate love but Reid sends nothing back.

Two boys, Lyric Justice and Liam Wignall alternate in playing Fletcher, Rachel’s son. I happened to see Justice and he was a delight and gave a peppy, fully assured performance. In the post-applause send-out song, a reprise of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”, he shows he can dance and sing, sounding quite a lot like the young Michael Jackson. Then we realize what a mistake Dinelaris has made by not letting Fletcher have a song to himself during the show besides “Jesus Loves Me”.

Matthew Stathers plays The Stalker, an almost silent role that requires him only to looks menacing on cue which he does quite well. Otherwise, the group of business managers that surround Rachel are indistinguishable from each other.

The show is given a very slick physical production by designer Tim Hatley using sectioned sliding walls that can close off the stage entirely or show only one half at a time. When used with the solid upper drop, the three sections can create the film effect of irising in or out of a location. Lighting designer Mark Henderson creates natural lighting effects for the indoor scenes, but switches completely to over-the-top rock concert lighting for Rachel’s many stage-upon-a stage performances. The post-applause finale even includes eleven disco balls. Karen Bruce’s choreography is made up of standard-issue video moves and quickly becomes repetitive.

Anyone who approaches The Bodyguard simply as a means of hearing songs associated with Whitney Houston sung live on stage with good production values should be satisfied. Anyone else, however, who goes to musicals to get caught up in a good story and care about what happens to the characters will find The Bodyguard empty entertainment. It’s really a pity that Whitney Houston’s catalogue of great pop tunes should be attached to a clunky crime story so opposed to them in tone, but that’s what the show is, and the more you can tune out the story, the more you will enjoy the show.

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

For tickets, visit www.mirvish.com.

2017-02-22

The Bodyguard