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music & lyrics by Irving Berlin, book by Gordon Greenberg & Chad Hodge, directed by Michael Lichtefeld

Drayton Entertainment, Hamilton Family Theatre, Cambridge

November 23-December 30, 2018

“Shaking the Blues Away”

Drayton Entertainment is currently in the final leg of of presenting the Canadian premiere of the musical Holiday Inn, loosely based on the 1942 movie of the same name.  Drayton opened the show at the Drayton Festival Theatre in Drayton in May, then moved it to Huron Country Playhouse in Grand Bend in September.  It is now playing at the Hamilton Family Theatre in Cambridge and is an ideal family show for the holidays because it is about a inn that opens only for the the main holidays in the US including Christmas and New Year’s.

More than that, the musical is a real showcase for four Canadian triple threats – performers adept at acting singing and dancing – in the four lead roles.  With a score made up entirely of songs by Irving Berlin, including some of his most famous like “White Christmas”, “Happy Holiday” and “Easter Parade” along with songs that deserve to be better known like “Be Careful, It’s My Heart”.  Add to this the taut direction of Michael Lichtefeld and his inventive choreography that favours elaborate tap-dance numbers and you have a show sure to raise your spirits and leave you in a buoyant mood.

Those who may have seen the musical White Christmas presented by Drayton Entertainment in 2015, also directed by Michael Lichtefeld, might wonder how the same song occurs in two musicals.  The answer is that “White Christmas” was such a hit in the film Holiday Inn in 1942 that Paramount Pictures decided to build a whole movie musical around it in its movie White Christmas of 1954.  Strangely enough, the 1954 movie was turned into a stage musical first, in 2004, while Holiday Inn of 1942 wasn’t turned into a stage musical until 2014.  Both films have a similar structure since they follow the romantic misadventures of two male performers, one who is primarily a singer and his pal who is primarily a dancer, in their pursuit of two female performers with parallel talents.  Book writers Gordon Greenberg and Chad Hodge have altered the story of Holiday Inn to make it more distinguishable from White Christmas, but the two movies were intended for the same actors, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, and they are still easy to confuse.

Although the plot in neither of the movies or their stage adaptations is all that important, Holiday Inn focusses more on the performer playing the male singer than does White Christmas.  Singer Jim Hardy (Zach Trimmer) wants to give up show business, marry dancer Lila Dixon (Alexandra Herzog) and move together to Connecticut to run a farm and live a simpler life.  Unluckily for Jim, his agent Danny Reed (Keith Savage) has just swung a deal for Jim and Lila and Jim’s friend the dancer Ted Hanover (Matthew Armet) to go on tour.  Jim refuses to go leaving Lila to choose between a quiet married life and excitement in the footlights.  She chooses the latter, travelling with Ted, but still considering herself engaged to Jim.

Jim takes over Mason Farm which comes with its resident handy-woman Louise Badger (Laura Caswell).  (The name in the stage musical is a tribute to the famous Black character actor Louise Beavers, who played Jim’s maid Mamie in the movie.)  Early on Jim meets Linda Mason (Jayme Armstrong), daughter of the former own of the farm, who was briefly in show business until she gave it up to care for her ailing father until he died.  She’s now a school teacher who attempts to hide her loneliness from everyone. 

It turns out that buying the farm has put Jim deeply in debt and following the ancient movie musical cliché he, Linda and Louise find the solution in putting on a show.  That plan in turn changes into making Mason Farm into Holiday Inn (the movie’s name inspired the real hotel chain’s name) that presents lodging and shows only during the holidays.  When Ted turns up alone since Lila has gone off with a Texas millionaire, the show has its biggest audience draw.  All might go well except that Ted finds that Linda would be his ideal new dance partner.

Lichtefeld’s concept for the show, one that Morris Panych has used far too many times in directing plays, is that the stage musical we’re seeing is a movie.  On a screen that serves for the stage curtain black-and-white titles and credits are presented in a surprising accurate facsimile in font, background and placing  of movie titles of the 1940s.  The screen rises and the show begins, albeit in bright, living colour.  Lichtefeld is justified in using this concept since the stage show is indeed based on a movie, and, not only that, but includes the making of a movie based on Jim and Linda’s life within the musical.  Thus, if we were to accuse the stage musical of using movie musical clichés, Lichtefeld has already pointed out for us the inherent artifice in both media.

The movie was written to highlight the talents of its two male stars and so it is with the stage musical.  I missed Zach Trimmer in his Drayton debut in Thoroughly Modern Millie in 2017, but I am certainly glad I saw him in this.  Trimmer has a wonderfully smooth, velvety voice and and is able to float heavenly high notes.  He sings with great clarity and expressivity and his singing alone brings out the soulfulness and sincerity of his character.  But Trimmer is also a fine actor and gives a nuanced performance as Jim making us instantly empathize with the character’s joys and disappointments. 

Matthew Armet spent six years at the Stratford Festival mostly in secondary roles.  Taking over the role of Ted Hanover from Zachary Scott Berger for the Cambridge run finally gives audiences the chance to see how talented Armet really is.  Although cast at the dancer as opposed to Trimmer’s singer, Armet has a fresh, full baritone that brings out the enthusiasm he puts into every song.  In the Act 2 opener “You’re Easy to Dance With”, Armet provides a survey of all ballroom dance moves both European and Latin.  His special skill is in tap and Lichtefeld has choreographed a spectacular solo for him for Independence Day, “Let’s Say It With Firecrackers”, where Armet punctuates some of the fastest tapping you’ve ever seen with full-foot stamps to imitate firecrackers exploding.  This solo is so amazing it alone is worth the price of admission. 

Drayton favourite Jayme Armstrong plays quite a different kind of role in the shy Linda Mason, who tries to hide her unhappiness from other people.  Armstrong appropriately dials back her naturally outgoing personality to create a believably reticent Linda.  Yet, when Linda gets back into the swing of song and dance, Armstrong gradually ramps up Linda’s self-confidence and Armstrong’s pure-toned singing even acquires a certain brassiness one wouldn’t have expected from Linda.

Alexandra Herzog, who played Liesl in Stratford’s The Sound of Music in 2015, is well cast as Lila Dixon.  Herzog gives Lila a harder edge to contrast her with Linda and Herzog’s singing and dancing style are both deliberately more forceful.  Herzog is excellent at showing what Lila is thinking before she says anything as when the chance of a tour comes up just after Ted has proposed to her.

Book authors Greenberg and Hodge have beefed up the role of Mamie the maid in the movie to the tough handy-woman Louise in the musical.  She is a fix-it gal who doesn’t stop at fixing physical problems with the inn but helps to fix the lives and relationships of those around her.  Louise thus becomes a comic stage manager figure who helps arrange most of the supposedly accidental meetings in the play.  Laura Caswell is delightful in the role.  Not only does she have a great sense of wry comic delivery but she can easily belt out a song. 

Special mention should be made of 13-year-old William Thompson, who delivers his lines with a clarity and confidence actors even twice he age can’t muster.  He is very funny as the local bank’s messenger boy Charlie Winslow, who carries along the bank’s stern attitude toward Ted’s missed payments along with his messages.

Greenberg and Hodge have added songs by Irving Berlin not in the original movie like “Blue Skies”, “Cheek to Cheek” and “Heat Wave”, but so great are his songs that no one could possibly object to more Berlin in a Berlin musical.  Holiday Inn was written as a celebratory musical and is ideal as a musical to celebrate the holidays at this time of year.  Given Michael Lichtefeld’s smart, well-paced, handsomely choreographed production with its five attractive, multi-talented stars, this is the musical that is perfect, as Berlin’s own song says it, for “Shaking the Blues Away”.        

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photos: (from top) Jayme Armstrong as Linda and Zachary Trimmer as Jim; the chorus of Holiday Inn; Alexandra Herzog as Lila and Matthew Armet as Ted  with the ensemble. ©2018 Liisa Steinwedel.

For tickets, visit www.draytonentertainment.com.