Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
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music and lyrics by Cole Porter, new book by Timothy Crouse & John Weidman, directed by Kathleen Marshall
Mirvish Productions, Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto
July 18-August 25, 2013
Chorus: “There’s no cure like travel”
Cole Porter’s 1934 musical Anything Goes combines a score bursting with great songs with a deliriously silly plot not unlike the screwball comedies of the same period. The tour of the Roundabout Theater Company’s acclaimed 2011 production has just docked in Toronto and, while it sometimes doesn’t know when enough is enough, it still captures the giddily joyful quality of this great musical.
The original book was by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse and features Wodehouse’s favoured mix of aristocrats and gangsters. The book had to be revised before the show opened in 1934 but Bolton and Wodehouse were unavailable, so Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse did the fixing. In 1987 Lincoln Center mounted a hugely popular revival and had Timothy Crouse and John Weidman further revise the book and add Cole Porter songs from other shows. The current 2011 production is much the same as the 1987 version with minor additions and deletions.
Through all these changes the essentials of the plot have remained the same. Billy Crocker (Josh Franklin) stows away on an ocean liner sailing from New York to Southampton because he learns that Hope Harcourt (Alex Finke), the girl he loves, has become engaged to the English aristocrat Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (Edward Staudenmayer). He has to disguise himself since his boss Elijah J. Whitney (Dennis Kelly) is also on board. For a good turn Billy did him, petty gangster “Moonface” Martin (Fred Applegate) and his friend Erma (Joyce Chittick) disguise Billy as “Snake Eyes” Johnson, their leader who happened to miss the sailing. The fact that Johnson is Public Enemy Number 1 leads Billy to be acclaimed as the ship most famous passenger. Meanwhile, Reno Sweeney (Rachel York), a former evangelist now turned nightclub singer who was once sweet on Billy, is on board as an entertainer. Mayhem ensues as Billy pursues Hope, Evelyn pursues Reno, Elijah pursues Hope’s mother Evangeline (Sandra Shipley) and Erma pursues any available sailor.
Along the way the cast sings some of the most famous songs Cole Porter ever wrote – “I Get a Kick Out of You”, “You’d Be So Easy to Love”, “You’re the Top”, “Friendship”, “It’s De-Lovely” and, of course, “Anything Goes”. Director Kathleen Marshall gets the combination of goofiness and sophistication just right. Where she tends to go wrong is in trying to make a production number of virtually every song. “You’d Be So Easy to Love” is not only a wonderful song, but establishes early on that Hope still loves Billy despite the engagement her mother has arranged. In the 1987 version the song naturally led into a quickstep and ended with Hope singing the title lyric. Marshall, who is also the choreographer, can’t let the song alone and has the music extended to mimic at least four more types of ballroom dance that Billy, Hope and the chorus perform. The dance sequence may show off Marshall’s ingenuity but tends to obscure the original point of the number. Marshall even extends the silly song “Be Like the Bluebird” that Moonface sings to Billy. Do we really need a reprise of the entire song and Moonface interacting with a blue spotlight for us to get the point?
The one time Marshall’s urge to double or triple the stage time of a number has a positive effect is her treatment of Lord Evelyn’s song “The Gypsy in Me”. Here Marshall adds an extended dance sequence with Reno picking up on the Spanish flavour of the music and included Evelyn and Reno singing in a voiceless chorus over the orchestral music as in an old Jeannette MacDonald-Nelson Eddie movie. Extending the sequence helps to make Reno’s sudden attraction to the British twit with a wild side seem slightly more probable.
Despite Marshall’s tendency to overelaborate, the show overall is such a pleasure that it could still have received full marks if it were not for the performance of Rachel York. There’s no doubt she has charisma and basically owns the stage as soon as she sets foot on it. There’s also no doubt that her style of acting and singing are completely unlike those of the other performers. While all the other performers interact with each and talk and sing to each other to move the story forward, York directs her speeches and songs directly to the audience. While the others are working as an ensemble, York’s approach makes the show seem to be a star vehicle where all the fine work of the others is only to set up her appearances. The height of this narcissism comes after “Anything Goes” in Act 1 where York stops the show by keeping her arms raised after the song is over, revelling in the applause and giving off self-congratulatory hoots to urge it on. Although the song finishes as a choral number, York accepts the applause as if it were only for her. Some people may enjoy this kind of chutzpah. I found it off-putting and disrespectful to the rest of the cast. How hard would it be through a simple inclusive gesture to accept the applause on behalf of everyone on stage?
York also has an unusual approach to the songs. Each one she sings with idiosyncratic phrasing and distortion of vowel sounds that would perfectly suit a cabaret performance but does not suit a dramatic performance. Songs in this musical are not meant as individual vocal stylings but as communications to other characters.
Fred Applegate is very funny as Moonface although he delivery is so deadpan that it sometimes seems to lack energy. Dennis Kelly plays alcoholic blowhard Elisha Whitney exactly in the mold of the great character actors of the 1930s, while Sandra Shipley matches him as Evangeline Harcourt with her lofty, upper-class attitude. Alex Finke ably coveys Hope’s conflicting emotions, but ideally she should match the actor playing Billy in vocal power. Joyce Chittick is a treat as the ditzy Erma, but of the raft of purely comic characters it is Edward Staudenmayer as Lord Evelyn who trumps them all. He is amusing enough when he plays Evelyn as a slightly dim-witted British twit trying to keep up with American slang and even more hilarious when Evelyn decides to let the “gypsy in him” out through a fantastic series of manic dance moves.
Just as the S.S. American is about to set sail, the chorus sings, “There’s no cure like travel To help you unravel The worries of living today.” As a musical, Anything Goes offers just that sort of experience. For pure escapist fun to refresh and invigorate you, you need only book a seat at the Princess of Wales Theatre.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Ryan Steer, Bobby Pestka, Rachel York, Jeremy Benton, Kristopher Thompson-Bolden; (middle) Alex Finke and Josh Franklin. ©2012 Joan Marcus.
2013-07-19
Anything Goes