Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
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music by Noel Gay, book & lyrics by L. Arthur Rose & Douglas Furber, directed by Ashlie Corcoran
Shaw Festival, Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 27-October 15, 2017
“Ev'rything's free and easy,
Do as you darn well pleasey” (“The Lambeth Walk”)
The Shaw Festival’s musical this year is Noel Gay’s Me and My Girl from 1937 – one of those musicals from the 1930s where a seriously silly plot is used as a threadlike support for pun-filled dialogue, great songs and fantastic dancing. If you’re looking for pure escapist fun done up in high style, this is where to find it.
This type of show was perfect to boost the spirit in dark times during its initial five year run in London when it was bombed out of two of its theatres. The revival in1985 with a new book by Stephen Fry ran for eight years in London and three years on Broadway. The story concerns the ancient line of Harefords who have have been at a loss to find a direct heir since the death of the thirteenth Earl. Luckily, Porchester (Jay Turvey), the family lawyer, has just discovered that the Earl did have a son by a now deceased Cockney woman in Lambeth and has brought the young man to meet his new-found family. This news is viewed with some lack of enthusiasm by the honourable Gerald Bolingbroke (Kyle Blair), the Earl’s nephew, who had been the heir to the Hareford fortune until now. Lady Jacqueline Carstone (Élodie Gillett) had been wooing Gerald, but with news of the new heir she sets her sights on on him.
To all the aristocrats’ horror the new heir is even more of a Cockney than they imagined. He is Bill Snibson (Michael Therriault) and will not give up his girlfriend Sally Smith (Kristi Frank) to marry into his new class. According to Porchester, Bill can inherit only if the family deems him suitable. Otherwise, he must accept an annuity and leave them in peace. Sir John Tremayne (Ric Reid) and Gerald think that Bill is hopelessly unredeemable, but Lady Jacqueline is already interested and Maria, Duchess of Dene (Sharry Flett), thinks that Bill can be trained up in the ways of an aristocrat, especially if he gives up Sally.
The plot thus becomes a variation on Shaw’s Pygmalion (1913) with a young man rather than a young woman who is to be made over to fit into high society. (Stephen Fry mentions that a famous linguist lives nearby.) The main difficulty with this male Eliza Doolittle is his loyalty to his “girl” Sally. Jacquie, despite deploying her greatest arts of seduction, cannot win Bill for herself, and Sally is unacceptable to everyone except Sir John, who begins to grow fond of her. Everything, of course, works out in the end and romances that had been put on hold or thought dead are rekindled so that the giddy show ends with the prospect of a triple wedding.
Like other musicals of the 1930s – the Gershwins’ Girl Crazy (1930), Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (1934) or Richard Rodgers’ Babes in Arms (1937) – the story is just an excuse for comedy routines, songs and dance numbers. Choreographer Parker Esse certainly obliges by turning as many of the show’s songs as possible into dance numbers. The first song, “A Weekend at Hareford”, featuring singing and dancing aristocrats and servants, is immediately followed by “Thinking of No One But Me” that Esse transforms into such a spectacular showcase for Gillett that it could be called a “showstopper” if it weren’t only the second song. Esse creates a suitably ridiculous routine for Jay Turvey’s Porchester for his G&S-like number “The Family Solicitor”. Dancing in “Preparation Fugue” is augmented with tennis rackets and croquet mallets.
To start Act 2 Esse makes the opener “The Sun Has Got His Hat On” into a showcase for Kyle Blair’s great talent for tap dancing and even brings tap dance into the scene inspired by G&S’s Ruddigore (1887), “Song of Hareford” when all of Bill's forebears step down from portraits to appear before him.
Nevertheless, Esse and director Ashlie Corcoran know not to overdo it. For Bill and Sally’s rendition of the title song, for Sally's melancholy “Once You Lose Your Heart” and for Bill’s solo “Leaning On a Lamppost", Esse and Corcoran allow the words and music to take precedence over dance. Naturally, for the show's best-known song, the Act 1 finale “The Lambeth Walk”, Esse pulls out all the stops. Corcoran sends some cast members into the audience, but if she was hoping they would dance along, Esse has made his Lambeth Walk just a bit too complicated for anyone to follow. Leaving out the Schuhplattler moves would be much easier for the general public to pick up.
The festival has assembled a great cast for the musical and Corcoran has ensured that it takes a uniformly serious approach to the piece which is how to make this kind of inspired nonsense work best. The central role of Bill Snibson was written for a well-known comedian and Michael Therriault, making his Shaw Festival debut, fits the bill, so to speak, perfectly. His instant rapport with the audience, his expert comic timing, his natural pratfalls all make him an ideal comedian-as-lead. But he is also a sensitive actor and that helps to lend more reality to the role than even the creators likely intended. Therriault’s singing voice has become more velvety over time so that the uncouth persona he presents as Bill contrasts quite a bit with the softness he gives Bill’s inner nature in song.
Kristi Frank is an immediately sympathetic Sally Smith. Her nature is tinged more with regret than harshness since Sally loves Bill so much she doesn’t want her presence to deny him a title and a fortune. Frank’s voice is also generally soft so that she makes a good partner for Therriault.
The oddity is that the secondary leads are thus stronger singers and dancers than the mains. Élodie Gillet has never seems so vivacious, her dancing so athletic and her voice as rich as in the role of Jacqueline. Blair gives his usual immaculate performance as Gerald and matches Gillett in vigour and voice and is in a class of his own as a tap dancer.
Sharry Flett can play aristocratic grandes dames in her sleep, but despite the Duchess’s often being called a “dragon”, Flett imparts enough good humour to the Duchess’s outward severity that we can see an eventual change of heart may be impossible. Meanwhile, Ric Reid as Sir John is her perfect foil – wobbly when she is firm, blustering when she is direct, heated when she is cool.
The show has a simple but elegant set by Drew Facey consisting of a horseshoe-shaped double-stairway that can turn in various directions. Sets can be flown into the interior of the horseshoe for instant changes of location. What likely will wow people the most are the fantastic range of Sue LePage’s costumes from the strangely goth-like black-clad Cockneys to the gorgeous pastels of the aristocrats. Gillett herself seems to have a new smart outfit at every entrance.
Stephen Fry’s revised book for the musical is filled with groan-worthy pun after pun, but that captures the sunny spirit of fun that imbues the whole show. With so much folly of the obnoxious kind abroad in the world, it’s a relief to spend two-and-a-half hours in a realm where the best kind of fantasy reigns – where people acknowledge errors in judgement, where kind-hearted people are accepted just as they are and where everything is accompanied by catchy tunes and lively dance. Time spent at Me and My Girl is exactly the kind of vacation from care that we could use right now.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Michael Therriault and Kristi Frank; ensemble of Me and My Girl, Kyle Blair (centre); Kristi Frank and Michael Therriault. ©2017 David Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.
2017-05-30
Me and My Girl