Shows I wish Someone Would Do #1: Xanadu

(I started drafting this early during the COVID lockdown but never finished it due to ... well, work and stuff - now people are doing stuff, so go see that stuff instead!)

It’s one of the most disliked movies of all time, a cheesy early-80s Olivia Newton-John roller-disco themed movie combining greek muses, the old-style musical glamour of Gene Kelly and the blandly good-looking Michael Pate together with a soundtrack full of ELO and ONJ’s longtime songwriter, John Farrar. The soundtrack is the thing that’s most loved about it, ELO’s hooks and grandiose production combining with Olivia’s pure singing ability and charm to deliver something very listenable to, even while the film is going all over the place to be somewhat unwatchable.

It’s also a damn fun stage musical – Douglas Carter Beane’s script rewrite lugs in two new songs, one ELO’s classic “Evil Woman”, and one John Farrar deep cut “Have you never been Mellow” and doubles down on the greek mythology element, giving “Evil Woman” to two evil muses, Melpomene and Calliope, and “Have you never been Mellow” to Zeus and three of the goddesses in a Clash of the Titans tribute that induces irresistible giggles, even while being completely aware how silly the plot is (sample line “this is like children’s theatre for 40 year old gay men”)

In terms of marketability, this is a double-edged show – it’s well known but it’s normally known as being not very good. And certainly it’s never quite done as well as it should – the Australian premiere production in Melbourne was done in a tent in Southbank under an expressway, making it hard to draw the attention of your modern musical theatre appreciating aficionadas. But the fact remains this is a show with five great lead roles for performers, a fun bunch of songs to sing, an entertaining story and a few deep things to say about making art in a commercial environment, about the act of creating and about how irresistible roller disco really is.

 

Brighton Beach Memoirs, Canberra Rep, Theatre 3

 Rep returns with a play set in roughly the same period as their last play pre-Covid, “Grapes of Wrath”, albeit at the opposite end of the US and dealing with a family in a very different social setting (Brooklyn middle-class Jews rather than working-class Oklahoma Dust Bowl residents). Neil Simon’s 1983 comedy is a memory piece, as the title suggests, with his extended Jewish family all crammed into one house and hitting up against circumstances that stretch the familial bonds to breaking point.

The play represents a bit of a swerve in Simon’s work – he’d previously largely written contemporary comedies touching on the various stresses of marriage, friendship and romance – and it does feel slightly like a memory not only of Simon’s own life but also of classic American drama of the late 30s early 40s (the extended “waiting for a gentleman caller” sequence at the beginning of act two riffs off “Glass Menagerie” a tad, as does Laurie's fragility, and there are a couple of other echoes here too). The multiple subplots pile up into some strong set piece (in particular act one’s family dinner), but also leave Eugene Jerome, the narrator character, curiously having very little plot function in his own narrative – the stories of the characters around him feel all much bigger than his subplot dealing with his early adolescent libido, and he mainly functions to quip off to the side of other people’s stories and provide exposition. The ending is also a little reluctant to let the characters be permanently shifted by the events of the story, meaning that the return-to-status-quo ending left me a little unsatisfied. It’s not entirely Neil Simon’s fault that his gag rhythms and structures were so extensively imitated by generations of American sitcoms that everything feels a bit familiar, but never the less it is a comfortable kind of familiarity, a warm hug of a play.

Karen Vickery’s production brings this to life with all the emotional heft and charm that you could want. A rich cast, made up largely of new-and-recent-arrivals to Rep, invest their scenes with sincerity and create a touching family straining against one another in close quarters.  Jamie Boyd plays Eugene with a effortless geniality and enthusiasm, becoming an easily enjoyable narrator. Victoria Tyrell Dixon's Kate Jerome is absolutely gripping as the rough, unfaltering disciplinarian of a mother, up until the point where the dam finally breaks in the second act. Paul Sweeney is a perfectly warm, engrossing father, with a strong sense of the history that led him to this point in his life. Amy Crawford takes the terminally indecisive Blanche to heartbreaking places, as the pressures of widowed motherhood bear harder and harder on her. James McMahon as big-brother Stanley provides that perfect big-brotherlyness that means we can understand why Eugene looks up to him even as he makes teenage-boy mistakes. Caitlin Baker's passion for freedom and Ella Buckley's nerdy reticence make the two cousins a solid part of the ensemble. Set, lighting, sound, costumes and props give the space and period the strength they need to support the narrative.

This isn't my favourite Simon play but it's a fine production and well worth catching.