Ken Ludwig's 1986 farce was a retro charmer even at its first productions - set in the 30s in a grand opera company in Cleveland, where two tenors, a stressed impresario, a demure ingenue, a wife, an ambitious soprano, a daffy dame, and a fanboy bellhop all collide over the course of one long afternoon and the following night. I've enjoyed it for many years -on tour in 1993 in Wollongong with Stuart Wagstaff, Rowena Wallace and Maggie Kirkpatrick, working backstage on Rep's 2006 run with Steph Roberts, Colin Milner and Andrew Kay, and now back in the audience almost 20 years later. It's still a delightful romp, using the Feydeau formula of people in lavish clothing chasing each other around from the most primal of emotions - lust, expediency, wrath, rage, and fear.
In Cate Clelland's production, it's in the hands of a master. Timing is perfect to hit every laugh, with a cast game for everything and a set and costumes that are the peak of era-appropriate chic. Farce is the kind of thing that can easily fall off the rails if the audience has a moment to think "hey, wouldn't they do something else if they thought about that for a second..." so the answer is to go full throttle and get the performers doing something at all times to avoid thinking about it too much. And given everything that the performers are doing is delightful, it's easy to forget about any plot holes.
Central to the production is John Whinfield as the sweet-natured Max, the dogsbody who rises through circumstance to become a conquering hero - Whinfield is sweetness personified, an underdog we're desperate to see come through and one we celebrate the triumph of. Around him is Michael Sparks doing some great seething as the constantly-stressed impressario Henry Saunders, most of the rage kept under for as long as possible before sudden explosions. Maxine Beaumot has the right mix of sweet-natured and inner determination as the not-entirely-innocent-but-we-don't-mind ingenue, Christina Falsone brings Italian passion and fire to the role of Maria, William "Wally" Allington brings a sweet nature to the slightly egotistical tenor Tito, Meaghan Stewart is all the right kinds of sultry vamp as Diana, Sally Cahill is deligthfully scatterbrained as the socialite chair of the opera, and Justice-Noah Malfitano is just the right kind of irritant as the sarcastic bellhop. (Whinfield and Allington are both also required to sing a duet from Verdi's "Don Carlos" to convince us they both would pass as opera-suitable tenors and both pass that test with flying colours)
Fourty years after it first premired, this is still a charmer - after rewrites to change the opera from "Otello" to "Pagliacci" (thus removing unfortunate blackface), a sequel, a musical and a genderswap to become "Lend me a Soprano", the bones of the original still hold true and in its current incarnation it should be bringing delight to audiences at the Hub for the next week-and-a-bit.
No comments:
Post a Comment