I real­ise Kris has already giv­en a review of [title of show] but I fig­ure I may as well throw my thoughts into the ring. There’s no such thing as too many voices on the inter­net right?

This review con­sists the one-two punch of a guest review from my part­ner Laura, fol­lowed by my take on [title of show] hence this is a wee bit lengthy. Laura LOVES music­als while I fre­quently find myself watch­ing them, thanks to afore-men­tioned Laura, and tap­ping my feet along.

There’s only four nights left to see [title of show] and both Laura and I recom­mend going to see it.

title of show

 

Laura “Intensely obsessed with music­als” Vin­cent (@HungryandFrozen)

I nev­er expec­ted to see a loc­al pro­duc­tion of [title of show] – for one thing, it’s so theatre-cent­ric, with its wise­cracks about Alice Ripley and Barnum and Sut­ton Foster – and I’d place those at the mid-level of obscur­ity as far as the in-jok­ing goes. Being a des­per­ately intense fan of music­als in New Zea­l­and can be like hav­ing a deli­cious secret to hug to your chest, so to sud­denly have this music­al that I’m par­tic­u­larly attached to appear in front of me sud­denly at the Fringe Fest­iv­al means – and I say this with all sin­cer­ity – hav­ing to con­front a lot of emo­tions. I just nev­er thought I’d see it per­formed live. What if it does­n’t live up to the per­fec­tion that is the ori­gin­al?

Like the movie Cab­in In The Woods, [title of show] unpacks the tropes of music­als while still adher­ing to many of them – a song about win­ning a Tony award (“Papa, would that change the way you saw your little boy, now he’s a man AND HE NEEDS YOU”) is dis­missed as obvi­ous pan­der­ing, yet the char­ac­ter Heidi still gets her elev­en o’c­lock num­ber in A Way Back To Then. The fact that the ori­gin­al act­ors were play­ing them­selves added an extra lay­er of intrigue, but also poignancy. Like Shakespeare, your ears even­tu­ally attune to the lan­guage, so that even if you don’t know why Alice Ripley is described as “fierce”, the adject­ive at least gives you a clue as to her import­ance, and there are still plenty of broad­er jokes to make you feel included. (Plus, look her up on you­tube singing I Will Nev­er Leave You with Emily Skin­ner. Fierce isn’t the half of it.)

Energy Theatre’s pro­duc­tion: I really loved it. Oh sure, as a non-sing­er theatre lov­er I have long har­boured a dream of play­ing my idol Susan Black­well in a New Zea­l­and premiere of [title of show]. It’s no-one’s fault that someone else thought to stage it before I did.

Though the mater­i­al is so snappy and crammed with jokes (some of which admit­tedly do not sit as right with me as they used to) that all you really need is to be faintly cha­ris­mat­ic and a not bad sing­er and you’ll be fine, I truly felt like the four act­ors play­ing Hunter (Wil­li­am Duig­nana), Heidi (Maryl­ouise Thomas), Susan (Sarah Andrews Reyn­olds) and Jeff (Waylon Edwards) had really stud­ied the char­ac­ters, con­sidered their phys­ic­al­ity, their inter­ac­tions, the real people behind what they were say­ing. Inter­est­ingly, the act­ors play­ing Heidi, Jeff and Hunter felt not­ably close to the per­form­ances of the ori­gin­als, where­as the act­or play­ing Susan moved fur­ther away from Susan Black­well’s drier style of deliv­ery to make the role her own. There is cer­tainly some­thing admir­able about both those dir­ec­tions and act­ing choices. Some oth­er things I enjoyed: they all had excel­lent chem­istry. The bril­liant exe­cu­tion of some of the trick­i­er num­bers like Mon­keys and Play­bills. The beau­ti­ful one-two punch at the end with the gor­geously sung and hugely touch­ing Way Back To Then segue­ing into the utterly endear­ing Nine Peoples’ Favour­ite Thing. And the Amer­ic­an accents did­n’t jar at all. Occa­sion­ally it felt a little over­ac­ted, but what can you do? All in all, des­pite my deep attach­ment to the ori­gin­al, there’s some lovely par­al­lels between the act­ors por­tray­ing the char­ac­ters’ fears and joys of put­ting on a show, while them­selves put­ting on a show. About two guys writ­ing a show. About two guys writ­ing a show.

Tim “occa­sion­al sing­er in the shower” Her­bert

I went along to this for two reas­ons. Firstly: I enjoy the escap­ism that music­als offer and the second reas­on is: Laura HAD to see this music­al. Her first reac­tion on hear­ing that [title of show] was being per­formed was “What?! I’m meant to be Susan!”

[title of show] is a good music­al. Not a great one, but a good one. Only one of the songs really stuck with me but per­haps hav­ing a song stick is what any music­al wants. The singing abil­ity of the four act­ors was sol­id but I didn’t really get any “WOW!” moments that blew me away. The pulling togeth­er of nearly every music­al trope into one show can leave those new to music­als sit­ting in the dark a little. How­ever there are so many ‘in-jokes’ in there that every­one can feel like they are in on the fun.

What makes this music­al worth going to see is the char­ac­ters. Being a music­al based on the four people who worked on mak­ing [title of show] means the dia­logue and rap­port the act­ors have with the audi­ence is key to its suc­cess. At first the act­ors per­form­ances it all felt a bit ‘too theatre‑y’ for my lik­ing. Like they were try­ing a bit too hard to be the over-the-top-quirky-people that the char­ac­ters are sup­posed to be. Over act­ing is a risk you take with small pro­duc­tions but I feel dir­ect­or Tabitha Arthur did a great job in ton­ing that down and let­ting the writ­ing and char­ac­ters do the work. The act­ors were great and by the end of the show it wasn’t four act­ors put­ting on the Energy Theatre’s pro­duc­tion of [title of show] it was Hunter, Jeff, Susan and Heidi (Larry doesn’t count. Sorry Larry.) attempt­ing to write a show in three weeks.

The pen­ul­tim­ate song nails what this music­al is all about. It shows why this music­al is spe­cial. It leaves you want­ing more people to take up its man­tra and attempt cre­at­ive endeav­ours. It’s worth sit­ting through the in jokes that fly over your head along with the laugh out loud use of oddly named music­als to get to get the inspir­a­tion­al buzz that under­pins why Jeff and Hunter want [title of show] to exist.