THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
It’s gaudy and gorgeous and finally here. After 10 Tonys on Broadway and at least two false starts in London because of Covid dramas this show delivers just the sort of soufflé treat we need to get us through to spring.
Firstly though, it’s not really a musical - the book is featherlight and the songs don’t really advance the plot. Instead, it’s what the French would call ‘Un Spectacle!’. It’s really more akin to a Ziegfeld Follies show from a century ago, those bombastic reviews where scantily clad showgirls delivered the latest hits. This is as if Ziegfeld unleashed his Spotify list and said, “I want to use all these”.
Luhrmann’s smash-hit 2001 movie really connected with a young audience at the time. It was a brashly baroque affair and like a magpie he borrowed shamelessly to mold a show that was sometimes kitsch, sometimes cool, but had a postmodern wink which hid a romantic soul, and the creative team here have built on this. Alex Timbers direction and Sonya Tayeh’s choreography clasp us in wonderment from start to finish.
In the movie McGregor and Kidman had the chemistry but no vocal chops, here we can rejoice in great voices. The other substantial change is that they’ve radically upped the number of songs to 70!. Everything from 'Lady Marmalade' and Beyoncé to Katy Perry, Gnarls Barkley and The Police get expertly sampled or mashed.
The show works for two reasons: one is the look and the emotional pull of those hits. Derek McLane’s gloriously indulgent designs, all hot reds and pinks, are as if you’d fallen into a giant velvet-lined jewel box, while Catherine Zuber’s costumes are simply eye-popping.
The emotional baggage of the songs is the other secret. If you’ve never listened to pop music radio these past few decades this is not the show for you. Luhrmann eet al understand how pop music works – how the ubiquity of verses, phrases, even riffs become the soundtrack to our lives and so get tied up with our emotional landscape. Logan’s book might be featherlight, but he provides just enough scaffolding for the set piece numbers.
Set in the eponymous cabaret spot in 1899 it tells of Christian, an aspiring American songwriter who falls in love with club dancer Satine. Jamie Bogyo, amazingly just out of RADA, has the voice and the looks for the romantic lead. His American co-star is proof of nominative determinism - with a name like Liisi LaFontaine what could you be other than a burlesque performer. She’s great too, combining a powerful soul voice capable of delivering this diverse range of hits while giving Satine some much needed dramatic heft. Her tragic ending is straight out of La Bohème.
The lovers are in peril because the club owner and MC Harold (Clive Carter) is relying on Satine to appease the evil Duke of Monroth (Simon Bailey) because his money is desperately needed to keep the establishment running. Carter manages to humanize the brash, bombastic, and very gay MC. Also along for the ride are tango dancer Santiago (a delightful scenery chewing Elia Lo Tauro) and, as a light-on-his-feet Toulouse Lautrec, the inveterate scene stealer from many a West End show, Jason Pennycooke.
A key problem for jukebox musicals is that the karaoke impulse to applaud a familiar song from its very opening bars will often be counter-intuitive to the emotional intention of the scene in question. In other words, ‘Not now, I’m acting!’. Gladly, these moments are few but of course the flip side of this problem provides a bonus for when an up-tempo hit is exactly right for the moment; the instant buy-in you get from the audience makes a scene fly.
This riotous burst of color and tunefulness provides an instant high and deserves a long run.
