Showtune

Staging an off-Broadway musical revue rather than the mid-year musical variety shows of recent years marks a fresh experiment by Canberra Rep and first-time director Jordan Kelly. This year, with no musical-variety show appearing in its programme, Rep has produced Showtune, an off-Broadway revue of the songs of consistent Broadway hit-maker Jerry Herman, a collocation of songs from eight of Herman’s shows. These include Hello Dolly, Mame, and Mack & Mabel, so at least some of the songs will probably be familiar to you. Herman has continued creating musicals—his (1999) Miss Spectacular (written for a Las Vegas audience) is awaiting production—and the revue (then titled Tune the Grand Up) was first staged in 1985, so it certainly doesn’t include songs from all his productions. But it has enough.

To stage an off-the-shelf songbook of any kind, even a “best of”, is probably a more challenging task in some ways than staging Rep’s past musical triumphs of the Jazz Garters variety; though the score indeed contains some of the “best of”, as well as notable obscurities, final song-and-dance selections and even the keys of the pieces cannot rest on the best abilities of the available cast. So it wouldn’t surprise you to find that several cast members were singing a little below their comfortable range.  As well, those consistently superb singers and dancers we’ve seen in past years were largely absent from this cast, so we could only ask that those chosen for this year’s production do their very best.

And it’s clear that indeed they gave it their all, almost all dancing with enthusiasm and singing their hearts out. Few solo or duet pieces were truly exceptional; in a couple of singers, pure lack of experience in singing showed plainly in every piece. The ensemble song-and-dance pieces made up for these, though, with some nice choreography and good, strong ensemble singing filling an elegant Broadway-style set.

The show’s format precluding efforts to match the repertoire to the capabilities of the singers, perhaps it’s unsurprising that there might have been, at times, a hiatus too between choreography and musical direction, with the pianist lagging behind the dancers’ natural pace.  That aside, the live piano accompaniment well stood in for a larger musical ensemble.

Unless your ear is particularly sensitive to slight mistunings, I’d recommend seeing the show once in your life for a bit of relaxed fun.  But I hope that next year will see the return of a more flexible format, allowing for the song selection and creative adaptation that Rep is so good at.

John P. Harvey

Image: [L–R] Leisa Keen, Liz de Totth, Sarah Hull, John Kelly, Nathan Kellie , Janelle McMenamin, Kirsten Pawlicki, and Daniel Martin, in Showtune.  Photographer: Cliff Spong.