Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Saturday 21st February 2015
Hunter and Jeff are two self-confessed nobodies in New York. They call on Larry to play keyboards, and Susan and Heidi to complete the cast, and assist in writing a new musical to enter in a festival, hopefully to win an off Broadway season. The Festival? Cue the Sondheim reference. Yes,
(title of show) is full of references, both obvious and obscure, making it, often, more relevant to the musical theatre enthusiast than to the general public, more specifically, those very familiar with Broadway Theatre of over a decade ago. If you are not in on the in jokes, there are times when you will wonder why part of the audience laughed, and the rest looked blank.
So what is this musical, you might ask, and with good reason. It is a deconstruction of the writing method, in which we see two men writing a musical about two men, themselves, writing a musical. In their search for content they decide to write into the script everything that they say and do as they try to come up with ideas and write the musical. In other words, we see a musical about two men writing a musical.
With only three weeks left until the deadline to submit a work to the 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival, they decide to start writing whatever comes into their heads and submit whatever they have on the closing date. Having not thought about it, when filling in the form they arrived at the section asking for the "title of show" and so, they wrote (title of show). Not only do we hear how it was received at the Festival, and of its 2006 off-Broadway run, but also of its Tony nomination, Surprise, surprise, the book is by
Hunter Bell and the music and lyrics are by
Jeff Bowen. Hunter and Jeff? Yes! They called on their friends
Susan Blackwell and Heidi Bickerstaff to assist them. Well, what do you know, it is based in truth. The musical really is the story of its own creation. They also dream of making it to Broadway. As it happened, they did, in 2008.
A piano, four chairs, and a table for props and water, are all that there is on stage, apart from the four actors and Peter Johns, the musical director and pianist, who becomes
Larry Pressgrove, the original musical director The director, Hayley Horton, gets to keep her own name as her predecessor does not appear.
Four very talented Adelaide actors make up the cast, with Scott Reynolds as Hunter, Rod Schultz as Jeff, Claire McEvoy as Heidi, and Amy Nagesh as Susan. With the songs tending to be mostly for the two women, or the two men, or all four, vocal harmonies are a major feature of the production and, with only person to each line of the harmony, it demands four people as experienced as these since any incorrect note would be highly obvious.
These four are also skilled actors, another essential in putting this musical across. Horton, Johns and the cast took on a big challenge with this piece, and it paid off. The result was a well-paced work that found both the comedic aspects as well as the occasional much more serious moments and gave a nice balance to all of the elements.
It was unfortunate that I was unable to attend until the final performance but, with over a thousand events in the Adelaide Fringe, and the Adelaide Festival performances beginning on Tuesday, it would be impossible to attend every event on the opening night without a team of a hundred or more reviewers. The Adelaide Fringe is second only to the Edinburgh Fringe in size. Fortunately, though, the production had sold out performances, anyway, so perhaps there might just be a repeat run at a quieter time for those unlucky enough to have missed out. Keep your eyes open and your fingers crossed, Adelaide.
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