Front Row Centre: SONG AND DANCE

Theatrical superstition calls for wishing a performer to "break a leg" on opening night. It's supposed to prevent it happening, but when something does go wrong and a performer is injured it is no laughing matter. 

Opening night of SONG AND DANCE at the newly restored Music Hall in Toronto, Rex Harrington fell suffering a torn Achilles tendon. This problem has apparently plagued him in the past and following surgery doctors have advised him they expect a full recover and that his tendon will be stronger than before. That's the good news. The bad news is that he will miss the rest of the run of SONG AND DANCE.

Well, maybe that isn't such bad news after all. The show is a big disaster.

Andrew Lloyd Webber pairing of the song cycle TELL ME ON A SUNDAY with a dance piece set to his VARIATIONS (on Paganini's A-minor Caprice for violin, re-scored here for cello) has always been an odd piece with no emotional thread to link the two segments. You could skip either half and not miss anything. With this production, you are better off skipping the whole show!

Even Louise Pitre is unable to salvage the song cycle. Partially because the direction is so abysmal as to be virtually non-existent, and partially because the show has been re-written to open with a key song that originally came much later in the action.

The basic premise is that Emma, a young English girl who arrives in New York filled with hopes and ambitions. Much later in the story a well-meaning friend stops by to tell Emma that Joe, her boyfriend is unfaithful, and the song "Take that Look off your Face" is of Emma's denial. But here for some incredible reason it is this song that opens the show with no build up or explanation.

Absent from the score is "Unexpected Song" – surely the biggest hit song to emerge from this show. It was not in the original 1982 version, but was added for the Broadway edition and has remained in all subsequent versions, until now. In its stead we get "The Last man in my life" – a superior Lloyd Webber melody, undercut by a clumsy and banal lyric. 

In fact the lyrics by Don Black are at times embarrassingly amateurish and many rhymes are painfully forced. The improvements made by Richard Maltby Jr. for the Broadway version are sadly missing here.

To make the show work the leading lady has to play her scenes with such conviction that we see the myriad of men she encounters. Director Trudy Moffatt simply has Pitre stand and deliver the songs as if it were a concert, and Pitre stranded without any direction or significant subtext is unable to make the material ignite.

Things don't improve much in the Dance half. Though Eric S. Robertson and Kimberly O'Neil completed the steps, there was little fire to their performance. In the final moments Pitre shows up to sing "Unexpected Song" but with new and totally pedestrian lyrics. It adds nothing to the segment.

In the end we have a weak show, given lacklustre direction and perfunctory performances to an audience that filled lass than half of the music hall's seats. Sometimes it is better for producers to cut their losses and this is one of those times. The best thing to do would be to close the show and go back to the drawing board. This SONG AND DANCE lacks too much of either to bother with.

 

 

SONG AND DANCE is scheduled to play at The Music Hall on Danforth Avenue until Sunday May 28^th. Tickets are available at www.ticketmaster.com or by calling (416) 872-1111.

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