Front Row Centre Theatre Review: THE BOY FRIEND

Theatre Review: THE BOY FRIEND

By Mark Andrew Lawrence, FrontRowCentre@rogers.com

The musical comedies of the 1920s were a rather generic lot. The stories and characters were all similar. Songs needed but a mere dialogue lead-in and they usually had little to do with the plot. Tap dancing and jazz were all the rage so shows feature the Black Bottom and Charleston or they created their own dances: The Jersey Walk (in HONEYMOODN LANE) or The Varsity Drag (GOOD NEWS.) 

It was all frivolity and fun and by the way there was enough story for a sparkling one-act comedy – stretched over three very long acts. No one really minded when you had those wonderful songs by The Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart or Vincent Youmans. The songs were all that distinguished one show form another.

Shows were not revived: each year they wrote a new score and recycled the same basic stock situations. Most of the authentic 20s musicals are long lost, not having been recorded and often the scores were never preserved.

These are the shows lovingly spoofed in Sandy Wilson's 1954 show THE BOY FRIEND. Introduced in London, the show quickly moved to Broadway where it launched the career of Julie Andrews who scored the leading role. Now, Dame Julie has directed a sparkling revival that has been on tour across the U.S, for the past six months and landed in Toronto this week for a limited week run.

The story is, if anything, thinner than the ones it satirizes but you don't come to THE BOY FRIEND for plot. You come to enjoy the songs and dances, and they are so zestfully performed that you'll forgive almost anything.

I said almost. One curious decision has been made to play Acts One and Two together which makes the first part a little too long. You can have too much of a much-ness and without a break it tends to plod. It also necessitates moving one song ("Safety in Numbers") into the final act. Fortunately the show is so loosely constructed that a change such as this is easily accomplished but it results in making the second half seem padded, placing two dance numbers back-to-back at a time when the action needs to start wrapping up.

The song in question is performed by the comic lead Maisie (Andrea Chamberlain) and her Boyfriend Bobby (Rich Faugno) who had earlier performed the show stopping "Won't You Charleston with me?" (Charleston – see, I told you!) She has the proper comic belt voice and he dances up a storm. They look great together and when they dance you can feel the tension, as the audience can't wait to applaud. This is how early musical comedy found its rhythm.

Unfortunately the rhythm didn't carry over into the pacing of the shows, and BOY FRIEND has some moments when the singing and dancing stops and the plot takes centre stage. The dialogue is little more than a series of mistaken identities and spoken asides. Polly (played here Jessica Grove) has to find a "boy friend" to take her to the Carnival ball, but afraid of attracting gold-diggers pretends to be a poor "secret'ry." She meets a delivery boy, sings the duet "I Could be Happy with You" and decides she's in love. If the song title seems familiar think of NO NO NANETTE"S "I Want to Be Happy" and you'll be in the right territory.

And just like the NANETTE tune, this one gets reprised and plugged incessantly. It's an all right tune but there are better ones in the score, notably the goofy "A Room in Bloomsbury" (which echoes HONEYMOON LANE'S "Little White House") and the slightly creepy "It's Never too Late to Fall in Love" (inspired by QUEEN HIGH's "Gentlemen prefer Blondes.") 

As Polly, Jessica Grove overcomes the role's limited range to ever so slightly burlesque the character's winsomeness. She also has a lovely voice that soars through the melodies with seeming ease. Eric Daniel Santagata plays her boyfriend, and he too has nice voice and an endearing shyness that leaves little doubt as to his suitability as Polly's suitor.

Beth Austin as Hortense makes the most of the absurdly (and intentionally) awful "It's nicer in Nice" – fake French accent and all. And Nancy Hess as Madame Dubonnet gets the operett-ish parody "Fancy Forgetting" (showing her age by singing in an "old –fashioned" style?)

Speaking of style there is no attempt to back-sing or scoop as in contemporary pop. Everything sounds authentic to the period thanks to the excellent musical direction of F.Wade Russo who has his spot-on orchestra sounding exactly like you'd expect the 20s to sound.

One note of warning: If you are planning to see THE BOY FRIEND do try to catch it in the next week while Rick Faugno is still playing Bobby. He is leaving the production to take on a role in SHENANDOAH at the Ford theatre in Washington, DC. While I am sure his understudy will be just fine, it's a shame those seeing the show late in the run will miss his wonderful dancing with Andrea Chamberlain. 

THE BOY FRIEND continues at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre until February 19^th, and then moves on to Denver to play the Buell theatre in the Denver Centre for Performing Arts from February 21 through March 5^th. 

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