Shire Music Theatre's Big River helps one to understand how it is so many Shire-dwellers, at least as legend would have it, only ever leave it under duress. If one can consume musical theatre of this quality within a stone's throw of home, where is there to go? I'm an ardent Samuel Clements fan, so anything associated with the man otherwise known as Mark Twain can't be all bad. This was my first exposure, having missed the big-smoke productions. So, if anything it had more to live up to, in order to prove its worth. SMT delivered, bigtime. Director, Gavin Leahy, & musical director, Dean Turner, have really pulled it off. And it must be a daunting task, taking on a Tony Award-winner.Fortunately for these talented two, they have a great depth of what I assume is local talent at their disposal. In charismatic boy wonder, Andrew Fabris, a star is born. Often out-singing his elders, with more stage presence and confidence, he's going places. One day, he might get his own Tony, whether as Huck Finn, or another character.
Roger Miller has, of course, furnished Twain's lovable tale with a super score, built around Bill Hauptman's book: the gauntlet of human experience documented by Twain is reflected faithfully. It requires someone who's lived more than a little to achieve that, and I'm pretty sure the king of country fits that bill. He also seems to have a keen instinct and feel for the fact an enduring appetite for Americana exists well beyond US borders (though perhaps not as far as, say, Pakistan). At least as far as Sutherland Memorial Arts Theatre (where the set worked perfectly and exploitation of the smallish stage was so well-conceived and executed), if the laughter and shrieks of delight around me were anything to go by.
I found myself effortlessly transported down the mighty Mississippi, through the timeless fictional annals of Finn's adventurous moral progress. Chris Malliate was effective as the rather distracted & impulsive Tom Sawyer, but the other performer (besides Fabris) who took me there was, indubitably, the hapless, on-the-run slave, Jim, played by Ed Mafi, whose voice has an irresistible timbre, akin to the cosy, reassuring warmth of a logfire. His every note is a soothing lullaby. And his acting almost matches his superb voice.
By contrast, there was one voice that missed the mark, and a few notes, not helped by a grating tone. Enough said. Meanwhile, back on the credit side of the ledger, other notables included Julian Batchelor, in multiple roles, but particularly outstanding as the king of France, a low-life schemer in cahoots with Murray Stanton, as the duke. Stanton is veritably purpose-built for the comic musical stage. There were a host of other more than creditable performances besides, both in vocal and theatrical terms: for example, Ken Dillon, as Pap Finn, had obviously made a careful study of the characteristic movements of the chronic alcoholic; while Jen Parbery, with Shirley Temple curls, is as sweet as 'par' and as unsuspecting as Little Red Riding Hood.
Three cheers to the orchestra, to boot, which had precious few moments of looseness or uncertainty. That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but it takes into account the steep expertise required in playing authentic bluegrass and country; not something typically required of pit musos, who often tend to have a more formal approach that can mitigate against the right feeling for those genres.
Big River was, historically, and especially with 20/20 hindsight, a milestone insofar as reviving the American musical, at a time (the 80s) when musicals, in a dramatic role-reversal by a former colonial mistress, were almost all emerging from Britain. On its side were the superlative book and music, sensible in every respect to the task of recreating Twain's mastery in a new form, as well as the pithiness and wiliness of Twain's original, evoked, for example, in the stern warning in song by Huck's guardians that opens the musical. 'Looka here, Huck, do you wanna go to heaven? Well, I'll tell you right now: you better learn to read and you better learn your writin', or you'll never get to heaven, 'cause you won't know how!' And in the ode to the river of life, the murkiness of right and wrong, and old-fashioned virtues and values, of perseverance and forbearance, as depicted in the lyrics of Muddy Water, which closes it. 'Well, I been down to the pain and sorrow, of no tomorrows comin' in. But I put my pole to the river bottom. And I've got to hide some place, and find myself again. So, look out for me, oh muddy water. Your mysteries are deep and wide. And I got a need for going some place. A need to climb on your back and ride'.
The final test of any production of Big River must surely be in ensuring Twain's messages about the true nature of freedom are carried. Thanks to a director and cast that seems utterly alive to the morality tale behind the colourful characters, there's never any doubt about the success of that endeavour in this lucid, invigorated version. Huck, the lovable, motherless vagabond, in helping his friend, Jim, on his 'long walk to freedom' is, of course, liberated and awakened himself, finding his own life's purpose along the way. It's just as we would want it.
Just as the musical has picked up no less than 7 Tonies, including for best musical, music and book, SMT deserves an award for singelhandedly elevating the status of regional and suburban musical theatre productions to a footing comparable to that of its big city cousins. Honest Injun! As my perspicacious companion put it, albeit with inadvertent snobbishness, 'I don't feel like I'm in Sutherland'. More like the great south land.
Shire Music Theatre
BIG RIVER
The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn
Music & Lyrics by Roger Miller, Book by Willam Hauptman adapted from the Mark Twain novel
Directed by Gavin Leahy
Venue: Sutherland Memorial Arts Theatre, East Parade, Sutherland
Dates: 16, 17, 21, 23, 24 April 2010 at 8pm
Matinees: 18, 24, 25 April 2010 at 2pm
Tickets: $29 /$24 conc (premiere $25)
Bookings: 8230 0668 | www.shiremusictheatre.org.au
