The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast heralded the advent of the mega-musical in South Africa. With High School Musical (HSM) the corporate musical comes of age. It is not merely a question of the scale of enterprise, HSM’s very DNA is corporate. Naturally then it is less about theatre and more about Hollywood entertainment.
In the first place, it is an invention of the Disney Corporation with all the financial muscle that comes with that conglomerate. Using a reality television audition show it is packaged from birth. The story board and characters are a calculated result based on marketing appeal and well-worn formulas. Its raison d’etre is to make money by giving people what they have already proven they want to see more of. Based on the Disney Channel’s movie (already in threequel) the full stage version is a global phenomenon with sold out seasons in the United Kingdom , Europe, Australia and more than 40 cities across the United States.
The 11-piece band under the baton of Charl-Johan Lingenfelder and the 32-member South African cast, many of them making their debut, are all in top form and do make one terribly proud.
So, is the critic happy with the phenomenon? W.H. Auden’s satricial poem on the unknown citizen springs to mind: The question is absurd. Had anything been wrong we would certainly have heard.
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After breaking with composer Andrew Lloyd Weber, lyricist Tim Rice collaborated in 1984 with the two former ABBA stars, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, to produce what became ‘the most successful “Swedish” musical ever written’ – Chess The Musical.
A concept musical about the chess match between world champions Victor Korchnoi and Bobby Fisher at the height of the Cold War, the work is refreshing for its novelty. However, the book is convoluted, at times ridiculous, and hopelessly over-developed, involving a love triangle, intrigues, political machinations and attempts to make statements about the Cold War.
The show survives on its musical hits, such as the party number One Night in Bangkok and the ballad I know him so well, forcefully rendered by dynamic female lead Gina Schmukler with Anne-marie Clulow. Amongst the rest of the cast, James Borthwick (the Russian patriot Molokov) is the clearest and the only one who’s every word is intelligible in song. But the night belongs to young Brennan Holder (the Russian chess grandmaster) who is fast establishing his reputation as a leading man.
This unusual choice for Pieter Toerien’s established creative team of musical supervisor-arranger Charl-Johan Lingenfelder and director Paul Warrick Griffin, Chess is their most robust production to date. The cast cope well with what is at times a hellishly difficult score. Conceptually some of the choreography is preposterous, but the new revolve for the theatre’s stage has certainly paid off.
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