Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 25 March 2009

Cole Porter

THE PINNACLE of my own dramatic career came forty-five years ago when I was First Witch in the Scottish Play at school, performing for a captive audience of appreciative parents and friends. I well remember the schoolmaster directing us urging that he did not want a performance that was very good for a school play; he wanted a performance that was very good – full stop.

Of course, our playing was cheered to the rafters, and the director supplied an illicit libation to celebrate our achievements, but in retrospect, we were probably pretty grim. In fact, we were pretty grim, and what it would have been like had the play been Verdi’s Macbeth, with singing involved, rather than Shakespeare’s, doesn’t bear thinking about. So, at the end of this, if the charge against me is hypocrisy, I hold up my hand and plead guilty.

All of which begs the question when reviewing a performance by a local amateur opera company; do you judge it as a local amateur production or do you accept the poisoned chalice and judge it against other performances of musical theatre in the Eden Court programme? Even more important, how do the members of Inverness Opera Company wish and expect to be judged?

It was last October that work started on this year’s main production from Inverness Opera, the Cole Porter musical, Anything Goes. It is a show packed with famous and memorable song and dance numbers, with a story line that is so convoluted and unimaginable that you would think it would have to be true, until you realise that it was written by P G Woodhouse.

Producer Maureen Pringle has the luxury of a selection of experienced members from whom to cast her leading roles, but was still able to look to the future by the choice of a newcomer, Nicola MacAskill, for the important part of Reno Sweeney, and with a new Musical Director, Fiona Sellar marshalling the forces of the very competent, if wind dominated, pit orchestra.

The show begins in a Manhattan bar where we meet businessman Elisha Whitney, played by the evergreen John Claudius, enjoying a drink with entertainer Reno Sweeney while he waits to meet his broker Billy Crocker, perfectly performed by Des Devine, with instructions to sell a packet of stocks and make him a fortune.

It is quite obvious that Reno is in love with Billy, as she sings I Get A Kick Out Of You delivered with a night-club voice, suitably lubricated with cocktails and cigarettes. It is quite a challenge to debut for the Company with such a well-known and demanding number, and Nicola MacAskill so nearly pulls it off.

Anything Goes is a show from the Thirties, the age of swing, and it was the swing that was missing. Sadly for Reno, Billy is a lost cause as he has fallen for the beautiful Hope Harcourt, and anyway Reno has to leave New York to work as the entertainer on board the SS American. But by a dramatic coincidence, one way or another, all the principal characters are about to up anchor and sail out of New York on the SS American for a spell on the ocean wave, with gangsters disguised as vicars, effete English aristocracy, possessive mothers and even double duplicity for Billy as a stockbroker stowing away and pretending to be a criminal in a sailor’s costume.

Confused? You’re meant to be. By the end of the show, all is unravelled, the principals are paired off and Ship’s Captain Donald Matheson has a multiple wedding to perform. On the way the hits keep coming, and isn’t it an interesting comparison with the modern musical that seldom has more than a couple of blockbusting numbers?

In Anything Goes, Cole Porter leaves us a heritage of at least eight: I Get A Kick Out Of You, You’re The Top, Easy To Love, Friendship, It’s De-Lovely, Blow Gabriel Blow, The Gypsy In Me and Anything Goes itself.

In Des Devine and Trevor Nicol, Inverness Opera have a pair of leading men who can hold their own in any company. Both have timing, style, presence, comic skills and good singing voices. But even in a world of make believe, nobody would be frightened by the Moonface Martin of Trevor Nicol, and that is because he is under the thumb of his lovely ‘moll’ Erma, played to the hilt by Caroline MacPherson.

Garry Black makes hay with his American stereotype of the English upper crust as Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, while John Claudius is a suitably generous and avuncular Elisha Whitney, in pursuit of Evangeline Harcourt as a delightful cameo by Jenni Lomax, determined that her daughter Hope should marry her English M’Lord.

Hope develops other ideas, and it is easy to understand why Billy should have fallen for her, especially when played by Claire Morris, one of the gems in the tiara that is Inverness Opera. I recall the first time I reviewed a performance involving Claire, herhum years ago when she was but a teenager. It was a Florians pantomime and her natural sense of style and movement shone out above her fellow mummers.

I commented that she had the makings of a professional performer if she chose to follow that career path. Past cast lists show that professional musical theatre’s loss is Inverness Opera’s gain and it is a pleasure to see that Claire has lost none of her style, making Hope the most elegant hoofer on the set.

The Reno of Nicola MacAskill gets the lioness’s share of the big production numbers into which she has put a huge amount of work, skill and commitment. She is better in the solo or duet numbers, such as You’re The Top or Friendship, and it is not Nicola who prevents the title song which ends the first act from being a show-stopper.

This is how local amateur operatics differs from the professional theatre. How can half-a-dozen enthusiastic but untrained dancers and a static chorus begin to compare with the effect of sixty pairs of disciplined feet thundering in unison and pzazz?

Wednesday’s performance had all the buzz of an opening night, but what we got was in effect a technical run through, and I hope somebody was making a list of all the details that need sorting. Lighting was erratic with a few suspect cues leaving characters unlit; sound needed fine-tuning and again more attention was needed to the cues.

And why on earth do we have to sit through those long dark pauses between scenes? The Empire Theatre is a fully equipped facility with everything needed to activate seamless scene changes, and there is on hand a professional team to help and advise on all matters technical.

The result was that the show lost pace and continuity, which the audience noticed, to the extent that the final applause had died away before the curtain had been raised for the cast to take their bows.

Hopefully, by the end of the run, everything will have been tightened up and the show will have a zip and a crispness that was lacking on the first night. If not, I fear that the Atlantic Ocean will be pretty close to the scuppers of the SS American, which will not be a happy portent for Inverness Opera’s production next March – Titanic The Musical.

© James Munro, 2009

Links

• Inverness Opera