HAVING THE BEST OF TIMES IN THE PARK
Even in acquainted classics you may by no means predict which anthem will set you dabbing your eye. You would possibly anticipate it at Albin’s anguished ‘I am what I am”. Or, since it’s the one huge musical-theatre hymn to dutiful parenthood, would possibly empathize in a midlife means with “Look over There”. But on this time of social and planetary dread, my very own second of helpless snivelling was to the credit score of Carl Mullanney, in his mumsy mother-of-the-bride go well with, swinging into “The Best of Times is now!” . He attracts in, one after the other, Georges and his embarrassed son, the homophobically hostile in-laws , all of the diners and waiters in sight and (properly underneath their breaths) various viewers members in Regent’s Park. All for a second can assume sure, that is it: “not some forgotten yesterday, not a future far away…”. Just now proper right here within the park, hearts singing collectively, underneath the bushes in the summertime nightfall.
Magic, it was. We know what to anticipate from Harvey Fierstein’s defiant 1984 musical (launched, bear in mind, initially of the AIDS terror) and from Jerry Herman’s songs. We’ll get a celebration of drag : old-style and joyful, drily self-aware with out the aggression of present culture-war. We’ll get an affirmation of the homosexual household in midlife domesticity beneath the glitter . We anticipate the gently louche humour, a sitcom second with the visiting bigots, and quite a lot of tits-and-tinsel, thrilling frills, excessive kicks and excessive camp and the odd drop-dead gag (“there comes a time in every Salome’s life when she should no longer be dropping the last veil”).
Tim Sheader’s swansong as chief of the Open Air Theatre offers us all that, and is superb. Mullanney is ideal from the primary glimpse of him scrubbing a casserole in housewifely dudgeon and a glittering negligee, via the ‘girlish excitement and manly restraint” of the mascara moment, to utter ownership of the cabaret stage, and onward into anxious sacrificial motherliness and resolution. He and Billy Carter’s genuinely touching Georges maintain the emotional line of the play completely, painfully actual of their devotion (Carter’s Song on the Sand is gorgeous).
There is actual energy in that emotional line, in addition to the central and glorious joke when, within the fantastically executed scene with younger Jean-Paul, Georges and Alban should come to phrases with their son’s straightness (“What have we raised, an animal?”). It’s an ideal mirror picture of the way in which straight society needed to settle for gay partnerships. And sly in regards to the variations of presentation: as Georges says sadly earlier than the Dindons arrive, “My mannerisms can translate into tasteful affections. Yours are..suspicious”. Mullanney’s gallant makes an attempt to look and transfer like an alpha “Uncle Al” are superb. But so is the second when, having mastered residing within the jail of hunched slobbish masculinity and adopted directions to behave manly, having nobly agreed to “dispense with everything that brings you personal joy”, Albin can’t bear the impersonation, and flees.
But simply sit again, banish tradition battles, and revel in. Musically it’s pretty, and theatrically notably masterful: flowing, holding or shifting the temper, the scene-changes elegantly achieved by the Cagelles with numerous small witty bodily asides. The choreography is fabulous, simply the best aspect of foolish; the costumes magnificently absurd (o, these spotted-and-striped tights on the peacock dancers) . And when you get a row-end seat chances are you’ll discover an occasional pastel-tulle volcano brush previous your very ears, most thrillingly. I additionally love the offstage collapse of these dancers, sprawling laddishly, ouch-ing their poor ft, abandoning their borrowed she-grace and not pretending something. A selected form of guys, however guys all the identical. Irresistible.
Everyone’s giving it 5, and everybody within the firm, and Sheader himself, completely deserves it. The musical mouse beneath is for the Cagelles.
openairtheatre.com prolonged to 23 September
