A romp of a music hall show at Drury Lane
The veteran theatre company clocks in its 40th year with its beloved Brit tradition
The British music hall tradition, closely related to North American vaudeville, is a kind of song-and-comedy buffet with a wildly varied menu. The difference is you have to eat everything they serve; but what you don’t like you can spit back out in playful boos, jeers and groans.
You’re encouraged to. It makes the stuff you do like go down all the better. And you know, as with any buffet, however bad the unpalatable is, there’s bound to be much that is delicious.
Like the hapless Elvis-y singer with the Scots accent and a guitar slung over his shoulder, at the Drury Lane production. He kept getting spun around by his backup singers — Boom, OO and Yatta-Ta-Ta, — so that they sang the lead and he did backup. It was priceless.
And if you don’t like absolute- ly everything, well, the peo- ple putting out the show don’t have to like you all the time either. While those in the seats, the “habitués” as the MC called them, help keep up the dynamic, feeding back as the show goes on, they take their lumps too, from the people on the stage.
“Some of you are real sons of habitués,” the MC jibed. At Drury Lane Theatre in Bur- lington they’ve been doing this for four decades and they’ve got it down, as is abun- dantly evident in the current run, the 40th anni- versary of the annual show.
There’s a lovely back-and-forth between audience and performers, especially the MC, called The Chairman, in the person of Ivan Buzzelli, so comfortable in the role of the charmingly deft and necessarily thick-skinned hit-and-miss (and Donna Dunn-Albert, artist. music director), is very well
The show starts with the audi- constructed, with strong pacing ence, and on the night I went, and an effective rhythm of they fell right into the feel of moods, from the stirring to the things, doing singalong ho- comedically outrageous. nours on a medley of Beatles Among its strengths is the tunes that fit with music hall show’s refusal to be too “pol- spirit — “When I’m Sixty-Four,” ished.” Lots of slack for deliber- “Yellow Submarine,” “Ob-La- ate “badness,” like the Red Di, Ob-La-Da.” Neck Deck sketch, with the
From there it was off to the men sitting in Muskoka chairs, races with the cast, robust performers comparing the size of their all, delivering tribute decks. medleys that covered everyone It’s difficult to isolate highlights and everything from Queen to but some standouts were ABBA to Canadiana to the the Triplets routine, featuring world wars. Through it all there Sheila Flis, Carrie Mines and are many splendid costume Margaret Moir; Paddy Skinner changes and energetic choreography. and Melody Rasmussen on Taylor the Latte Boy; and guest
The show, co-directed by Caroline artist Marta Stiteler’s feelingly Clarke and Shelley Rennick performed “Crazy.”
Of course, they had to throw in the scandalous and ribald, and so there were the men bumping and grinding across the stage, to “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” building up to the big “reveal,” when they opened their trench coats behind which were — watch out for spoiler — bright red codpieces. It’s all in good, cheeky British music hall fun.
The fine cast is, aside from Buzzelli, Michael Belton, Ed Bradica, Randall Bridge, John Dillon, John P. Kemp, Paddy Skinner, and Al Skinner on The Misters side. And May Farquhar, Sheila Flis, Kay Lewis, Carrie Mines, Margaret Moir and Melody Rasmussen for The Misses.