Music & Lyrics by George & Ira Gershwin; Book by Joe DiPietro
The Production Company
State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, Aug 15 to 23, 2015
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ****1/2
Full review also published in Herald Sun online Mon 17 Aug, 2015 and thereafter in print. KH.
Blend a catalogue of inimitable, early 20th
century Gershwin songs with a 21st century book, 1920s bootleggers,
playboys and chorus girls and you get the effervescent, new musical, Nice Work
if You Can Get It.
After over a decade of
development, American writer, Joe DiPietro’s hybrid opened on Broadway in 2012
and won multiple Awards.
In a story set during 1927 in a playboy’s mansion on
Long Island, DiPietro captures the flavour and characters of the Prohibition
era but modernises them with saucy contemporary gags, bold women and ditzy men.
Nice Work is a hit that successfully straddles
two centuries.
Rohan Browne balances sensuality with dim-wittedness as
playboy, Jimmy Winter, who is blessed with wealth and good looks but not brains.
Jimmy is marrying the self-absorbed daughter of Senator
Max Evergreen (John Wood), Eileen Evergreen (Christie Whelan Browne), ‘the
finest interpreter of modern dance in the world’, and Whelan Browne milks this ridiculous
character for comic potential.
Jimmy’s honeymoon goes off the rails when he meets tomboy
bootlegger and fugitive from justice, Billie Bendix, played with charming naiveté
and gangling awkwardness by Esther Hannaford.
Roger Hodgman’s production gives the performers their
heads, never getting in the way of audacious characterisations by his cast of
consummate musical and comic artists.
The Gershwins’ music is the star of the show with
such unforgettable, singable hits as: Nice Work If You Can Get It, Let’s Call
The Whole Thing Off, Someone To Watch Over Me, ‘S Wonderful, Fascinating Rhythm
and even an orchestral version of Lady Be Good.
Under musical director, John Foreman, the slick band plays
Gershwin with fierce commitment and plenty of brass and percussion.
With such a vivacious cast and chorus there are many
highlights, but Whelan Browne’s sassy, narcissistic rendition of Delishious, sung
in her bubble bath with a chorus line of bubble girls, is spectacularly funny.
Browne’s opening scene of Sweet And Lowdown with the
Speakeasy chorus features some of Dana Jolly’s exuberant, provocative
choreography that also sparkles in Fascinating Rhythm.
George Kapiniaris is a classic 20s clown as
bootlegging gangster, Cookie McGee, and his duet with Gina Riley as prohibitionist-turned-boozer,
Duchess Estonia Dulworth, is a comic gift.
With her fine voice, Hannaford brings new life to the
evocative ballad, Someone To Watch Over Me, singing it with a shotgun in hand,
and to Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, her trio with Browne and Tony Farrell as
Police Chief Berry.
Blah, Blah, Blah is a delightfully eccentric love duet
between Jensen Overend as the dopey Duke, and Monica Swayne as Jeannie, his
equally dim girlfriend.
Nice Work is impudent, boisterous, beautifully sung
and performed and allows us to hear Gershwin tunes in this new and cunningly
wrought musical.
By Kate Herbert
Rohan Browne
Esther Hannaford
Christie Whelan-Browne
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