Studio, Sydney Opera House, October 19
9/10
Sometimes a show and a venue press each other’s buttons in a way that makes each perspire just a little, and bundles of joy are instantly born in the form of smiles on people’s faces. Calamity Jane and the Opera House’s Studio are such a coupling. The room becomes the Golden Garter saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota, in the 1870s – a place where women are scarce and horses are skittish.
Were some omniscient history of theatrical depictions of the fabled Jane penned, three would surely rise to the top like so many whiskey-laden burps: Doris Day in the 1953 movie, Robin Weigert in TV’s superlative Deadwood and Virgina Gay in this ongoing production of the musical derived (in 1961) from the film.
I missed it at Hayes Theatre (where it was initially in Michelle Guthrie’s Neglected Musicals series), at Belvoir, and in its gallops around Australia, so join the hoedown seven years late, but forever grateful finally to witness Gay giving the performance of a lifetime. The show’s also a supreme example of Richard Carroll’s art as director, including making the audience so many extras in the Golden Garter, and the way the production keeps poking itself in its own theatrical eye.
The musical is basically the movie with a stagecoach full of extra songs, although Carroll tweaks the characters and story-telling, while musical director Nigel Ubrihien slims the orchestral score down to just piano (plus the cast playing a bunch of stringed instruments for The Black Hills of Dakota). They found no solution to saving the saccharine Love You Dearly, however.
Gay is a force field of charismatic energy as Jane, roaming the stage and audience, looking for trouble, confused about what her heart’s telling her, and discovering her “female” side with all the wonder and suspicion of a child being given a shiny new bicycle. When she sings the show’s famed My Secret Love, she doesn’t compete with Doris Day’s pristine sweetness, but rips the song apart, and, in the process, performs some amateur cardiovascular surgery on us, too. Gay’s Jane is almost a female Falstaff in her scope.
Like Carroll, choreographer Cameron Mitchell, designer Lauren Peters and lighting designer Trent Suidgeest give the cast a hand full of aces with which to play. While Andrew Cutcliffe may not have the strongest singing voice, his idiosyncratic Wild Bill Hickok is a worthy foil for Gay. Victoria Falconer (usually a musical director) is sassy and feisty as Susan, the “niece” of saloon owner Henry Miller, played with bravura by Phillip Lowe. Kala Gare is an ideal Katie Brown, the woman who, deliciously ambiguously, moves in with Jane, and then snares Lieutenant Gilmartin – admirably played by Kaya Byrne.
Whether you loved the movie, adored Deadwood or saw this production before, see it in the Studio. It’s funniest, whip-crackingest, shot-drinkingest, heart-warmingest show in town.
Until November 19.