Anastasia musical, Cats the musical at Hamer Hall

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Most within the ensemble are all of triple-threat calibre but Tim Haskayne as Mr Mistoffelees with his balletic and acrobatic moves and Gabriyel Thomas with her powerhouse vocals as Grizabella deserve special mention.

Cats is pure spectacle (with flashing strobe lighting and pyrotechnics aplenty). There’s no deep and meaningful moral to parse here and no modern renovations to the score, direction or plot. But if you’re after some fluffy content with which to herald the new year or want a kitschy nostalgia hit, then yes, “let the memory live again …”
Reviewed by Thuy On

MUSICAL
Anastasia ★★★
Regent Theatre, until February 20

A perfect storm of misinformation, political turmoil and the collective desire for a fairytale culminated in the legend of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, who was rumoured for decades to be alive even as the rest of her family – the last reigning monarchs of Russia – were believed to have been executed by the Bolsheviks.

Finding its expression in the 1956 film starring Ingrid Bergman and 20th Century Fox’s first animated feature in 1997, the myth of Anastasia then found its way to Broadway, culminating in the 2017 premiere of the namesake musical.

With music and lyrics by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens – the same two who composed the animation’s score – and a book by Terrence McNally, there’s pedigree underpinning this stage production.

Tsarist Saint Petersburg, post-revolution Leningrad and the swinging 1920s of Paris are evocatively reimagined for stage as a trio of misfits – an amnesiac street-sweeper called Anya and her two co-conspirators Dmitri and Vlad – journeys across the border for disparate reasons.

Linda Cho’s resplendent costuming garb the royals and peasants alike, Alexander Dodge’s set design recalls the grandiosity of the Romanovs’ reign and Parisian splendour with majestic archways and luxurious drapery, and Aaron Rhyne’s ornate projections lend the stage an unmistakeable verisimilitude and dimension.

A rotating skeletal train carriage that the characters cavort around in the travelling sequence is a particular highlight, as is a stunning performance of Swan Lake, where the tensions of the show-in-a-show mirror the anxieties of the central characters at a crucial point.

Donald Holder’s bold lighting ties it all together, bathing cinematic bursts of heightened drama in intermittent swathes of lilac, red and blue, while David Chase’s choreography sees the ensemble break out in spirited displays of Russian folk dancing.

Director Darko Tresnjak’s decision to not have the cast members speak in Russian-accented English sidesteps the potential unevenness of such an endeavour, but the broad American and English accents on display chafe against superbly recreated backdrops that so faithfully recall a specific time in Russian history.

Robert Tripolino brings an impish energy to Anya’s rapscallion love interest Dmitry, while Rodney Dobson is his perfect foil as the jolly, all-knowing fake Count Vlad. Joshua Robson has a difficult role as the sombre villain Gleb, but brings an operatic voice and believable moral ambiguity to the role. Elliot Baker briefly plays the Tsar but it’s in his minor role as Count Ipolitov where he truly shines, while the scene-stealing Rhonda Burchmore enlivens the second act with her physical comedy and irrepressible antics as Countess Lily.

Georgina Hopson as the titular character is curiously flat – not helped along by her uncanny physical transformation into Julie Bishop in the second act – though her renditions of the continually reprised Once Upon a December and Journey to the Past are compelling enough.

Irreconcilable contradictions lie at the heart of Anastasia. Glimmers of clarity and memory puncture the amnesiac princess’s vacuum of remembrance – so much so, she begins to believe she is Anastasia – yet she turns on her two co-conspirators for waylaying her into their so-called duplicitous scheme.

The 1997 film – with its ahistorical supposition that Rasputin cursed the royal family, aided by his albino bat Bartok – is such an absurdist recreation it sits outside the sensibilities of time and space.

The musical hews closer to historical accuracy, but in the process elides the reason behind the Russian Revolution and the Tsar’s abdication, save for an unacknowledged throwaway line about how the common people were suffering under three centuries of autocratic rule.

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The scion of an ineffectual monarchy that lived in a gilded fortress with nary a care for its subjects is a fraught heroine to anchor your feel-good musical on, and Anastasia never quite transcends the trappings of history.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

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