THEATRE REVIEW: OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR
19 Mar'10

Something missing from ‘Lovely War’

JOHN COULBOURN -QMI Agency
Rating: 3 out of 5

There’s a lot more than musical style separating the stage of the British music hall and even the most run-of-the-mill concert hall.

And frankly, a deeper understanding of those differences would go a long way toward fixing what’s wrong with Soulpepper’s production of OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR that opened at the Young Centre on Wednesday.

In attempting to breathe new life into the 1963 British classic (created by Joan Littlewood, Theatre Workshop and Charles Chilton), director Albert Schultz and his largely eager and fresh-faced cast approach it almost as if it were an audition piece to show off collective musical skills and the like, content to relegate the play’s scathing socio-political examination of the First World War to secondary status.

This, despite the fact that the work is clearly created in the grand old British music hall tradition — which of course, wasn’t grand at all, but rather a bold and brassy milieu known as much for its bawdy and often subversive humour as for its catchy tunes. That’s a milieu that, one suspects, would be pretty alien to the thesps-in-training who not only comprise this year’s enrollment in the Soulpepper Academy, but who make up almost half the cast of this ambitious undertaking as well.

That’s a real pity too, for even though this is a play rooted in the tradition of British music hall, this is musical theatre almost by default. Its main purpose is to underline the fact that, while war has always been hell, in the 20th century we moved ever closer to turning it into absolute lunacy. This was especially true of WWI, styled by many to be the ‘war to end all wars,’ but which devolved into a particularly horrendous study in avarice, mismanagement and political irresponsibility that came close to wiping out an entire generation.

But it also spawned more than its share of memorable tunes — tunes such as Keep The Homefires Burning and It’s A Long Way to Tipperary — some of which have been revived as musical springboards for the heart-breaking, even hair-raising commentary created by Littlewood and her collaborators.

With musical direction by Marek Norman and choreography by Candace Jennings, Schultz’s take on OWALW is at least enthusiastic. His 15 members are led, after a fashion, by Michael Hanrahan, doing his best to pass off tin as brass in the role of the evening’s emcee.

Arrayed in the Pierrot/Pierrette costumes favoured in the original production, Raquel Duffy, Ins Chou, Tatjana Cornij, Gregory Prest, Karen Rae, Jason Patrick Rothery and Brendan Wall join forces with more seasoned stage veterans such as Oliver Dennis, George Masswohl and the ever-evolving Mike Ross to bring the work to life.

If all you’re looking for is a pleasant evening of musical theatre, they’re not half bad — an evening of sweet-faced youth singing sweet harmonies and dazzling its audience with instrumental skills. But they also aren’t half good enough at bringing to life the proper mix of honesty, humanity and world-weary cynicism the work demands. Occasional flashes of the right kind of work only serve to underline how much of the work misses its mark, and even with fine work from Dennis, Ross and Wall, it all feels far too much like a Bible school staging of CABARET.

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR is simply too lovely by half.

What’s more, while a play that comes perilously close to ignoring Canada’s involvement in the First World War no doubt worked in Britain in 1963 — and properly so — it doesn’t exactly fly in Canada in 2010, thanks in no small part to the kind of theatre fostered by Littlewood disciple George Luscombe, who taught us, years ago, that we have a history all our own.

At the Young Centre
Directed by Albert Schultz
Starring the ensemble