White Christmas – an Orpheus Musical Theatre production of an inferior musical of 1957. “Why do a new production?” asks Jamie Portman.
Orpheus Musical Theatre’s decision to offer the stage version of the 1954 film, White Christmas, prompts one immediate question.
Why?
This was an inferior musical 57 years ago and it remains so today, whether you experience it on stage or the big screen. Yet, it inexplicably has assumed the status of a classic. It arrived in 1954, protected by built-in insurance — its title. Indeed, there’s a widespread misconception today that this was the movie which introduced Irving Berlin’s irresistible Yuletide ballad to the world. Not so: the song had been introduced 12 years earlier in a much better film, the 1942 Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Crosby was smart enough to make it one of his signature songs — a song which attained such potency that Paramount saw rich commercial potential in capitalizing on it with a new movie called White Christmas which would once again star Bing.
By the time it happened, Hollywood was fighting back against the devastating impact of television on movie attendance. Its new weapon of choice was the wide screen and stereophonic sound. Fox had been first off the mark in the autumn of 1953 with Cinemascope. A year later, the release of White Christmas marked the unveiling of Paramount’s high, wide and handsome VistaVision process. The technology was greeted with favour by critics, the movie itself far less so.
White Christmas is by no means the first movie musical to be redone for the stage. Gigi, 42nd Street, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Hans Christian Anderson and Singin’ In The Rain have all been redone with varying degrees of success. But White Christmas is probably the worst. The movie borrowed some of the better elements of Holiday Inn only to trivialize them in a trite predictable screenplay by Norman Krasna, Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. The stage version retains the essential elements of the film: song-and-dance men Bob Wallace and Phil Davis pass up a lucrative gig in Florida, ending up instead in wintry Vermont where they come to the aid of their former commanding officer from the Second World War. General Waverly is now the struggling owner of a tourist lodge which is failing financially, and he needs help. So what do the boys do? They decide to draw the customers in by putting on a show.
Such material had whiskers on it back in 1954. And it looks no better in 2011: the reworked book by David Ives and Paul Blake is so respectful of the original that it leaves no cliche unturned.
Why would an Ottawa institution with the track record of Orpheus want to bother attempting to resuscitate something like this? Probably because, against all odds, White Christmas continues to have box-office potential. And there are times when this revival, directed by Judy Follett-Johns does manage to display the solid production values one expects from an Orpheus show.
The largest bouquets are in order for the musical numbers and the imaginative choreography of Linda Fournier-Brown. The engaging ensemble sequences — most notably a richly melodic Blue Skies led by Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston as Bob — are high points. There’s also the nimble footwork of Darren Bird as the carefree Phil who is exuberantly complemented by Erika Seguin in the toe-tapping I Love A Piano.
The production’s musical strengths receive further support from the spirited work of the orchestra under Murray Doggett — something of an achievement considering the variable quality of the score. Irving Berlin wrote several new songs for the film, but apart from the amusing Sisters and the melodic Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep, they were scarcely memorable, and sometimes embarrassingly bad. And none of the new additions matched the quality of the old numbers which Berlin also threw into the mix.
That’s another reason why this Orpheus cast in general deserves plaudits for making at least the musical portions work as well as they do. It’s another matter when it comes to dealing with the script’s tired dialogue and flabby characterizations. For example, Liane Wray and Erika Seguin, playing the singing Haynes gals who inevitably end up in romantic entanglements with the two guys, can’t do much with their roles, but they certainly enliven proceedings with a song like Sisters. In the case of Bob, the character was boring when it was conceived for Bing Crosby and he remains dull today: more credit then, to Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston for finding some charm in his role and for investing the title song with the quiet eloquence it requires.
And there are certainly pleasures to be found in Barb Seabright-Moore’s portrait of a cheerfully cynical factotum named Martha, the confident stage presence of Darren Bird’s Phil and the engaging contribution of 10-year-old Isabella Hearne as the general’s granddaughter.
Other performers behave as though they’ve been scarcely directed at all. And there’s one portrayal which is truly objectionable: someone in charge should have put a stop early on to the depiction of a temperamental stage manager as a mincing, mannered homosexual stereotype. This is the sort of thing which has the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation setting up pickets.
Furthermore there’s often a failure to take advantage of even the material’s limited dramatic potential. Outside of the musical numbers, the production has little sense of pace and displays a cavalier disregard for nuance. Furthermore, despite designer Tony Walker’s success in meeting the show’s multi-scene demands with minimalist but functional sets, scene changes seemed oddly sluggish opening night.
But even in its best moments, Orpheus’s White Christmas seems like a bad idea. The bottom line: it wasn’t worth doing in the first place.
Ottawa, Jamie Portman
November 14, 2011.