By BRUCE DENNILL
Pretty Woman: The Musical / Directed by Rusty Mowery / Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways
It’s not as often as many musical theatre lovers would like that a show that is brand new to a particular audience turns up, so although there is understandably a lag in terms of what appears on Broadway or the West End making its way to South Africa, it’s great to see, in the wake of the recent Dear Evan Hansen, another major production being reproduced in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
In this case, it’s one of the increasing number of movie-to-stage adaptations (where Mamma Mia!, Dear Evan Hansen and others took the opposite route), meaning that audiences are familiar with the basic plot and characters, or have family members who are (the film is 36 years old now, so some generational overlap is missing). The book, by Garry Marshall, who directed the film, and JF Lawton, who wrote the screenplay, is, interestingly, not a direct reproduction of the original script, and nor should it be, as – among other things – original music and lyrics by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance didn’t exist in the screen version, so trying to shoehorn those into the story as told on screen would be a fool’s errand.
As such, then, Pretty Woman is (for South Africans) a new musical with an old story that isn’t the same as it used to be. So how does that land? Initially, it must be said, rather slowly. A narrator character, Happy Man (Tiaan Rautenbach) helps to contextualise what’s happening, what sort of characters he’s surrounded by (prostitutes and hustlers, mostly) and where, leading the opening number, Welcome To Hollywood. As an introduction to the score, it sets expectations at a level that doesn’t really get exceeded. It’s good music, often featuring chord progressions familiar to fans of Bryan Adam’s mainstream pop and rock work and certainly helping to move the story along through the songs’ lyrics. But nothing really sticks in the mind for its hooks or mood as is sometimes the case with original material in music and, other than Roy Orbison’s eternal hit Pretty Woman, there are no tunes that are hits outside of the show.
This requires some commitment on the part of the cast as foundations are laid, and by On A Night Like Tonight, a scene in which hotel manager Mr Thompson (Rautenbach again) teaches Vivian Ward (Leah Mari) to dance ahead of an important event with their shared client Edward Lewis (Christopher Jaftha), their combined efforts begin to bear fruit. Much of that has to do with the warmth and wit with which Rautenbach infuses his multiple roles (he also turns up as a Rodeo Drive shop owner, a member of the in crowd at a polo event and part of an opera scene), but most notably as Thompson, an old-school hotelier with a reputation for discretion and peerless service who finds himself charmed by his rough-edged new guest.
With the characters by now firmly defined, the momentum of the production as a whole in full flow and lovely injections of humour and energy from a number of ensemble members and the bouncing, beaming figure of Bo Molefe as hotel bellboy Giulio, the show settles into a happy, assured rhythm that carries the rest of the story well.
Mari bolsters her growing reputation as a potent leading lady after star turns in The Sound Of Music and My Fair Lady (interestingly, like Pretty Woman, also an interpretation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion) as a sassy, smart, sweet and sultry Vivian Ward, and with a singing voice that is both commanding and adaptable, communicating exactly the tone required in each piece she sings.
Jaftha is impossibly smooth as Edward Lewis, looking the part of a ruthless businessman. He’s not as strong a vocalist as his co-lead (few are), but he has a pleasing vibrato and in both his singing and his portrayal of a lovable rogue who starts to shift his worldview, Jaftha offers a consistency that makes his character’s striking combination of arrogance and kindness believable throughout.
Rautenbach is the beating heart of the piece, stealing every scene he’s in without at all being the sort of performer who tries to tries to draw undue attention to himself.
As its name suggests, the show celebrates the physical beauty of its cast in a wide range of both raunchy and glamorous costumes, and there are a couple of moments when Ward and Lewis are getting intimate that might have parents in the audience trying to deflect their kids’ attention with a bag of Jelly Tots or similar. The set doesn’t always keep up with the costumes in terms of detail or imagination, though there are some clever touches – for example, the seating scenario in the opera scene.
Ultimately, the various aspects of the production combine to ensure that the narrator character’s name – Happy Man – is probably a fair reflection of everyone (of any gender) in the theatre.