Carolina Gregory and Will Haswell in Do I Hear A Waltz? at the Park Theatre, London. Picture: Bill Knight
Do I Hear A Waltz? continues at the Park Theatre, London, until 30 March.
Watching the witty and charming end-product at the cosy 200-seater Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, it was hard to imagine that the birth of Do I Hear A Waltz? almost half a century ago was so beset by behind-the-scenes disharmony.
With a score by an often alcohol-hazed Richard Rodgers who earned the nickname Godzilla, book by Arthur Laurents and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim that Rodgers called “s**t” (when the general view was that they were a good deal better than the music), this bitter-sweet musical comedy (or is it an operetta?) set in romantic Venice, was hardly a collaboration made in heaven.
Laurents had already had a Broadway success with it as a play, The Time of the Cuckoo, in the early 1950s and as a movie, Summertime with Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi, and wanted Rodgers & Hammerstein to make a musical out of it.
The idea was shelved for a while and then, when Hammerstein died in 1960, Rodgers had to put up with a Sondheim who was relucant to get involved in the first place and never again wrote a lyrics-only show.
He called it “a workmanlike, professional show that deserved to fail because it had no real energy – no excitement whatsoever” and could never see the point of making a musical out of it. Laurents stomped out of the first run-through, disliked much of Rodgers’ score and the way he insulted both collaborators, and said: “I think he was afraid of his own talent not being what it was.”
Waltz still ran for seven months but was overshadowed by the hit musicals Hello, Dolly! and Fiddler On the Roof that year (1965) and remains to this day a rarely-performed curio.
This production by the Charles Court company which was founded by its artistic director John Savournin in the same year, 2005, that London last saw a professional version of Do I Hear A Waltz? at the Landor, is therefore a delightful surprise.
Rosie Strobel, as the sex-mad widowed owner of the little pensione where one revoltingly happy older American couple, a younger pair whose marriage becomes tested, and one rueful singleton Leona desperate for her luck to turn are staying, has us laughing straight away with a comic song about tourists ‘This Week Americans’, and every scene with her larger-than-life involvement is a joy.
Philip Lee, as Di Rossi, the middle-aged local charmer who woos Leona without telling her he’s married and breaks her heart, has some wonderful ballads to sing, ‘Someone Like You’, ‘Take the Moment’ and ‘Stay’, and more than does them justice.
Leona herself (Rebecca Seale) moves us in the title song and in her parting duet with Di Rossi ‘Thank You So Much’ , while ‘We’re Gonna Be All Right’, the catchiest number (and most-often performed in cabaret), gives the warring younger couple Eddie and Jennifer (Matthew Kellett and the excellent Rebecca Moon) their big moment.
Theo Coleridge, as the cute street urchin with an eye for tourists’ potential, is a right little scene-stealer, as is Carolina Gregory, in her first year out of Arts Educational School, who acts, sings and dances a storm as the dim waitress Giovanna struggling with her English. She is definitely one to watch.
The music is in the more-than-capable hands of MD David Eaton on piano and Dave Jennings’ percussion, choreographer Damian Czarnecki deals well with the one big Act I number involving Giovanna and her boyfriend, Louie Whitemore’s set is spare and functional, and director Savournin can be justifiably proud of a well-rehearsed, very well-sung interpretation of a piece that is of-its-time, frothy but not without serious undertones.
It is a great pity that the programme does not come up to the same standard. The lack of a photo-biography of one of the main performers, Rebecca Moon, was a glaring oversight but has happily been put right since press night, as was the absence of a list of songs and who sings them. What would we do without Wikipedia?
Jeremy Chapman
Readers may also be interested in:
Do I Hear a Waltz? – Rebecca Seale does – Interview
Kim Criswell and Louise Dearman celebrate Richard Rodgers – News
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