MOONSHADOW
MOONSHADOW - Princess Theatre, Melbourne, May 31, 2012.
BY BRYCE HALLETT
LESS than three weeks after the world premiere of An Officer and A Gentleman in Sydney comes another musical that has taken almost a decade to reach the stage: the song-packed fantasy Moonshadow created by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Sevens) and realised by a predominantly Australian creative team, cast and crew.
Moonshadow is Yusuf's first foray into musical theatre and although the visually enchanting and tuneful show has enormous potential it is marred by an inferior script, structural weaknesses and Anders Albien's largely workmanlike and uninspired direction. The cartoonish fable centres on the young, white-haired loner Stormy (Gareth Keegan) who lives in Alaylia, the land of eternal night, and whose restless imagination is fuelled by fantasies about Shamsia, the mythical land of the lost sun.
At the heart of the story, based partly on an Inuit rite-of-passage tale, is the question: how do you escape the shackles of tradition without denying the very things that shape and define your cultural identity? The outsider Stormy's odyssey taps into elements of Yusuf's own chameleon journey and spiritual quest while re-interpreting many of his best-known songs, including Remember The Days (Of the Old Schoolyard), Father and Son, Wild World, Who'll Be My Love, First Cut Is The Deepest, the eponymous Moonshadow and Morning Has Broken.
There's no denying that the musical is ambitious and imaginative in its ideas and scope, but it seldom takes marvel-making flight despite the efforts of a first-rate cast that includes Gemma-Ashley Kaplan, Robert Grubb, Sally Bourne, Rodney Dobson and Marney McQueen as the deliriously cruel and camp Princess Zeena. The production is a mishmash of playing styles and is not yet as confident and magical as it should be. All the ingredients are there but the book needs editing and rewriting to bring substance to the string of homilies woven throughout.
In its current form, caricature and indulgence, not depth and originality, take precedence. There is also a sense that the actors have been left to their own devices - as resourceful and clever as that can be - rather than been afforded the leadership of a top-notch director who can attend to details and still see the forest for the trees. There are scenes that fail to coalesce dramatically and musically but Moonshadow does have the makings of being a fully-rounded, seamless collaboration and a truly transporting experience. There's certainly no shortage of talent on stage and behind the scenes.
The cast comprises talent of varying ages and experience, and the singing and musical values are excellent on the whole. Keegan has a superb voice and is engaging as Stormy yet there's a lack of nuance and dimension in his acting while he belts out many of the songs at the same intensity and pitch with mixed results. He is severely let down by the director. As Stormy's childhood sweetheart Lisa, Kaplan nicely evokes strength of mind, innocence and sensitivity, and their Act I duet How Can I Tell You is tender and harmonious, although too little is made of the moment. Kaplan's version of First Cut is The Deepest is heartfelt and poised.
One of the most vibrant, amusingly theatrical song and dance turns belongs to Blake Bowden as Stormy's rival Pat, the son of the tyrannical factory owner who has his sights set on marrying Lisa. Bowden has a remarkably strong and agile voice, and his comic timing and buffoonery is cast from the same mould as the macho manipulator Gaston in Beauty and The Beast. It may be pure panto but Bowden's performance brings an exhilarating, much-needed lift to a musical which, by the second half, threatens to become as long, winding and arduous a road for the audience as it is for our young hero.
Throughout his quest Stormy is guided by the droll-witted, towering figure of Moonshadow, played by Joylon James, who turns out to be one of the last remaining benevolent shadows. A guardian angel of sorts, Moonshadow is only seen and heard by Stormy as he goes through any number of trials and tribulations, not least his seductive, ultimately combative, encounter with Princess Zeena, the ruler of the Zalims, the Jinn-spirits of darkness. James is in fine voice, his portrayal measured and assured.
The tale of battle-scarred families in which prejudices run deep and whose offspring dream of a better world echoes the tribal divisions and shifting allegiances of West Side Story and, of course, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on which the Leonard Bernstein musical is based, but Act 2 is a peculiarly whimsical meld of ideas, essentially a medieval-dress cabaret meets Sondheim's Into The Woods mixed with Tim Burton and a trippy dose of the rock musical Hair. Trudy Dalgleish's lighting invests colour and dimension to the pop-up storybook world conjured in the mix of projections and designer Adam Gardnir's simple yet ingenious sets which give the wonderland a dual sense of permanence and transience.
Two of the most visually striking and effective scenes are the spiritual marketplace with its lanterns and shadowy voids, and Princess Zeena's glass bubble kingdom in the sky in which McQueen dispenses Cleopatra-like charisma and some tough love to get her wicked way. McQueen handles it with typical gusto but the script doesn't offer her many rewards. After the earlier poignancy of the beautiful and rousing Father & Son, Stormy's coming of age and return home at the end is poorly staged, more befitting an episode of Neighbours than epic fantasy. The reunion lacks emotional impact because there is so little sense of yearning, let alone genuine surprise. The scene needs to be reworked, be it of the father and son seeing each other from a distance, then gradually moving towards one another in an act of reconciliation propelled by music not silence, uneasy acting and verbal cliches.
The climactic Morning Has Broken is almost thrown away in what should be the most lyrical, life-affirming and spirited song in the show. It comes close but if only the director had taken his cue from West Side Story and Jerome Robbins by creating a near-empty canvas on stage to suggest a vast, lyrical expanse - a better world? - in which the younger Stormy and Lisa emerge from darkness.
The reason many of Cat Stevens' songs are memorable and appealing, and have endured over the years, is that they are fluent, poetic and spare. If only Moonshadow possessed more of those qualities. Already the musical shows considerable promise. With further development, not least a sharper book and fluent direction, it could well prove a hit with audiences on Broadway and the West End. But for that to happen the musical needs looking after and for the producers to make hard decisions about what is in the best artistic interests of the show.
