BEYOND DESIRE
BEYOND DESIRE, Neil Rutherford Productions in association with the Hayes Theatre Co at the Hayes Theatre, 26 November-14 December 2014. Photography by Oliver Toth, above - Nancye Hayes and Chloe Dallimore; right Phillip Lowe and Blake Bowden.
Beyond Desire, a “modern Edwardian musical”, is a mash-up of Hamlet, EM Forster’s Maurice and the TV shows, Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey. But it’s so lumpen and inauthentic it beggars belief that co-creators Neil Rutherford (book and lyrics) and Kieran Drury (music) have “presented two private readings of successive drafts (at the London Coliseum with the English National Opera in 2005 and at the Sydney Opera House in 2012) and one workshop, all of which provided invaluable reworking notes and feedback from the invited audience”. It can only be supposed that the audiences were hand picked for their tin ears and myopic vision and unfamiliarity with either of the TV series or the Edwardian era itself.
But first, the good things…
Nancye Hayes is always in a class of her own and here she is almost in a show of her own too, so blindingly in tune with what she’s doing, and doing it superbly, as Mrs Milson, the cook-housekeeper to the Pemberton family, she is Upstairs Downstairs’ Mrs Bridges with songs. Nevertheless, it made my heart ache for her and the rest of the cast to see them lumbered with such tosh as that which reveals itself over two very long hours and 45 even longer minutes. (Including an interval during which you should resist the temptation to run away as the second half reveals all; presupposing you care by that point.)
As lady of the house Mrs Louise Pemberton, Chloe Dallimore is very definitely above stairs, looking exquisite and just a little bit sinister as befits her role in the unfolding murder mystery. Like Hayes, she can’t help but be funny, sharp and so much better than the material.
In a different way, as parlour maid Emily, Christy Sullivan is also head and shoulders above the piles of waste paper aka the book and lyrics. This is largely because, in the absence of a program credit for a dialect and accent coach, she seems to have listened to hours of Upstairs Downstairs’ Jean Marsh as her template for an upwardly mobile Cockney – all glottal stops and sweet pretension. It’s beautifully done and sustained throughout.
Of the men, Phillip Lowe (so good in the recent Sondheim on Sondheim) is as compelling as his odd role as the murdered Edward Pemberton allows. Probably because he’s dead he spends much of the first half as an enigmatic, cigar-toting observer from the sidelines and as a portrait subject in a series of elaborate gilt picture frames. He comes into his own in the second half when finally given something to sing and so answers the question that plagued me in the first act: why are you there?
As Hamlet/Maurice and in this iteration, Anthony Pemberton, Blake Bowden is handsome. As his university best friend and would-be lover James, Ross Hannaford is well cast as a physical contrast. Returning below-stairs, as Syd, the handsome young footman, David Bulters has not enough to do that’s of any interest, but does it really well; the opposite has to be said of Tony Cogin as the murdered man’s business partner George.
Unfortunately, they are all wildly over-amplified and the result is unflattering (to Bowden and Hannaford in particular) and at times enough to make one’s ears bleed. Sound designer Tony Love – whose recent credits are Big musicals – appears not to have noticed the intimacy of the Hayes auditorium and certainly hasn’t heeded the creator’s intention that the show be “the antithesis of the high octane, large scale International musicals”.
Sadly, however, none in the company can entirely overcome the obstacles and dead weight of Neil Rutherford’s book and lyrics and his ungainly direction which consists of – get up and cross the stage; now come back; sit down, get up, cross the stage again. Run up the stairs, run down the stairs – yours is not to reason why, just do it, never mind any sense or purpose.
Kieran Drury’s music is a cross between Lloyd-Webber’s dictum of one reasonably memorable tune is enough to hang a show on, and Sondheim. Stephen Sondheim has a lot to answer for in making a generation of musical theatre composers madly ambitious for an orchestral/operatic and minor key way of doing things. Ably led from the piano by musical director Peter Rutherford, the band - violin, cello, reeds, horn and harp - plays across the full spectrum from delightful to turgid; and of course is over-amplified and often drowns out any possibility of understanding what’s being sung.
The less said about the ridiculous set (Luther Forinder) the better, while the book’s anachronisms and failure to make more of the Edwardian era than costumes and “an extraordinary backdrop” is insulting to the stated inspirations, Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs, and to the cast and audience too. At the end, despite the valiant efforts of the company, there was no standing ovation – in Sydney that’s telling you something.
