Above: Rhonda Burchmore performs the role of Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch. Photo credit: Jeff Busby.
The latest Broadway expat to hit our shores is Anastasia The Musical. The Twentieth Century Fox animated musical, not conceived or crafted by Disney teams but now owned by the Disney empire through the magic of mergers.
The 1997 film’s strength as a Disney competitor, which attracted stars for the voiced and singing roles such as Meg Ryan, John Kusak, Kelsey Grammer, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst and Broadway’s Liz Callaway was expanded to a colourful romp through history, in its own colourful journey through turn of the century political upheaval and the change of the old Russia.
Anya (is she suffering PTSD or amnesia as the only member of Tsar Nicholas II’s family to survive the family’s slaughter during the Russian Revolution or is she just a street sweeper used by reward hungry Russians passing her off as long lost royalty?) is here played by Georgina Hopson in all the Broadway converted glory.
Above: Robert Tripolino as Dimitry and Georgina Hopson as Anya. Photo credit: Jeff Busby.
Hopson smashes the role with cross continent relevance and poise. Hers is a layered rendered with much fragility, integrity and humanity. Despite the lavish costuming, big digitally enhanced sets and big versions of the animated feature’s hits (such as ‘Journey to the Past’ and ‘Once Upon a December’) this local musical theatre royalty performs with an impressive non-belting rendering of Stephen Flaherty’s adapted-for-live-stage score. Visually, hers is a street sweeper turned Duchess fairytale anyone would enjoy watching. It comes with skilfully crafted gesture, chemistry with other cast and a stellar measured approach to nuance in her chameleon role.
The musical presents the best and worst of history, a villain (the communist out to kill Anya/Anastasia, played with great intensity and vocal fireworks by Joshua Robson) and a vivid portrait of Russian intellectuals in Paris in the 1920s.
The show’s Parisian expat episode comes complete with Chanel and Charleston, and a small but formidable triple-threat ensemble that greets is after interval, capturing the essence of a weird kind of exile, as many fled the lost happiness of revolutionary Russia and chased the Imperial extravagance and culture akin to that of France.
Amidst the massive digital effect and videography palette painted here the show and our local cast maintains an elastic expansion and contraction. In intimate moments, there is humour, comaradie sans threatening dogma and storylines relating to good old showstopping romance, family reiunion, grandmothers, mothers and running from the authorities.
Those who have criticised Opera Australia’s willingness to blur the division between opera and high-art Broadway would do well to monitor the reaction (no, the screams) following numbers sung by Rob Guest Endowment recipients Hopson and Robson here. The applause and standing ovations, continuing in Sydney the success and verismo energy this Opera Australia production (co-produced with the likes of John Frost) brings to Sydney, as it already has to Melbourne and Perth.
Above: Joshua Robson as Gleb and Georgina Hopson as Anya. Photo credit: Jeff Busby.
And the casting that includes local legends Nancye Hayes (solid and heart-wrenchingly appropriate) in the role of the Dowager Empress searching for her rumoured still alive grand-daughter plus Rhonda Burchmore, an absolute theatre survivor and diva in the role made for her as expat night owl lady in waiting makes Opera Australia and Frost Productions aim the loaded stage show gun straight at our hearts and hit the target.
The trio of Georgina Hopson’s exquisite Anya, Dimitry (Robert Tripolino) and Vlad (Rodney Dobson) with a Court history and flame burning for Lily on their own endearing trajectory are amazing to watch. Their team effort to reach Paris has much energy, humor and some fine contrapuntal musical moments.
Above: The trio heads across the Russion border to France. Rodney Dobson, Georgina Hopson and Robert Tripolino plus cast and amazing videography. Photo credit: Jeff Busby.
They shine in their own city of light capability amongst the huge and lush staging, the realism of the videography, the fashions various and even a full Swan Lake ballet excerpt to boot. The well blended voices and individual motivations of the trio are the beating core of this stage conception and Australia’s version of it. And like any good fairytale, animated, old or modern, political, historic or human to the max, the transformation of these characters to live where Paris ‘Holds the Key to your Heart’ is extraordinary and full of the chic that freedom and hope can bring.
This show will hold the key to your heart if you let it. Journey to its past, once upon a time success reborn from film to stage and brought Down Under. It will do your senses, Opera Australia and the concept of theatre for entertainment’s sake beyond strict genre or production boundaries so proud- and all your Decembers will play at once on intricate repeat.
