A new stage
adaptation of the 1928 classic narrative poem by Joseph Moncure March.
Adaption,
direction and design by Pauline Wright.
Musical
Direction by Jiri Kripac
Performed by
Pauline Wright and Joe Woodward
Musicians: Jiri
Kripac and David Bates
The Famous
Spiegel Gardens, Senate Rose Garden, Canberra
16th
March 2013
Reviewed by
Bill Stephens
First
published in 1928, this long Jazz Age narrative poem by Joseph Moncure March
was originally banned in Boston because of its risqué content. Its violent
story of a vaudeville dancer who throws booze and sex fuelled party quickly
achieved popular success however and was made into a film in 1975, and formed
the basis of two musicals.
Both
musicals were presented in New York in 2000. The version composed by Michael
John La Chiusa was presented on Broadway, and the other composed by Andrew
Lippa, (whose musical “The Adams Family” opens in Sydney this week), was
presented off Broadway. A concert version of the Andrew Lippa musical was
presented at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2005 with a cast which included
Simon Burke, Sharon Millerchip, David Harris, Chelsea Gibb and Eddie Perfect.
What better
venue then, in which to present Pauline Wright’s new adaptation of the original poem for which
Jiri Kripac has written an original score, than the deliciously decadent
atmosphere of the 1920’s Belgian
spiegletent,
The
presentation was as simple as it was sophisticated. Just two musicians, David
Bates on piano and Jiri Kripac on trumpet and two actors, Pauline Wright and
Joe Woodward, and a stage dressed with two gold antique chairs, separated by a
small antique table holding a glowing
lamp ,a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
After an appropriately
bluesy overture, Wright and Woodward each sing a song which sets the context
and mood before both sit on the chairs to read the rest of the poem. They read,
rather incongruously, from hand-held electronic readers. Convenient perhaps,
but somewhat at odds with the otherwise carefully evoked period atmosphere.
The static presentation
placed the emphasis very much on Joseph Moncure March’s extraordinary writing and Wright and Woodward,
both skilled actors and storytellers, drew on their formidable vocal skills to invest
the protagonists and the many lesser participants with a variety of accents and
personalities. They wisely relied on Moncure March’s idiosyncratic and
evocative words, enhanced by Kripac’s evocative music, to do the rest. Very
soon the willing audience found themselves inexorably drawn into the seductive world
of prohibition, decadence, drugs, booze and sex.
Despite the interval,
which rather broke the spell, and the unfortunate competition from Skyfire
towards the end of the performance, this delightful presentation of “The Wild
Party” proved to be a memorable experience as captivating for the uniqueness of its spiegletent
presentation, as for the opportunity it provided to engage with one of the more
provocative and celebrated poems of the twentieth century.
