Lightning has struck twice for Michel Hazanavicius’s irresistible 2011 homage to Hollywood silent cinema. The Oscar winner is now reframed as an effervescent and delightfully inventive stage show, which anticipates a longer life after a short run in Plymouth. Directed, choreographed and co-adapted by Drew McOnie, it retains the old-school charm and wit but goes beyond a retread, makes unexpected additions and more emphatically celebrates the transition to the talkies.
McOnie combines theatre and prerecorded film throughout a production that unfolds within set designer Christopher Oram’s glowing art deco proscenium arch and has a superbly integrated video design by Ash J Woodward. As in Hazanavicius’s near-wordless original, the narrative is driven through title cards, almost constant music (newly composed by Simon Hale, with standards from the era), distinctive Variety-style headlines and expressive physical gesture.
But McOnie’s lustrous dance routines add extra volume to the characterisation, whether it’s incorrigible ham George Valentin (Robbie Fairchild) pirouetting at a party after chewing the scenery in his latest blockbuster, or his long-term screen partner Constance (Rachel Muldoon) thrusting her rear in frustration at the spotlight-hogger.
As the plot thickens, McOnie finds onstage equivalents for silent film techniques such as intercutting and montage to follow George’s career, which crashes like Wall Street, and the simultaneous rise of starlet Peppy Miller (Briana Craig). In the film, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo were bowled over by each other; there is less electricity shared between Fairchild and Craig (each of them otherwise excellent). That is partly due to the script, co-adapted by McOnie and Lindsey Ferrentino, which reduces their romance – although they are given a touching duet, and Peppy’s playful mime with George’s coat and hat stand remains. The real meet cute here – in a new twist – is between George’s unappreciated wife Doris (Ebony Molina) and her gardener (Will Bozier). Molina captures Doris’s heavy heart with a grounded stillness that she slowly sheds in a winning performance.
Gary Wilmot makes a surprisingly cordial studio honcho, Tiffany Graves channels Hedda Hopper as caustic gossip columnist Gertie Gams, and Alexander Bean, as the chauffeur Clifton, has a standout scene where his steering wheel is replaced with a drum kit. George’s canine co-star Uggie – the breakout star of the movie – is a whiskery, irrepressibly waggy puppet designed by Maia Kirkman-Richards and dynamically handled by Thomas Walton. But even cat lovers may question if Uggie really needs a rival pet puppet in the form of a sourpuss owned by Constance.
One of McOnie and Ferrentino’s main additions is commentary on sexism in the studio system, with observations that ring true today, and they have written Peppy as a gutsier character who calls out bad behaviour. When she speaks up, so too do the other characters, and the latter part of the show unfolds like a talkie – with the gag that only silent-era relic George still needs intertitles. It is a neat joke although, with the arrival of dialogue, the script also begins to overstate its themes.
Simon Baker’s sound design is sophisticated and musical director Isaac McCullough keeps things swinging through an interval-free production only slightly longer than the movie. It’s a visual treat, from Oram’s costumes in a palette of black and white to his set deftly suggesting picture palaces, mansions and back lots (lit by Zoe Spurr). McOnie choreographs delightful flights of fancy for the era’s genres, including a swashbuckler film danced with cutlasses. It’s an adaptation brimming with love and respect for the original – rather like the RSC’s My Neighbour Totoro – and tighter focus in the second half could ensure it does, as Variety might say, whammo biz at the box office.
At Theatre Royal Plymouth until 25 May
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