You'll want to see this again... and again! PATRICK MARMION reviews Groundhog ... trends now
Groundhog Day (Old Vic, London)
Verdict: On repeat, please!
Think you know Groundhog Day from the Bill Murray movie? Been there and got the giant furry rodent T-shirt? Well, think again.
Matthew Warchus and Tim Minchin’s musical is a dizzying, blistering and joyous reinvention of Danny Rubin’s cult story.
Back in the West End seven years after its premiere, it’s a show that not only stands repetition but also turns that repetition into an art form — thanks in no small part to the mesmeric Andy Karl in the Murray role of cynical weatherman Phil Connors.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible to top Murray as the contemptuous TV reporter condemned to relive the same day in Midwest Hicksville.
But to Murray’s laconic genius, Karl adds song, athleticism and fizz.
Matthew Warchus and Tim Minchin’s musical is a dizzying, blistering and joyous reinvention of Danny Rubin’s cult story
Andy Karl as Phil Connors and Tanisha Spring as Rita Hanson in Groundhog Day at the Old Vic, London
Warchus’s production, too, is a spinning top of a show. If it wobbles, it’s over — but wobble it never does.
That’s partly because Warchus has an ultra-low tolerance for stasis, constantly bombarding us with whirligigs of dance.
And Rob Howell’s set is a gigantic cuckoo-clock: swallowing Phil’s chintzy tomb of a bedroom to replace it with a town square, a local diner, a bar, park benches and the pick-up truck Phil uses to belt down the railway in despair.
(A content footnote on the website warns those taking this, and Phil’s comic suicide bids, seriously to contact the Samaritans — but it’s really never that deep.)
The paradoxical genius of the story — and the show — is that we love the ride and yet, like Phil, we long for it to end.
Warchus’s sleight of hand — with astonishing illusions by Paul Kieve that seem to defy the space-time continuum — also ensures that the pace is seldom less than breathless.
Much thanks for this goes to Lizzi Gee’s microscopically choreographed movement, in which one cog out of place would mean all four wheels coming off the recreational vehicle.
Yet it’s a moralistic story, too.
Underpinning the correction of Phil as he turns from contempt to anger, followed by recklessness, despair, acceptance and, finally, redemption is a gooey rom-com, with Phil learning to love his TV producer, Rita (the Andie MacDowell role in the film).
Minchin fares better with cynical whiplash lyrics than he does in giving the love story a memorable, beating heart.
But he blasts the action forward with marching music, rock and a groundhog drum solo — as well as easing it up with moody acoustic guitar, plangent piano and a corny but cute country & western love song for the finale.
Groundhog Day is a show that not only stands repetition but also turns that repetition into an art form — thanks in no small part to the mesmeric Andy Karl (centre) in the Murray role of cynical weatherman Phil Connors
Underpinning the correction of Phil as he turns from contempt to anger, followed by recklessness, despair, acceptance and, finally, redemption is a gooey rom-com, with Phil learning to love his TV producer, Rita (left)
The show, however, would be inconceivable without Karl as self-centred Phil.
Rarely are looks and talent so strikingly combined.
He channels deadpan Murray, Steve Martin’s physical comedy and David Schwimmer’s goofiness, but he also has the dark, brooding features of Bryan Cranston.
Did Minchin need to give his star a number of icky references to his solo sex life?
Probably not, but thanks to the pell-mell pace we never linger on them; and Karl deftly pulls the show together mind, body and soul.
Tanisha Spring fleshes out the MacDowell role of Rita — although her Disneyish ‘Dear Diary’ interludes are a slightly transparent attempt to turn her 2D love interest into the strong, independent woman that has become the cliché du jour.
Still, like the rest of the formidably drilled townsfolk (and Eve Norris’s sweetly yearning Nancy, Phil’s one-night stand), Spring has a warm voice and spirit of her own.
Maybe the second half’s race to the finish is ten minutes too long — simply because it’s so damn exhausting to watch. But that doesn’t mean it’s not one hell of a ride.
The Shape Of Things (Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, London)
Verdict: Shapely fit-up
Welcome back to Neil La Bute’s 20-year-old play, which is now about the same age as its college-grad characters and remains as fresh as a newly decapitated daisy.
Readers who didn’t catch the theatrical fit-up drama first time round, at Islington’s Almeida Theatre (starring Rachel Weisz as a sassy, sociopathic art student), will perhaps know the play instead from the film, in which Weisz also starred.
She meets goofy Adam in a gallery where he works as a security guard — and she is threatening to deface a sculpture, in the name of artistic freedom.
What emerges is a small-scale, American campus version of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion — with genders flipped and a whole load of sex, sneering and swearing.
The jewel in the play remains the Weisz-role of Evelyn, who styles herself as a wild, male fantasy figure.
Amber Anderson as Evelyn and Luke Newton as Adam in The Shape of Things at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, London
Gawky English Lit student Adam is eagerly lead to the slaughter as she transforms him from a nervy, Woody Allen type into a mincing Tom Cruise.
He throws off his frumpy corduroy jacket and specs, stops biting his nails and — wait for it —starts using lip balm.
Peaky Blinders’ cruel temptress Amber Anderson nails the part with a wry detachment and forensic purpose. And Luke Newton manages his transition from zero to hero, while remaining loveably and fatally incredulous at his astonishing good luck.
Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy and Carla Harrison-Hodge fill in the anxious, college-kid background in Nicky Allpress’s nifty production.
And it’s
