City of Angels Review - The Age
City of Angels Review
Reviewer, Martin Ball
The Age - Monday 11 December
Film noir gets a Broadway twist
"Hollywood and Broadway have a fascination with themselves that sees each form cannibalising itself for characters and plots.
But they also turn to each other for content - think of the films Broadway Melody or The Producers.
The 1989 musical City of Angels is a mocking portrait of 1940s Hollywood film noir. The cast includes a hard-boiled detective, a screenwriter and a studio producer.
Throw in a femme fatale, a patriarch in an iron lung and an actress prepared to sleep her way to the top, and you have a full deck of cliches.
The twist is that the show operates in the parallel worlds of the screenwriter Stine and his fictional detective Stone, and when the two start talking to each other the fun really begins. It's a great book by Larry Gelbart, laden with wry ironies. Sure it's overwritten and 20 minutes too long, but you have to love lines like "she had a body that made the Venus de Milo look all thumbs".
Broadway musicals are generally about bigger is better, so it's a surprise to see this show produced by one of Melbourne's many small independent companies, Just Pretending, and staged in the intimate environs of fortyfivedownstairs.
It's a feat even of the imagination to fit a cast of 15 and a five-piece band into this space, but it mostly works, and all credit to director Peter Mattesi.
Mark Doggett and Tom Stringer are strong as Stine and Stone respectively.
Doggett has a clear and confident singing voice and Stringer revels in his deadpan one-liners. Their duet, You're Nothing Without Me, is the show's highlight.
Jane Harber is excellent as the devious and sexy Alaura Kingsley, with a look that demands attention and commands obedience.
Nicolette Minster brings dignity and character to the wallflower roles of Oolie and Donna with her fine vocal delivery.
Sarah-Louise Younger completes the formula of female parts. She sings well as Bobbi, the jazz-singer-turned-prostitute, although she is still finding her emotional range.
There are some compromises: the voice-over monologue is ineffectual; the band plays well, but without a pit it tends to dominate the singers; the male voices in the quartet can't find their pitch.
Although the direction is snappy, the second half slows - and you know there is a huge set gone missing. But these quibbles aside, City of Angels is a great chance to see a recent Broadway musical. And at $30 a ticket, it's affordable too."