A musical of musicals — 20 Years of the Tony Awards has all the feels

There’s been a lot of chatter lately about the perilous state of Broadway musicals. New productions have been tanking after a few weeks of insubstantial ticket sales, budgets are through the roof, and some believe there are simply too many shows competing for a share of the audience.

Economics aside, critics and fans are in a tizzy: too many old ideas made new again, too many stage shows riffing movies, too much this, too little that, plus all the hype around big-screen musicals like the currently trending second part of Wicked.

Never mind the prevailing US federal administration’s dampening of creative impulses by clamping down on anything “woke”, something many musicals and their creators and stars identify with in some way. Musical theatre is, after all, a pretty inclusive universe.

As any musical theatre fan will happily confirm, musicals aren’t shy about being a bit camp, a bit left-leaning, embracing the extremes of radical inclusion.

They are, however, equally unafraid of offending, of making rascally jokes, of gripping firmly onto inappropriate – even shocking – themes and making light of them. Sex, nudity, innuendo, outrageous parody, sharp satire and a general tendency to fly in the face of conservatism are all grist to the mill when it comes to musical storytelling.

Musicals allow emotions – light, dark, green or rainbow-hued – to be expressed at top volume, without embarrassment at the likelihood of slipping into melodrama. The cheese may ooze and drip and sometimes cause drooling, but that’s to be anticipated, even expected.

It’s a heightened realm, the musical, that instinct for over-the-top effusiveness part of the charm. There is with musicals an unspoken contract between performers and audiences that somehow makes it perfectly acceptable for much that’s otherwise unsayable to be expressed – often with added gusto, a flourish, a chorus line and a soaring melody.

As the lyrics from one popular show tune would have it: in musicals, anything goes…

If, however, you still have questions, there’s a new musical on the boards in Camps Bay that’s dying to provide answers. Not in an academic way, but in a manner that will let you feel and experience what musicals are all about, how they’re meant to make us feel, and why – when they hit the right notes – they make us want to dance in our seats, sing along, maybe cry a bit at the end.

LAMTA’s 20 Years of the Tony Awards is a compendium-style show that serves as much as an end-of-the-year celebration for its student cast as it does as a showcase of the best of what musicals aspire to be.

The numbers chosen to represent these shows (and, no, it’s not simply a revue of award winners) demonstrate musical theatre’s depth and diversity, arranged to put you on a kind of emotional roller coaster.

One moment I was giggling at naughtiness of slightly tongue-in-cheek choreographic moments amid the soaring, epic quality of the opening number, No One Mourns the Wicked (from Wicked, which perplexingly did not win the 2004 Tony for Best Musical), the next I was shedding tears in the dark at the frankly beautiful sound of Vuyo Mcanyana’s honeyed voice as he led the cast in a stirring, honest and frankly captivating iteration of Wait For It, one of the numbers from the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, Hamilton.

While Miranda’s music is marvellous and the interpretation here brilliant, the song alone didn’t give me gooseflesh – it’s the manner in which these young people gave themselves over to the performance that made my heart soar. You sit there in the dark and actually feel some spellbinding energetic force barrelling out of them.

Euan Frankim shines repeatedly; he’s the kind of performer who keeps you guessing, makes you wonder about the level of fame he’s undoubtedly destined for. And there’s Robert Everson, whose voice should surely have its own insurance policy.

There’s Alessia Gironi, a stick of pure dynamite in human form; you can enjoy the entirety of her performances, or zoom your focus in and simply watch her eyes telling their own magical (and often hilariously complex) stories.

Another rock concert moment is Revolting Children, in which a huge portion of the ensemble whips itself into a frenzy during a ribald, heart-racing number from Matilda; it gives these performers a chance to unleash their inner naughty child and it’s glorious. And who doesn’t love the crazy comedy of Monty Python, served up here with such spot-on glibness by Jude Bunyan, Schyler van der Westhuizen and others in The Bright Side of Life, a definitively unhinged song from Spamalot.

Among the funniest sequences in the show involves the unhinged shenanigans of a group of guys convincing each other to suppress all their urges and anxieties in a song from The Book of Mormon, which is the award-winning musical that emerged from the deepest depths of the crazed imaginations of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The song is hilariously deranged, the performances effervescent, the choreography spot-on, and you will weep with laughter.

There is Michael Mittendorf who exudes an elfin cuteness that’s craftily mixed in with his obvious penchant for perfection – he brings such delight and joy with him each time he appears on stage, not least in his wonderful duet with Kristin Murison, the two of them playing a kind of coy mating game, again spot-on.

I loved how occasionally these otherwise strait-laced performers would reveal some off-kilter aspect of themselves (Killian Blerk, I’m looking at you), and at how, for example, Benjamin Stannard so deftly shifted between outlandish comedy and an opportunity to turn on the charm in an utterly unironic love duet from a musical called Once (yes, there are plenty of shows on the bill that you probably never knew existed).

And there’s the incomparable Pride Ncube’s powerhouse performance of I Feel the Earth Move, and the quite explosiveness of Phoebe Goliath, who is pitch-perfect and so radiant in everything she does, including her gently spirited scene-stealing turn in Breathe, from another Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, In the Heights.

And then there is Matt Blerk who is an unmitigated star in every way, from the generous tone of his introductory speeches that never feel like a chore to listen to, through his subtly tongue-in-cheek, scream-out-loud-funny comedy performances, such as when he appears as the only guy in a chorus line of women with yellow umbrellas, to his touching rendition of Mary Jane, one of two songs from the Alanis Morissette musical, Jagged Little Pill; he has such gravitas and so much to give as a performer, never mind the fact that he’s an absolute dish.

What’s obvious, though, is that Matt, like the rest of the cast, will go far not because of the way he looks or because he is (judging from the generosity of his performance) such a people pleaser, but because he is ridiculously talented and does what he does with such passion. He doesn’t just perform on stage, he has the time of his life up there. He shines a light, fills you with a warm glow, that happy feeling of being addressed like you’re the only person in the auditorium – or on Earth – who matters.

This show is an endorphin rush, an adrenalin spike, an opportunity to be buoyed from your seat, lifted out of reality for a bit.

And, if you’re lucky, you’ll leave the theatre with a couple of your favourite songs still playing in your head.

The other thing this production reveals very strongly is why they do it. What you see on that stage is a large cast having the time of their lives. It’s hard to imagine the tremendous hard slog, the relentless rehearsals and the admonitions from their directors, all of whom are there as much to nurture their spirits as make sure they deliver.

And deliver they do. My word, what a rush of superstar energy and verve. And the degree to which they step into the self-deprecating jokes, deliver them with such a wonderful nudge-nudge, wink-wink sense of fun, reminds you that they are not simply good at singing and dancing and holding their own in a space, but are also great at comedy, at drawing focus where focus is required, and at not taking themselves so seriously that the audience can’t have fun, too.

What moved me most about this show was getting to see so many young people stepping into their truth, knowing that right here, right now is where they want to be.

To be perfectly clear, my generous feelings about this show are based not on a fully fledged performance or a VIP showing with a papered house full of invited guests, but from seeing their final dress rehearsal, complete with all the added stress and nervous pangs of not quite knowing how it will all pan out.

Apart from the anticipated anxieties, they had one of their directors whispering acerbic admonishments into the mic (“Move to your left, Robert! Into the spotlight, Robert! Your other left, Robert!”), and he also had many endless notes for the technical team, who had only recently stepped in. It was wild and nerve-jangly and a very real reminder that theatre is a human activity, with many, many moving parts, and that it is ever-evolving.

It was a reminder, too, that musicals are as complicated and difficult as any team sport requiring careful interplay of multiple components: fragile emotions, egos and the possibility of exhaustion included. Plus the added reality of having any tiny error dramatically exaggerated under unforgiving spotlights.

But that’s the magic of the thing, what makes it all worthwhile. It is not merely entertainment, it is life. And those who opt to step into those spotlights are brave souls, indeed.

While this fabulous student show is not a Broadway or West End musical, what it is is something even better: it is a show that feels like home. DM

20 Years of the Tony Awards is playing at Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town until 13 December.