Latest news with #Cry-Baby
Time Out
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
If the leading lady of a daytime telenovela was to read too many pop-psychology books while downing a double Espresso Martini, you might get something close to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This musical comedy based on Pedro Almodóvar's 1988 cinema cult classic is given a neon-lit, red-curtained makeover at Sydney's Hayes Theatre. With precision taking a backseat to passion, director Alexander Berlage (Cry-Baby, American Psycho) delivers a stylish descent into screwball mania. The action takes place in Madrid, Spain, where Amy Hack 's (Yentl) heartbroken actress, Pepa, is having a terrible, very bad day, which we see play out from depressive start to high-flung resolution. Her lover Iván breaks up with her over answering machine, and thus, her Odyssey-styled mission to find and confront him begins. Along the journey, Pepa butts heads with Iván's scorned ex-wife Lucia (Tisha Keleman), his son and his own frustrated fiancée, as well as her wildly unravelling best friend, Candela (Grace Driscoll). With a book by Jeffrey Lane (known for his musical adaption of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and music and lyrics by David Yazbek (Dead Outlaw), the original Broadway production of Women on the Verge had a relatively short lifespan – closing soon after it received poor reviews, and even poorer ticket sales. This is where Berlage's adept hand at re-inventing cult flops takes charge – finding a space for his avant-garde style through sharp angles, frenetic choreography, and psychosexual vignettes. His style is well matched by Phoebe Pilcher 's discordantly placed, evocative and frenzied lighting design, which effectively fills the space with the heat of the Spanish sun. Alexander Berlage (Cry-Baby, American Psycho) delivers a stylish descent into screwball mania Berlage has a reputation for breathing new life into former musical flops, and likewise, this production aims to move the material beyond a generic film-to-stage adaptation and lean into a clever, subversive vision. Women on the Verge skewers the most Shakespearean of plot points – love – and of course, the root cause of everyone's problems – men. (And underneath that is Greta Gerwig's favourite nemesis: the patriarchy.) The men in the piece may seem as vapid as those in the Barbie movie, but the bite of the women is more akin to Fleabag – dishevelled as they may appear, you don't want to cross them on a bad day. Hack demonstrates the utmost commitment to her characterisation of Pepa, with subtle nuances in her emotional state giving way to strident outbursts – she is quite literally the picture of a woman on the verge. Her accent is held firm through both dialogue and song, while her flinging and flailing of bags, sunglasses and telephones is a superb lesson in choreographed chaos. Driscoll's lust-lorn model, Candela, holds elastic characterisation and physicality, taking outlandish shapes and forms that are at times absurdly hilarious. Her patter song, 'Model Behaviour', reads like both an ode and challenge to the late great Stephen Sondheim himself. Meanwhile, Keleman's overlooked and vengeful wife Lucia is a woman who now seeks to get back the years lost to an untrustworthy man. As her son, Carlos, Tomas Kantor is our most grounded male character, still led by his base instincts, yes, but at least he has a good heart through which the blood is pumped. Playing opposite as his fiance, Nina Carcione 's doe-eyed stare cuts through the space, drawing attention to her excellent knack for non-verbal comedic timing. Chiara Assetta 's choreography is tasked with the olympic-sized hurdle of navigating around the congested set, and meets the challenge. The use of streamers instead of solid walls allows hands, faces, and limbs to appear and disappear with ease, while a large bed for one red-hot set piece blocks out a great portion of the space. It's swiftly executed choreography that has our characters dancing around, over and throughout the sharp angles of Hailley Hunt 's set design, which quite aptly reflects the slowly decaying psychosexual tensions of the show's characters. The production's take on Spanish characteristics is somewhat hit and miss. Sometimes, in the same vein as Lady Gaga in House of Gucci: thickly accented, but imbued with enough commitment to the bit that it works. But at the same time, also a little like Jared Leto in House of Gucci: absurd, over-the-top, and somewhat inconsistent. Aaron Robuck 's narrator/taxi driver seems an innocuous enough plot device in the grand scheme of the piece, and the character's disjointed nature isn't helped by Lane's underdeveloped book. Popping up throughout to (quite literally) transport Pepa between main set pieces, accordion in hand, the script takes what is meant to be the show's MC and replaces it with a big question mark on his purpose. On opening night, the sound levels seemed unbalanced – a weakness in a piece driven by dense lyrics and rapid tempo. Dylan Pollard 's musical direction, whilst being able to give the score a toe-tapping beat that's liable to make your hips shake, drowned out the enunciation from our fast-talking, thick-accented characters. Nonetheless, this stylish production makes a meal out of an undercooked script, and Hack's leading performance is especially worthwhile – her Pepa is as lived-in and layered as she is hysterical. The most poignant, powerful and purposeful moments of the show come when all five women are together in unison, particularly in the final moments, which offer the most quiet and peaceful state of the evening. This is what it looks like when women on the brink take back their power – in four-part harmony.
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Cry-Baby, the Musical review – John Waters' teen rebels will have you in tears of joy
This musical adaptation of John Waters' comedy of teen rebellion in 1950s America was not a big hit when it opened on Broadway in 2008. Why not? It is a deliciously satirical creation: dark, silly and utterly delightful. It sends up not only a genre of musicals that feature teen love across the divide, from West Side Story to Grease, but acerbically pokes fun at Wasp-y values and America itself – from its constitution to its sense of exceptionalism. This first professional UK production was long overdue, and in director Mehmet Ergen's hands it is a firecracker of a show – faster, funnier and more intelligent than so much other retro teen musical fare in the West End. It takes us to Baltimore, where the upper-class 'squares' are at war with the leather-clad 'drapes' – though they rather ridiculously enact their enmity through singing battles. The titular rebel Wade 'Cry-Baby' Walker (Adam Davidson), in his sleeveless leather jerkin and bandana, is a drape while 'good girl' Allison (Lulu-Mae Pears) is the square who instantly falls for him. Where the 1990 film (starring an electric Johnny Depp) is more absurdist, there is more plot in the adaptation. This is an America that buzzes with McCarthyist anxiety and panic over the atomic bomb. The first scene features a polio inoculation picnic and the reprised song I'm Infected encapsulates not just the infectious nature of love but 'respectable' America's fear of a 'diseased' underclass. Performances shine with eyebrow-raised irony. So do the songs by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger. The music is a highly infectious mix of rockabilly, blues and swing, and lyrics explode with gleeful satire and ironies that make you laugh out loud. A small band sit on an exposed mezzanine level and create an astonishing sound. Allison looks like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz at the start ('My grandmother told me never to loosen up. It's not upper class') but gathers shades of Rocky Horror's Janet as she ventures into sexual rebellion, and Pears has a fabulous singing voice. Davidson matches her in scrubbed-faced wholesomeness as Cry-Baby, despite the bad-boy leathers, and is an impressive dancer. His posse bring thrilling characterisation too, from pregnant Pepper (Jazzy Phoenix) to 'Hatchet-Face' Mona (Kingsley Morton), while Chad Saint Louis as Dupree blows the roof off with songs such as Jukebox Jamboree, as does Eleanor Walsh as Cry-Baby's stalker, with Screw Loose. It is all as darkly exhilarating as The Producers (the book is co-written by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, the latter of whom also wrote the book for Mel Brooks's musical). And like the most recent London production of that show, this is inventively staged in a modestly sized space, with performers using the entirety of the auditorium. Chris Whittaker's choreography – an amusingly twirling pastiche – becomes more sophisticated in the ensemble numbers without seeming cramped. Robert Innes Hopkins' set design is light on its feet, with banners raised and lowered like the American flag for changing scenes, and the star-spangled banner projected on a back wall. And who can fail to feel the bite of the last song, Nothing Bad, which insists that things couldn't be better in America? The irony carries forward, to chime with America's endeavour to make itself great again. At the Arcola theatre, London, until 12 April
Telegraph
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Cry-Baby, The Musical: Bold and brash – though you pine for Johnny Depp
When the musical Hairspray (based on the John Waters film) became a smash hit on Broadway in 2002, its adapters clearly hoped to replicate that success by turning to another of the subversive filmmaker's works: the 1990 campy cult classic Cry-Baby. Waters's parody of the teen rebellion movies of the 50s starred a very fresh-faced and chiselled Johnny Depp, who deliciously spoofed his heartthrob image in his debut lead role by playing Cry-Baby, the rock'n'roll outsider with a heart of gold. Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan's 2007 theatrical adaptation wasn't a Broadway triumph and closed after 68 performances (despite four Tony nominations). Nearly two decades later, it's finally getting its UK premiere at the 200-seater Arcola. Director Mehmet Ergen does his best with the material and delivers a bold, brash and at times very funny production. The film is utterly ridiculous, and while the musical captures some of that energy, it doesn't go the whole hog in the way that you wish it would. There are forays into the absurd, with songs dedicated to kissing 'with tongues' and taking the polio vaccine ('if you value the use of your legs' is an actual lyric), yet it still comes out feeling like a weaker version of Waters's oddball vision. In this social satire of 1950s Baltimore, Allison is one of high society's preppy 'squares', but becomes infatuated with the titular James Dean-ish rebel and is drawn into the world of the denim-clad juvenile delinquents known as 'the drapes' (who are ostracised and blamed for society's ills but are really just misunderstood). Lulu-Mae Pears plays the Sandra Dee-type Allison with a compelling doe-eyed naivety while Elliot Allinson is perfectly cast as her snivelling, smug 'square' suitor Baldwin – who reveals a malicious side. As for Baldwin's boy band the Whiffles, kitted out in sweater vest and brogues, they bring a manic enthusiasm to their upbeat doo-wop songs and are so superficially clean-cut you can almost hear them squeak during their delightfully cringey dance routines. While the Whiffles lay on the smarminess with a supersized trowel, the gang of 'drapes' – comprising the disfigured Hatchet-Face, the sexy Wanda, the crooner Dupree and the knocked-up Pepper – should feel larger-than-life but are curiously underpowered by comparison. They may sing and brag about being 'bad', but you're never convinced of it. This is especially true of Cry-Baby himself. Depp, who leant into the kitschy vibe and managed to make the character edgy and sensitive, is an impossibly cool act to follow, but this musical seems determined to cast the high-school 'bad boy' (played by Adam Davidson) as overly sincere and puppyish, a portrayal which robs the character's Elvis-like rockabilly tunes of their sexiness. In the film, Cry-Baby's father was a terrorist; less edgily in this version, the wrongful execution of his pacifist parents becomes a plot point. Still, Ergen's production is lively enough that you're swept along and almost forget your reservations, leaving on a high with the gloriously superficial, satirically buoyant closing number Nothing Bad's Ever Gonna Happen Again. The Arcola's intimate space is judiciously used during the big dance sequences (which are slickly choreographed); the cast almost burst off the stage and carry that energy into the audience. Like Grease on speed, Cry-Baby the Musical is a fun if fluffy evening's entertainment.
