In the Shaw Festival production of Sweet Charity, director Morris Panych and his impressive cast reach under the stylized and safely distant entities that musical characters can easily become and find there a vibrant and unforced humanity. I took almost instantly to this warmly energetic production and could well understand both the standing ovation at final curtain and the enthusiastic buzz in the lobby afterwards. The audience doesn’t applaud only because they have been thoroughly entertained but, as well, because they have connected with the humanness of these characters and been moved by people like themselves.
In Julie Martell we have an instance where actor, character, and performance blend together to define the very active heart of this production. Martell’s Charity is loveable and loved and not simply because she is supposed to be. She isn’t the embodiment of the glitz of New York, but rather an ordinary and flawed human being who is trying, with all her cards on the table, to survive in it. Her sometimes tentative dancing seems the attempt of an endearing young woman to go with the flow in a town that is indifferent to her.
Martell’s Charity doesn’t dance with the clipped elan of a Broadway hoofer, but more the fun seeking enthusiasm of an ordinary person who must earn a living and find happiness as it comes. Dance isn’t a natural physical language for her, but an extension of her natural spontaneity. She is physically fun in all places and in the scene with Vittorio we get the impression that she would be thus in bed too. However, when she has this Italian heart throb on very human, albeit start struck terms, he of course goes for his estranged babe instead.
Charity Valentine is somewhat unpolished, even though she is a dance hall hostess. Her New Yorker’s qualities are her keenly in-tune ability to banter and her hip physical gestures, no pun intended. She seems like a child let loose in a store of goodies, as when, in the Italian celebrity’s bedroom where she asks, with a mixture of push and doubt, “Is there anything I can do for you?” He doesn’t pick up on the sexual cue but suggests instead that they eat, which they do. When Vittorio’s current squeeze turn up, he and Charity are like brother and sister conspirators.
Julie Martell’s Charity is someone you like, but might not at first notice. She seems to be a wandering innocent who goes all places and, whatever state of denial she might be in about her world, she remains resilient and fresh. She is comparatively short limbed and pleasantly ample of thigh and calf, sexy as someone you notice, perhaps, because you chanced a glimpse of her leg emerging from a short trench coat that she invariably inhabits and rarely seems to leave. She is the one who is always used in relationships, a sucker for anyone who sends affection her way. We love her husky giggle, her irresistibly wide smile and we are charmed to be on her side.
As an audience, we easily, maybe eagerly, blend into this Sweet Charity’s dynamic yet humanly-flavoured world. It is a place ripe with eccentricities and the stereotypes that some people wear as their true identities, if anyone actually possesses such an entity, though most can’t help being near genuine. We have humanity’s variety before us and often they appeal. Take Mark Uhre’s Vittorio Vidal, a man who wears his worldly experience lightly with inherent understanding and charm, and with a pleasantly smooth daily grace in his manner. We enjoy the connection of Charity and Vittorio because it seems to unfold, slightly rough-edged, yet kindly.
Jay Turvey’s Herman is the closest to a big city persona among the males. This fits, after all, since he’s the one who keeps the taxi dancers focused and geared to sell their dancefloor company at the dance hall. He wears New York abrasiveness, but with heart as a natural quality, and his perpetual doer’s buzz is quite wired. Moreover, he has a stylized musical voice of tonal variety, secure and fluid with even a rich falsetto, so he’s nice to have on stage.
As Oscar, Kyle Blair does a skillfully measured and annoyingly believable take on a young man who is more ordinary that ordinary, an embodiment of paranoid futility. For Charity, Oscar is the latest to be claimed as “the one” and as he sees in her a “virgin” of “purity” their duet of neediness, as a result, is touching. Throughout, he winces at his life. We feel sorry for him, though we wouldn’t want him in the same elevator as we.
Charity’s two workplace best pals are Melanie Phillipson’s Helene and Kimberley Rampersad’s Nickie, two gals in the dressing room and beyond who, street-smart as they are, pick up on lies and fantasies with quick and compassionate insight. We see them as genuinely friendly, distinctly sexy, worldly-wise no–nonsense women, but dreamers too. Helene, the blonde with a wounded faraway look in her eyes, seems like a gorgeous hot number now beginning her slow decline into worn beauty. Her physical glamour seems like body warmth in a cold world.
Nickie, with good line and legs that go on forever, has probably the best dancing chops on this stage. She’s a dynamic blend of knowing sass and fun, a radiant dancing presence, a woman both hot and cool. Nevertheless, the lives of all three are summarized by another dancer with this quip -“Who dances, we defend ourselves to music”- because the extras, though not included in the price for dances, are sometimes available.
Morris Panych directs not for the effect of bright lights to which so many young and hopeful aspire but, rather, an atmosphere of real people who are hanging on to hope even as they lose it. We are entertained, to be sure, nonstop, by this production, but for Panych the unrelenting pace of life that people live doesn’t stop for dance numbers but instead fits dance into a daily grind for survival. Parker Esse’s choreography, therefore, is often geared more to a mass effect than individual quirkiness, massively busy for a city that is, well, massively busy. People here endure by doing some fun time.
Neil Simon’s book is zippy with much back and forth banter, the kind that fuels a number of short New York City vignettes and brings constant mild eruptions of chuckle in the audience. Try this exchange: “Can you tell me what room Norman Mailer is reading poetry?” “At home, (because) nobody showed up.” I still laugh at that one. We also hear reference to “that big coffee break in the sky.”
Ken MacDonald’s multipurpose set is a gem of concise but imposing encapsulation of the biggest of cities -now a subway, now a club, now a walkway, lots of doors- and because this main structure weighs 8 tons, we subtly feel imposed upon in our private worlds, even squashed. Bonnie Beecher’s lighting, with its looming shadows within both urban landscape and so within human inner lives, gives an air of subtle foreboding and the aftertaste of half-digested despair.
We find ourselves tuned into this engaging production and maybe sense Giulietta Masina from Nights of Cabiria, on which Sweet Charity is based, looking down benevolently. One bonus in this show -no maybe about it- is Paul Sportelli’s orchestra. Very soon we notice a full bodied band displaying their chops to seductively swinging effect, a punchy and brassy drive in irresistible groves that don’t let go. It so easy to move with this music and dance, ourselves, even sitting in our seats.