Review: Tim Minchin’s musical Groundhog Day opens in Melbourne
The musical version of Groundhog Day diligently ticks off every scene from the movie, with the addition of clever staging and smart songs by Tim Minchin.
The enduring appeal of the 1993 movie Groundhog Day comes from its balance of shining idealism and icy cynicism. After many unhappy returns of the day, weatherman Phil Connors finally mends his ways... but only after he has exhausted all other options.
Original screenplay writer Danny Rubin has taken another run at the story with this musical adaptation – restoring a discarded scene, tweaking others, adding detail and some delicious dialogue – but the narrative superstructure is intact. Scenes from the movie are ticked off diligently.
In card-playing terms, Groundhog Day The Musical is a lay down misere. The hand is played with cards facing up. We know what’s coming and how it will play out. This vastly increases the pressure on composer Tim Minchin (Matilda) and director Matthew Warchus (A Christmas Carol). Happily, both are at their very best when the degree of difficulty is in double digits.
Turning bit parts like Nancy (Phil’s first one-night stand) and Ned Ryerson (the smarmy insurance salesman) into three-dimensional characters – people we care about – is a huge challenge. Or it should be. Minchin makes it look easy. Nancy (Ashleigh Rubenach) sadly admits it’s better to be leered at than not desired at all. Turning Ned (Tim Wright) into a real person, with a poignant backstory, is even more remarkable.
One of the pleasures of listening to a Minchin musical is trainspotting the musical references. I heard Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, a Pink Floyd ballad, some ’70s pop hymns, some Bernstein, some Sondheim.
Another is hearing Minchin’s own voice coming out the mouths of his characters – the lines he might sing solo. Weirdly, one hears him most clearly in songs sung by Ned and Nancy (in the second act) and by Rita – Phil’s TV producer in Punxsutawney – throughout.
Minchin’s compositions for Rita and Phil are, not surprisingly, his most intriguing. Phil (Andy Karl) travels to the beat of a different drum. He finds it impossible to keep time. In a small-town, four-four world, he’s hitting 10, 11, 12 beats to the bar. Amid a relentlessly brassy and cheerful town chorus, he’s noir, he’s jazz, he’s the epitome of musical ennui.
If Phil has his own time signature, Rita (Elise McCann) has an entirely different kind of motif. It’s most obvious in her diary songs. Each line trips and falls on the last syllable, like hitting a bum note on a piano at the end of every phrase. (“Luckily he’s funny-ish / Thinks he’s too good for this.”
Opposite Andy Karl – who is 90210 handsome – shaggy-haired McCann is too grown-up to play the ingenue. She’s 36 and resigned to being alone, but sings with thwarted romance and longing. She sounds like the love interest in any old musical comedy. Not saccharine, exactly, but definitely failing the Bechdel test.
This looks like a failure of imagination on Minchin’s part. But he’s playing the long game. “It’s complex,” Rita says about her mixed desires, midway through the show. Ingrained in her is the belief that if she kisses the right frog, she might end up in a four-poster bed.
Matthew Warchus’s direction is ingenious and often riotously funny. But there is depth to the acting, even in scenes that teeter over the clifftop of farce.
All up, this is a polished, well-rehearsed, good-looking production that takes us on a long and satisfying journey.
Groundhog Day. Book by Danny Rubin. Music and lyrics by Tim Minchin. Developed and directed by Matthew Warchus. A Whistle Pig production produced in Australia by GWB Entertainment. Princess Theatre, Melbourne, February 1. Tickets: $56-$284.95. Bookings online. Duration: 2hr 40min, including interval. Bookings open to April 7.