Victor/Victoria
Victor/Victoria went on to become a Broadway crowd pleaser–but only as long as Andrews was in it. The show closed soon after Raquel Welch took over the lead, and a post-Broadway touring edition with pop singer Toni Tennille, booked into the Chicago Theatre last October, was abruptly canceled due to poor ticket sales.
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Happily, even in Mark S. Hoebee’s somewhat workmanlike staging, Marriott’s Victor/Victoria affirms that there’s life after Julie Andrews, though this isn’t an enduring classic of musical theater by any means. The forgettable score contains only two really good songs, both Mancini-composed holdovers from the movie: the sassy production number “Le Jazz Hot” and “Crazy World,” a wistful ballad in the tradition of Mancini’s 60s hits “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses.” But Victor/Victoria is strong where most musicals are deficient: it has a snappy script filled with surprises and more than a few touches of Mack Sennett-style slapstick and 1930s screwball comedy and burlesque, not surprising considering such Edwards movies as The Great Race and the Pink Panther series. Victor/Victoria is the creation of an intelligent man with a pervasive fondness for lowbrow humor, especially fast-paced physical gags and smart-ass, sometimes vulgar sexual comedy.
When Edwards reworked Victor/ Victoria for the stage, he took such criticisms to heart. Of course, by 1995 Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s musical La Cage aux Folles had placed middle-aged male lovers center stage, pleasing mainstream audiences while preaching loudly and proudly the virtues of tolerance. But La Cage always maintains a clear distinction between its gay and straight characters, while the stage version of Victor/Victoria blurs the line between homo and hetero: the male lead declares his love for Victoria before he learns that she’s female. This follows a long period during which the hero wrestles with, and finally accepts, the possibility that he’s homosexual–and it leads to the story’s most important crisis, as Victoria and her lover must decide whether to pose as gay or admit that (gasp) they’re straight after all.
This tango is credited to Rob Marshall, Victor/Victoria’s Broadway choreographer. The other numbers, staged by proficient local choreographer Kenny Ingram, have a perkiness whose initial charm wears thin: one misses the slinky-kinky eroticism of Marshall’s original dances. A similar peppy briskness drives the entire Marriott production, keeping the action and the laughs rolling but muting the material’s subtler side. Yet the intimacy of the in-the-round theater draws the audience closer to the characters than did Edwards’s original sprawling, splashy proscenium staging, and the material is strong enough to work even without an elaborate bi-level Broadway-scale set. The only scene that really loses impact is the elaborate hide-and-seek chase through Victoria’s and King’s adjoining hotel suites: this trademark Edwards set piece still amuses with its pratfalls and peekaboos (thanks largely to the agile clowning of Jim FitzGerald as an accident-prone nightclub owner), but the flow of traffic around the stage is considerably harder to follow than it was in the original production. Thomas M. Ryan’s Marriott set design is best when it’s most minimal: the clutter of furniture in the hotel scenes distracts from the action. And while Nancy Missimi’s costumes have some nice touches (like Norma’s loud leopard-print dress with shoes to match), her glitzy chorus-number outfits don’t quite fit the dancers’ sleek bodies, and Victoria’s gown for “Le Jazz Hot” looks positively matronly.
