Music and Lyrics: Rufus Wainwright
Writer and Director: Ivo van Hove
A new Ivo van Hove production is always a thrilling experience and love or hate the auteur director, he pushes the boundaries of what the performance space is and challenges the audience to reconceive the margins between fiction and reality in which his characters exist and the place between the story and the audience. Bringing a European sensibility to this production of Opening Night at the Gielgud Theatre, the adaptation of John Cassavetes’s 1977 film is full of complex staging and conceptual thinking that will delight and mystify in equal measure.
Actor Myrtle finds art imitating life in the preparation of a new play in which she stars alongside her ex-husband while playing a divorced woman looking to be loved. Struggling to connect with the writing and unable to perform, the death of a fan outside the theatre causes a crisis in the company as Myrtle’s search for truth creates an unravelling that threatens their readiness for opening night.
For audiences, this production is the point where two different theatre-going experiences interact. Star Sheridan Smith brings a big following from her work in Shirley Valentine, Funny Girl and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, while director van Hove throws the rules of musical theatre, proscenium arch playing and cinematic styles into the air. The result is a wonderful jazz, a clashing, discordant riot of ideas, perspectives and notions of storytelling that puzzle and push at what it means to be an actor, to perform on and off stage. And with all that musical theatre experience, it is interesting to see Smith take on this part with such gusto, rerouting her skills to the demands of this role and van Hove’s style of theatre-making.
Employing several cameras has become a trademark for the director and here, perhaps more than anywhere in his previous work, they fit the brief because Opening Night is about a documentary film crew capturing the tears and tantrums, conflicts and dramas of a story where the play Myrtle is performing in and her real-life merge. van Hove and set designer Jan Versweyveld apply the same logic to the show’s staging, a place with no boundaries or walls in the traditional sense, a space where rehearsals, performance, backstage, onstage, home, work, reality and fantasy blend together. This is a complete reimagining of what the proscenium ‘box’ must look like and do, saying that what the audience sees from their seat and the places that the production can roam are fluid, using cameras to change our perspectives, taking us beyond the Gielgud Theatre and into this behind-the-scenes story. And this is a place where form and narrative are reinvented and unified.
There is a point, however, in the second half of Opening Night where the story starts to get away from the company, where drastic changes in direction feel too hurried or unexplained, suffering perhaps from the transfer from screen to stage. Myrtle’s solidarity with writer Sarah and director Manny’s wife Dorothy in the search for self in The Second Woman is rapid and a touch opaque, as is the transformation from Myrtle defending her hallucinated fan Nancy to the, albeit excellent, fight to defeat her, suddenly convinced of her malignancy. It gives the end a slightly unsatisfying quality, with insufficient time to understand Myrtle’s acceptance or victory over her demons.
Smith’s central performance is very well pitched and whenever she is on stage, she is the compelling heart of van Hove’s story, channelling all that star charisma to give Myrtle a reality, a flesh and blood existence that makes her equally maddening and empathetic. Smith embraces the damaged, frightened and overwhelmed actor that Myrtle is, throwing herself into the demands of this complicated part as she searches for self and humour. The vocals occasionally strain but Smith certainly conveys the star power and the fragility that make Myrtle so fascinating and her struggle illuminating, tragic and meaningful.
The rest of the cast are fine musical theatre stars from Hadley’s Fraser’s Manny who loves and loathes his leading lady in equal measure, Nicola Hughes’ Sarah watching her work disintegrate and John Marquez’s producer David protecting his investment. None of them are as well drawn or tangibly real as Myrtle but as forces working on the central character and the background to the theatre business they represent, it is a strong ensemble.
The inventiveness and excitement of van Hove’s theatre are perhaps ultimately more electrifying than the story which stutters to a close, and while the director occasionally allows traditional musical theatre to creep in and muddy his alternative vision, Opening Night and its lead take you through a performance like no other.
Runs until 27 July 2024
