Adaptor and Director: Anderson Davis
Musical Supervision/ Arrangements: Jesse Vargas
Tarantino Live is an unusual mash-up of scenes and songs from Quentin Tarantino’s body of work, combined with other seventies songs and presented with style and gusto.
It calls itself a musical, telling the story of the Fox Force Five, “a group of fierce superwomen made up of five of Quentin Tarantino’s most iconic female characters” who take on the “tyranny of evil men” in an “epic battle of revenge and redemption” but it’s not that, it’s something far odder.
The group behind the show, For the Record, began as a cabaret show in LA, presenting songs from film soundtracks. They attracted big-name TV and film performers who wanted a chance to sing live. The Tarantino night was a particular favourite and it grew and morphed into Tarantino Live. There are still many moments for the talented cast to sing and play songs from Tarantino’s films, but these are mixed in with acted scenes, 70s numbers that weren’t in the films and occasional commentary by Alexander Zane, who explains themes and tropes found in all the films.
However, this isn’t all. Tarantino Live isn’t structured as a retrospective of his films, starting with Pulp Fiction and ending with Once Upon a Time in the West. It folds and blends these stories together. So Mr Blonde cuts off Nash’s ear whilst singing Stuck in the Middle With You, but then Jules Winnfield comes in and does the scene where he threatens the man in the chair not to say ‘what’ again – mixing Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
Later on, the audience is presented with an anti-Nazi speech by Aldo Raine from Inglourious Basterds before he becomes Butch from Pulp Fiction, crawling into bed with his girlfriend Fabienne who then gets out of bed to play the part of Shosanna in Inglourious again. Another time, the action slips from Pulp Fictionto Django Unchained, back to Pulp Fiction, to Kill Bill Vol. 2 before going back to Pulp Fiction – and so now, Maynard the rapist shop owner is also a KKK member and the Yakuza boss decapitated by O-ren Ishii all at the same time.
It’s a fascinating conceit, to have the audience watching all of Tarantino’s films simultaneously, as if through a kaleidoscope, but it seriously undermines the cohesion of the piece. What’s more, with the use of chapters, and the attempt at an end with all the female characters from Tarantino’s films attacking poor Mark Isherwood, who has taken on all the main villain roles in the piece, it seems to think it’s telling a story – which it absolutely isn’t.
This does mean that Tarantino Live is near incomprehensible as a whole piece and the fragmentation renders it peculiarly lifeless. This is a shame because there is so much talent, energy and quality in the fragments it is made up of.
The cast is uniformly excellent, with a host of soul singers and big belters who could carry a show by themselves. Anton Stephans has a passionate streak of self-righteousness as Jules, Lifford David Shillingford is powerful and commanding as Marcellus, Karen Mav bridles with joy and defiance as Jackie Brown and Tara Lee is fantastic as both Marcellus’s wife Mia and The Bride. It’s thrilling to see the Jackrabbit Slims twist competition in person and to hear Miserlou blasted out at an audience, with members of the cast twiddling that surf guitar. There’s clear attention to detail, with even small things like Vince’s confused face, now a popular meme, included in the show.
What’s more, the staging is excellent. Using a thrust stage with the audience on three sides, the cast also stalk, march and patrol around the sides and on gangplanks above. The choreography makes full use of Tarantino’s love of funk, providing a number of delightful Temptations-esque moves. The car chase from Deathproof is thrillingly staged with swerving headlights and rear-projection. There’s a balletic sword fight taken from Kill Bill Vol. 1 and even a scene where someone puts their bare feet on the dashboard of a car.
The music is wonderful, the singing flawless, the staging perfect and the whole thing dripping in style, but the incoherency leaves it a frustrating experience.
Runs until 13 August 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Style without substance
