Review of Amélie: A New Musical

amelie

Friday night, I attended a performance of Amélie: A New Musical at the Berkeley Rep. This was my first time attending a show at that theater—I’ve only lived in Oakland 6 months, y’all. And my biggest takeaway from the performance is that I will absolutely never buy an obstructed-view seat at the Roda stage again. Honestly, I could only see two-thirds of the stage at any given time from the loge. Don’t do it. Pay full price.

Especially pay full price for a show as charming as this one. Before I go on, you need to know that I’ve never seen the Amélie movie, and my knowledge of it was limited to knowing it’s a quirky indie flick starring Audrey Tautou. You should also know this review contains plenty of spoilers—I want to talk about what worked and what didn’t, and it’s hard to do that without specifics. Lastly, I have only one song title, unfortunately, because the program did not include a scene list, which makes absolutely no sense to me unless they still wanted the freedom to change things up during this first run.

So What Worked?

The Whimsy. From the off-kilter set design to the choreography, props, and performances, Amélie’s (modern-day, Samantha Barks; young, Savvy Crawford) imagination comes through without it being an over-the-top hammer hit of “LOVE ME AND MY QUIRKS!” It’s subdued whimsy, if you will. One of my favorite scenes was the simple staging of Amélie skipping stones: quickly raised pom-poms streaming with blue were all that was needed for the image to come across. Special kudos go to the hearts that magically appear during the scenes when Amélie and her love interest, Nino (Adam Chanler-Berat), spy on each other in the subway station. The show would undoubtedly be a lesser being without the travelling gnome number as well. The postcard puns were a sheer delight on their own, and David Andino’s enthusiastic performance made it a highlight of the show.

The Songs. A good 90% of this show is songs rather than dialogue, with music by Daniel Messé and lyrics by Messé and Nathan Tysen. The performances and the score had airy, breezy qualities that made the songs easy to understand and able to show off the tonality of the singers’ voices well. Nino’s solo, “Thin Air,” and Nino and Amélie’s shared song around the doorframe at the climax of the romantic plot were plusses for me. To be fair, I’m a sucker for the tried and true romance device of lovers separated by a door. I must say, however, that my favorite musical moments were when the company rises up in harmony, which occurs in several numbers. These songs won’t wear you out, they’ll just guide you effortlessly through the plot. And frankly, an easy-to-follow plot is a win for a musical.

The Choreography. The first scene that takes place in the Two Windmills Café is a fantastic number. Simple percussive beats made by slamming cups or various other objects made it engaging and a great introduction to the characters that inhabit the modern-day portion of the narrative. The first song of Amélie’s childhood—it involved a giant goldfish puppet performed by Paul Whitty, who also plays Joseph—also kept the energy and fun level high. Sometimes, simplicity truly is best, and that also came through in how the company was choreographed.

The Company. I’m not just talking about the engaging performances the cast gave here, though I’ll go ahead and single out the fruit-loving grocer Lucien (Perry Sherman) and Amélie’s father (John Hickok) as vivid characters I wish had more focus. What I’m talking about, really, is how the company acts as a momentum-building force within the show. It’s not the same as a Greek chorus; rather, you get the sense that the presence of each of these characters is essential—the story could not have happened in this time, at this moment without them. Amélie’s journey toward emotional vulnerability would be changed, different in some small way if any one of the characters had not been there. Which leads me to the last strength of the show….

Amélie’s Emotional Journey: The characterization of the show’s main character is somewhat of a gamble. The narrative begins with Amélie in childhood and skips to her rote daily life in what I’d guess are her late 20s to early 30s. Modern-day Amélie is a void. With a repressed childhood and her mother’s (Alison Cimmet, who also plays Philomene) early death, it makes sense she’d be afraid of making connections with others. And indeed, Bank’s hunched-over portrayal of Amélie’s body language is her most significant feature. Until the plot point of Princess Diana’s death and the subsequent hilarious hallucination of Elton John (Randy Blair, who also plays Hipoloto) in a song as close to an Elton John melody the composer could get without infringing on copyright—a feat unto itself. The song inspires Amélie to seek meaning for her life through brightening others’ days. It’s only then that Amélie awakens as a person in her own right, and that’s about a third of the way into the show already. Like I said, a gamble!

Even then, Amélie’s hesitant, not so sure her new quest is one for which she’s well-suited and I liked that a lot. She’s uncomfortable taking this step into the world and that makes sense for her. That uncomfortableness continues as we gain more insight into why she’s so crippled by fear of meeting Nino in person, to the point that she must come up with fanciful ways of putting off their inevitable coming together until she’s emotionally ready for it. It’s honest, but having the lead character so inaccessible for so long is hard. That choice worked for me; it could easily not work for people who haven’t had similar experiences. Which brings me to….

Room for Improvement:

The Opening Number. I assume it’s a carryover from the film, but why is this song focused on a fruit fly? The performers sing it well, and that powerful forward push of the company is effectively set-up right from the first note. But I couldn’t stop thinking that anything but a fruit fly would be a more powerful focus of the song. Why not a butterfly? Too many syllables?

The Passage of Time. The chronology is perfectly fine until Amélie starts doing her good deeds…and then the whole rest of the show could have taken place over a week as far as I could tell. During Amélie’s fight with her neighbor, the glass man Dufayel (Tony Sheldon), I got the impression she had been working on her quest and finding safe ways to risk connection over several months. But I’m still not sure I was supposed to assume that, and if I was, I should have known that earlier. Some sort of passage of time notice would have done wonders for me to (a) buy into the romance, though in entertainment I must accept that romances are always whirlwind; and (b) be willing to accept she’d made a significant impact on people’s lives through her anonymous gestures. As it was, I felt Amélie had barely emotionally progressed to the point of participating in others’ lives before I was told she’d been using that as a crutch to stop living her own.

The Half-Way Boat Song. It’s a song that gives us great insight into why Amélie’s afraid of connecting with others in that she’s taken to heart her mother’s instruction that distances are never broached, only ever divided by half. But I got that message within the first few lines of the chorus—I didn’t need to watch Amélie’s mother give the lesson, young Amélie try to make it clear, and modern-day Amélie try to complete the walk to Nino and then retreat in fear. There just wasn’t enough movement on the stage for the number, so it felt like dead air to me. The boat and math equation projections are fine, but they aren’t exactly lively on their own. It was one of the moments when I wondered if my obstructed view was making me miss some background action.

Dufayel’s Final Painting. How great would it have been to see Amélie painted as the Mona Lisa or some equally well-known object d’art? Why didn’t we? Was this another obstructed view problem? I felt ripped off to learn Dufayel had moved passed his artistic block but not see the results of that progress.

That’s about it. The positives far surpassed the negatives for me. Amélie: A New Musical has oodles of potential that are by and large fulfilled. I hope it does get another incarnation that extends its life beyond its Berkeley Rep run.

Attended 18 September 2015.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.