I went to see the International Premier of Lucy Simon’s new musical Dr Zhivago last Thursday (17th Feb, 2011) so thought I would write a brief review of it here. This stage muscial is an adaptation of the 1957 novel of the same name (ДоÌктор ЖиваÌго in Russian) by Boris Pasternak. There have been several adaptations of Pasternak’s novel including:
- A Brazilian television film (1959; currently unavailable)
- David Lean’s 1965 film adaptation, featuring the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif as Zhivago
- A British television serial with Hans Matheson, Keira Knightley, and Sam Neill (2002)
- A Russian mini-series produced by Mosfilm (2006)
(Wikipedia, retrieved 23/2/2011; Pegasos, retrieved 23/2/2011)
To start with the show was very well cast with no real weaknesses vocally. Of course Anthony Warlow as Zhivago is inspired, not only because of his rich and powerful baritone voice, but he is also a very good actor and breathes life into any part he plays and was a pleasure to watch as always. The two female leads of Lucy Maunder playing Zhivago’s love interest Lara and Taneel van Zyl playing Zhivago’s wife Tonia were both brilliant and brought the contrast of the personalities of their two characters out very well. Their voices were strong and well produced.
The only notable distraction in the casting was that Dr Zhivago’s son was played by a woman (I don’t know the name of the actress playing him). While the register may be similar between a boy soprano and a mezzo, the timbre is very different and it was terribly distracting. Partially because the boy sounded like a woman when he was singing, even though she was doing her best to sound innocent and untrained, but also because it struck me as being a little amateurish. I mean an amateur muscical society for example may have to occasionally make casting sacrifices for the sake of budget or lack of available talent, but I would have expected that in a fully professional production they should not be similarly constrained and would cast all roles correctly for the voice type and character needed.
The production design was good, not overly lavish but certainly detailed enough to provide the actors with the back drop to the story they were telling. The raked stage and perspective sets were great and added a nice touch. I am not 100% sure about the projection used as part of the set. In many cases it was used for effects, such as snow as well as for titles. But there was also times when it is used to project photos onto parts of the set. In one scene the image moves, consisting of a lady allowing her blouse to drop down to reveal her bare back and the top of her bum. This was surprising for the audience, largely because we thought it was a still image and so tended to draw focus more than set the scene I felt.
The music was gorgeous as you would expect from a Lusy Simon musical, brilliant harmonies and gorgeous interplay between vocal lines in the duets and group songs. The day after I saw the show my singing teacher asked me what I thought of the show and I have to say that then, as even now I struggle to bring to mind any song from the show. In other words the show does not have any show stoppers that make people walk away humming. I suspect that some of that is because it is such a new show, we have had very little exposure to the music. With repeated listening I suspect we will also have one or two favourites from this show. One song that did stand out was the duet between Lara and Tonia in the second act when they meet for the first and only time. It was very reminiscent of Chess, the musical, with the Angry wife in this case confronting the lover of her husband, in addition to being from Russia too. But this was a really great song which I think will be sung time and time again for the two great female leads.
The biggest criticism I would have for the show musically is that there was very little Russian influence in the music. I am in no way saying that the music wasn’t good, and there certainly was some Russian themimg, the wedding party song for Pasha and Lara’s wedding in the first act was a great scene and the Russian Dance Pasha and one of his Groomsmen did was excellent, but I think there was a great lost opportunity in not bringing out more of the Russian Flavour in the show. The story and the events being told and the characters are all heavily Russian. I understand that the theme of love and finding the passion that ignights your sould etc is universal and translatable to any medium or environment, but this particular story was set in Deepest Russia during one of its most significant points in History. The Author or the original story, Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature only a year after the story was smuggled out of Russia and Published in Italy (Nobel Org) which Russia filed a protest about and Pasternak was oblidged to turn down so as not to inflame the Soviet Union which had already banned the book for being anti revolutionary and anti-Soviet Union. In the musical Zhivago spends a considerable amount of time working int he army, in particular as a prisoner of the Red Army. While the character of Zhivago, or we as a symathetic audience may not agree with the politics underlying the new regime, the Red Army is associated with some of the strongest most Russian music of all times in the form of the Red Army Choir (look this up on You Tube and you will see what I mean) which should have given a huge range of musical inspiration for these sequences. If not in order to tell the story of Dr Zhivago, certainly to set the scene and provide the background atmosphere.
In fact despite being set in Russia, during the russian revolution and the Russian civil war, and all the characters being russian and Zhivago being captured by one of the most recognisably russian organisations of all time (the Red Army), associated with the most patriotic Russian music of all times, the show was virtually devoid of any Russian influence at all. There were three words in cyrillic written on the window of the factory where Lara worked at the start of the show, and they were all supposedly in Russia but that is where the Russian theme stops. There was no attept at Russian accents (potentially because the only thing worse than an inappropriate accent is a really badly botched accent) and in many cases the Russian names were mispronounced by the actors (the Russian language is very particular and very sensitive about where the stress falls in a word to the degree that a word in Russian can be unrecognisable by a Russian unless you but the stres in the right spot).
The Red Army in particular was very under done in general. There should have been some very intense moments much like those in Miss Saigon, where the scenes with the Vietnamese Army, also portrayed as the enemy, were very intense and driving with memorable musical themes underscoring them. I am not even sure there was a musical theme underscoring the Red Army in Dr Zhivago, let alone a memorable one.
This may very well just be personal preference since as a bass, I love the rich Russian musical tradition.
As a last comment I think there also could have been some lighter moments during the show. Two hours of turbulent angst is a bit much. Every show like this needs its Master of the House to lighten it up a bit. Overall though the show is great and well worth a look, it definitely did not disappoint and the cast did a fantastic job of telling the story.
See also the very good review here.