Review: Road Show
Taken from The Stage 07|07|11
By Mark Shenton
"Sooner or later we’re bound to get it right," says Wilson Mizner, one of the two real-life brothers whose lives are chronicled in Road Show, the latest version of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s much travelled and frequently revised musical.
Originally staged as Wise Guys at Off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop in 1999, then Bounce (seen in Chicago and Washington DC) in 2003, its European premiere at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory is based on yet another re-working that was premiered under its current title at New York’s Public Theatre in 2008. So have its creators finally got it right?
Michael Jibson (Addison Mizner) and David Bedella (Wilson Mizner) in Road Show at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London.
Photo: Catherine Ashmore
As someone who has seen each and every one of those incarnations, I can confidently say they are finally closer than ever before to giving it pace and poignance, as two essentially unlikeable characters go on one of Sondheim’s typical journeys towards self-realisation, which is also, of course, a reflection and critique of the American dream itself.
"In America, the journey is the destination", goes one line, and these brothers certainly travelled - from gold speculators together in Alaska, Wilson Mizner was an inveterate gambler, sometime fixer of prize fights and even writing a Broadway play, while his gay brother Addison was more creatively inspired, becoming private architect for rich clients who was eventually drawn by his sibling into a disastrous property scheme that collapsed. Their life stories prove that America is not just a land of opportunity but also of opportunists.
The rich, varied and tuneful score is as audacious and complex as any Sondheim has ever written, but although it pulls together the competing strands of their lives to give their stories some dramatic coherence, it still proves difficult for the show to provide more than a cursory biographical overview. But John Doyle - following in the footsteps of Sam Mendes and Hal Prince who respectively directed the earlier incarnations of Wise Guys and Bounce - brings a seamless fluidity to it, even if the repeated motif of dollar notes being strewn over the stage soon tires.
A deeper humanity is provided by David Bedella, silkily smooth as grasping Wilson, and Michael Jibson as the more sympathetically portrayed Addison, with Jon Robyns touching as Addison’s boyfriend Hollis. It’s a show that Sondheim fans will want to collect, but it has an urgent, fervent flavour that should collect yet more admirers, too, for the pre-eminent theatrical composer of our time.
Production information
By: music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman
Management: Menier Chocolate Factory
Cast: David Bedella, Michael Jibson, Jon Robyns, Gillian Bevan, Adrian der Gregorian, Fiona Dunn, Sarah Ingram, Julie Jupp, Glyn Kerslake, Elizabeth Marsh, Christopher Ragland, Robbie Scotcher
Director:John Doyle, who also designs
Design: Matthew Wright
Sound: Gareth Owen
Lighting: Jane Cox
Musical direction: Catherine Jayes