Review: Seven Brides For Seven Brothers
As a child of the 60s getting hooked on movie musicals in the 70s, I was more drawn to the romantic doom of West Side Story, the naughtiness of Sweet Charity and a little later, of course, Cabaret than this bright and breezy 1954 MGM musical, even if it did have tight-bunned male dancers leaping around in tight jeans and checked shirts.
When I eventually saw the Seven Brides movie, which starred Howard Keel and Jane Powell and was directed by Stanley Donen of Singin’ In The Rain fame, I was underwhelmed. There were no great songs – except opening number Bless My Beautiful Hide – and no tragic love story to hook me in.
So maybe the show – which was adapted for the stage in 1982, with some new songs added to pad out the score, and promptly belly-flopped on Broadway – isn’t the show for me. Maybe the whooping audience on opening night at this new production saw something delightful in it that didn’t always delight me.
The plot, what little of it there is, seemed to float off into the evening air of the Open Air Theatre (such a wonderful venue). In 1850s Oregon, girl meets boy, agrees to marry him even though she’s known him for all of three seconds, is looking forward to serving just one man instead of all the hicks she waits on in her job as a waitress, then finds he has six brothers she’s expected to cook dinner and do laundry for.
The six brothers, who are loveable long-haired lugs like Thor when we meet them and have bear-ish beards, can’t dance for shit. Then suddenly, after popping backstage for a makeover, they can – and they’re suddenly short-haired and clean-shaven too. Time has passed, but the show – racing briskly forward, which is something of a godsend when so many productions these days go on forever – doesn’t make that clear. Plus who cut their hair, shaved their beards and taught them to dance?
You can bet it was a woman and probably our heroine, Miss Milly (played by the very lovely and talented Laura Pitt-Pulford). Seven Brides For Seven Brothers has been criticised for its sexual politics (women belong in the kitchen and all that), but actually the plucky heroine has much more gumption than the hero (played by a nonetheless charismatic and cheeky Alex Gaumond) and the guys come across as whatever the plural of doofus is (doofii?). They’re led by their loins, as illustrated by the use of cushions to hide their sexual frustration during the very funny We Gotta Make It Through The Winter number.
It’s not, as I say, much of a show but this new production has energy and exuberance to spare and even if the songs aren’t up to much, the dancing sure is. The mechanics of the plot are, sadly, as wobbly as the scenery. The footwork? Something else. When the boys and girls are in full-footed glory, Seven Brides becomes musical comedy heaven and, in a setting as lovely as Regent’s Park, that’s no incidental pleasure.
THREE STARS
Seven Brides For Seven Brothers is at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until August 29th. For more information and tickets call 0844 826 4242 or visit openairtheatre.com.
Words by SIMON BUTTON