"Roman Holiday" at SHN

Roman Holiday is a classic movie of the 1950s. It's a light-hearted romantic comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck from a screenplay originally written by Dalton Trumbo, so there's a lot of talent and star power involved. Now we have Roman Holiday: The New Musical, which as the name implies has been adapted into a musical. This is a pre-Broadway production, so much like the original appearance of Wicked in San Francisco, we're seeing a quite early iteration.

The Play

Like many romantic comedies, particularly in period of the early 50s, Roman Holiday isn't really deep. It's a fun story about a sheltered princess who gets bored and restless during a tour of Europe and slips away from her entourage in Rome to see some real life. While out, she falls for an American ex-pat journalist. They tour Rome. They have fun. Then (spoiler) she goes back to being a princess and he goes back to being a newspaperman.

Again, not a lot of substance there, but with the charisma of the stars and a clever script, you've got a nice movie.

So, what have they done to turn this into a (pre-)Broadway musical? First, they needed music. To their credit, they chose the music of Cole Porter, so at least we have quality and familiarity. The team putting together the show includes producers and directors who did Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. I'm getting a bit leery of shows that try to build a story onto a body of existing songs. It worked almost miraculously well with Mamma Mia, which managed to create a (reasonably) coherent story out of hit songs by ABBA. Subsequent efforts have tended more to kind of biographical/greatest-hits pieces featuring a particular artist or recording label. It's fun and nostalgic, but it's not particularly theatrical in most cases.

But what we have here is a true throwback to a classic movie musical, where the songs are not just a backdrop or a transition: the characters sing them right into the dialogue, and numbers like "Easy to Love" or "Night and Day" translate right into the story and also fit the period, so it feels like a 1950s musical romantic comedy. And that's cool.

The Production

First observation is that this is a really expensive production. Unlike most touring shows, this one has extensive, complicated scenery that seems a bit overwhelming on the stage of the Golden Gate Theater. There are pieces sliding in from all directions in quite elaborate scene changes. Except when they don't. Twice during the first act, they had to stop the show, drop the curtain, and bring up the house lights because some or all of a scene change didn't happen, and it was two different sets, so it wasn't just one malfunction. That's pretty embarrassing. Even in a pre-Broadway run, a set this extensive and complicated has to work. There were no further (visible) glitches, but this was quite remarkable for a show of this quality with such a large budget.

All that said, the show works pretty well. When the scenes actually change, they change pretty deftly, so the play flows along at a nice pace, and the songs (and the orchestra playing them) are very good. The singers are strong and the dancers are terrific, though I felt like for a real Broadway show there ought to be more dancers, bigger crowds, etc. Maybe when they get to a bigger stage they can expand the ensemble a bit.

The lead actors are fine, but kind of inevitably pale in comparison to their movie-star predecessors. Princess Ann starts the show with a rather stiff, affected accent that kind of disappears as she gets more involved with people outside her entourage. I'm not clear that that was intentional, though I can see where the weird, clipped princess accent would be a bit annoying for the whole show.

And I should mention the princess's aunt, the Countess, played by Georgia Engel, who we last saw locally earlier this year in John at ACT. Much as she was in that role, Engel is charming and funny, a little dotty but clever and hinting at depths not quite in evidence in the character. You could tell the audience was enjoying and anticipating her little digressions.

Bottom Line

This is old-school musical comedy, more in the vein of mindless fluff than messaging. But that's fine. It's done authentically and well, and if they can keep their scene changes moving, it's quite a fun show to watch. Don't go for intellectual stimulation, but if you want to see singing and dancing and romance and some cute fun, this is the show for you. You could do far worse than listen to Cole Porter tunes for a couple of hours while really good dancers perform, and you get singers and a little story, too.

This definitely proved to be a pleasant little diversion between two much heavier plays this weekend.