Its instructive every so often to see a show that is an epic fail. I’m not talking about one which is just boring or ill-conceived. I’m talking about one which fails so monumentally that it achieves a sort of perfection which can leave you awestruck. I had the privilege last night of witnessing a true musical theatre holocaust in Shirley Jones’ show at the Arts Theatre.
Jones is a bona fide pop cultural artifact. Broadway star, Oscar winner and the onscreen and real life mother of David Cassidy in the Partridge family. Patrick is her son who has parlayed a helmet of hair, name recognition and a passable voice into some kind of musicals career. Now 76, I presume Jones can plausibly claim to have passed into ‘living legend’ status but its really more of a horror show than a legend.
Firstly, there is no doubt that Jones, at some point had a gorgeous bell of a voice. The clip package which proceeded her entrance hit all the highlights of her formidable career (including the lowlights of singing at Regan’s inauguration). But from her opening mauling of Tonight it became clear that her voice is, charitably, not what it once was. She could just about belt out the big notes but there was not a jot of nuance or grace in any of her numbers. I was sort of reminded of a story from Meryl Seacrests biography on Sondheim. During the rehearsals on Gypsy, he learned that Jerome Robbins controlled the intensity of Ethel Merman’s singing by simply telling her to say “louder” or “quieter”. I get the impression that this is about the level of Jones’ own interpretation.
All of this is even before we get to the banter. Oh my... the banter. Painfully scripted and delivered with about as much conviction as a take-away food order, Jones never for once gave the impression that she had actually lived through any of her anecdotes. There was a sort of plastic fantastic veneer through which she communicated to the audience that had everything sounding canned or condescending. As my friend wisely said, Americans have difficulty with humble. Jones couldn’;t help coming off as deeply self-satisfied. When you add the lapses into nasty Republicanism and silly nostalgia, you have a uniquely awful performance.
Yet that wasn’t even the worst part of the might. Because there was Patrick Cassidy. Imagine a televangelist, or an Amway salesman, a man who is a terrifying shade of orange and possesses the type of perfectly coiffed hair that looks like it could be snapped off like a Lego man. That is Patrick Cassidy. Patrick wishes you to take two very important lessons from his part of the show;
1) That he is in no way jealous of the success of his more famous family members. Not in the slightest. He repeats this so often and with such a strained smile that I can only explain it as some kind of mantra that was beaten into him as a child.
2) He is a full blooded heterosexual. He is as straight as they come. He is straight squared. No, make that straight cubed. He loves women so much that he is practically a lesbian. And all his brothers are too! They are just a gaggle of women-fuckers. Why do I get the impression there is a whole history of National Enquirer innuendo here that I am not getting.
Anyway, for somebody who is supposed to be a long running Broadway performer, Patrick has a deeply unlikeable stage presence, the comic timing of my dead nan and a voice which at times searches desperately for the right pitch. His version of Being Alive will haunt me forever. On the other hand, his duet with a paper cut-out of David Cassidy’s head will provide me with joyful memories for years to come.
Yet despite all this, I am super-glad that I saw the show. I now have a benchmark to measure how shit a night at the theatre can actually be. But I was never bored. In fact the whole thing was vastly entertaining, and I have to award their persistence in mining ever lower levels of the barrel throughout the night. Shirley and Patrick, thank you. I will never forget it.
