White-out

Last year, I saw a "musical in concert" as part of SummerWorks. This year, this concept has spun off into its own festival called Musical Works. As director Tracy Michailidis explained, by stripping away all the staging, the audience can hopefully gain a better sense of a musical theatre show. Furthermore, the performers are able to concentrate on character development. On Saturday, I attended one show at Factory Theatre called Misprint.

This was obviously a riff off Archie (Comics) as we meet, in 1962, students in small-town Sunnydale getting ready for their last week of high-school. Domestic-minded Elly was itching to settle down with her "pumpkin-headed" beau Charlie while her rival Monica was looking to leave and explore the world, though the latter also had eyes for Charlie. The cast was rounded out with a football jock (Cliff), girl clique (Mary Jane, Lucy) and of course, gruff but kindly school staff (Miss Dundy and Mr. Sunnyhive).

On the positive side, I enjoyed the consistent musical arrangement. Many new musicals use a pastiche of song styles which, in my opinion, is a cheap way to engage the audience. Even the 2 songs that used popular musical motifs evoked the "shoo-wop" sounds of 50s pop. But plot-wise this was well-trod territory. The nostalgic look back at a supposedly simpler time is just too easy: for the actors to ham it up "gee golly" style, and for the audience to feel superior. After all, from a modern perspective, Elly's dream of a white-picket fence life is obviously headed for a rude wake-up call. As the show progressed, there were some hints that maybe even that may not be possible: perhaps they were actually just comic characters destined to keep reliving their senior year. But even that, with its echo of Pleasantville or The Truman Show, didn't move me. Essentially, Misprint was a lot of work in service of an ordinary story.