OBSERVER: The Butcher, The Baker
As part of this year’s Midsumma Festival, Theatre Works and Ella Filar presented The Butcher, The Baker … a musical theatre play that had wonderful songs and music but which suffered from a poor narrative structure and mediocre dialogue.
A woman, Honey (played by Natasha Broadstock), in order to more fully understand a crush and obsession she has with her butcher, Johnny (Fletcher Dyson), disguises herself as a male brain surgeon, Alex (Claire Nicholls). Hijinks and misunderstandings follow as Honey explores her attraction to the butcher with the surgeon as her proxy.
The script was written by Ella Filar who also composed and directed the music. The songs and music were wonderful with a tight quartet of sax, violin, keyboards and percussion backing singers Myf Powell and Bruce Langdon who were credited simply as ‘voices’.
The songs either commented on or developed the narrative and were interlaced between scenes involving the three characters.
Unfortunately, it was here, in the text and dialogue of the scenes between characters, that the piece lacked polish; the language was often cliched and, at times, the storyline was difficult to follow.
This was not, however, due to a lack of effort nor skill on the part of Broadstock, Dyson and Nicholls who all gave strong performances as they earnestly worked at making sense of the script.
Each of them successfully captured the style of the play while bringing their characters to life.
Their work in this regard was well supported by the director Kevin Hopkins. Given the challenging shortcomings of the script and the musical theatre style, he held the whole piece together through his direction, even if he was less successful in blending together the ordinary and fantastic elements of the action.
Generally speaking then the quality of the singing and music failed to compensate for the script which, while having its moments, always felt like it needed further rewriting to improve dialogue and structure.
Presented at the Explosives Factory, St Kilda.
Review by Peter Murphy