Anastasia musical turns history into a fairy tale

The idea that a regular girl can be made over into something like a princess is an enduring one in stage musicals – check out My Fair Lady, or Pretty Woman: The Musical for that matter.

Anastasia riffs on the urban legend that one of the daughters of Tsar Nicholas II survived the family’s murder by the Bolsheviks in 1918 (a misconception stemming from the fact the Russian royal family were not all buried in the same grave).

The many imposters who subsequently came forward claiming to be the Grand Duchess inspired a 1952 stage play, a 1956 Ingrid Bergman movie and in 1997, a Fox Animation Studios kids’ film in the Disney style that was one of the last gasps of hand-drawn animation before 3D computer graphics took over.

Broadway duo Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens did a commendable (and Oscar-nominated) job writing that film’s songs, five of which make their way into the stage version along with several hummable new ones. Acclaimed playwright Terence McNally revised the script for a more adult Broadway audience – don’t hold your breath for any sassy animal characters – but it remains, in essence, a fairy tale.

Brisbane is the last stop for the local staging of Darko Tresnjak’s Broadway production, which means we’re getting an exceptionally polished show. Dances hit every mark, choral work is masterful, and the cinematic backdrops depicting St Petersburg and Paris integrate seamlessly with the live action (albeit sometimes going too far down the IMAX route for good taste).

Costumes practically redefine lavish, with Linda Cho given a stunning palette of Imperial Russian and Jazz-era Paris to play with. Once you get used to the idea of Russians who speak with American accents, it’s hard not to be swept up in the spectacle.

Queenslander Georgina Hopson stars as the amnesiac street sweeper Anya, who falls in with two Leningrad swindlers, Dimitry (Robert Tripolino) and Vlad (Rodney Dobson). The rascals are looking for a woman they can pass off as Anastasia to her Paris-based grandmother, the Dowager Empress (national treasure Nancye Hayes, still in great form), in hopes of pocketing a large reward.

Songs centre around two bangers, the music-box melody Once Upon a December, and Anya’s signature song Journey to the Past. Other highlights include a nostalgic ode to the city of light, Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart), and The Countess and the Common Man, which gives Rhonda Burchmore (as the Countess Lily) a chance to do what she does best and try to steal the show with comedic shenanigans.

Hilariously, the 1997 film’s sense of peril was provided by Rasputin’s zombie spirit returning to try and destroy the last surviving Romanov – which is fine, I guess, if you’re eight years old and really liked The Little Mermaid.

Here the antagonist is more believably a Stalinist apparatchik, Gleb (Joshua Robson, an impressively powerful singer), who pursues Anya to Paris with a fervour not unlike Les Miserables′ Javert.

Gleb, like Javert, has layers to his character, but the musical flubs its chance to generate real tension from the threat a revived monarchy might pose to the Bolshevik cause, or to even acknowledge what the Russian Revolution was really about. The peasants were starving under the Romanovs, after all.

Anastasia is an enjoyable night’s entertainment carried out by very talented theatre professionals. It’s just a shame it doesn’t overcome its kids’ film origins and achieve the level of nuance the historical events it portrays would seem to warrant.

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