The bio-jukebox musical is coming into its own as a genre. Part nostalgia exercise, part commercial property, part Behind the Music, these shows have plenty of potential. The music is already hummable and legendary artists tend to live tumultuous lives, ripe with dramatic conflict and perfect for a “hero’s journey” narrative.
Following the sputtering, lacklustre Georgy Girl (the story of the sweet-as-pie Seekers) which played across Australia earlier this year, Dream Lover is 2016’s second mid-century pop jukebox musical created locally, though this one is about an international star: Bobby Darin.
Dream Lover: The Bobby Darin Musical feels as polished as any solid Broadway production. There are few surprises in structure and tone (it feels like a sibling to Jersey Boys, the wildly successful musical charting the life of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons) and the show’s flashback narrative device works reasonably well to frame the story, though it does end on a mawkish note.
Directed by Simon Phillips, the show barrels through decades of Darin’s life and career milestones with efficiency. On a dazzlingly bright and surprisingly dynamic amphitheatre set piece by Brian Thomson, the big band (led by Daniel Edmonds, on stage with the performers), Andrew Hallsworth’s clever, era-appropriate choreography, and Tim Chappel’s costumes all pop. There’s a lot of life, lights and glitter to take in, but it’s a welcome spectacle.
Darin and his family (Caroline O’Connor is his mother, Polly, while Marney McQueen plays his sister, Nina, and Bert LaBonte Nina’s husband, Charlie) are immediately likeable, determined to help young Bobby overcome his brush with death from rheumatic fever, buying him instruments to foster his talent. We watch him grow into a teenager and young man, pounding on doors for a chance at a record contract, and it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement when he scores a taste of national success, performing Splish Splash on American Bandstand.
Part of the reason it’s so easy to root for Darin is David Campbell. With a decadent caramel voice and expert technique – and a particular insight into Darin’s family dynamics – Campbell is in his element, the consummate performer. He approaches Darin’s wide-eyed youth and later world-weary angst with equally open-hearted sympathy. The show would be far less successful without his generous performance and powerhouse vocals.
But Campbell’s charisma can’t compensate for some of the show’s more thoughtless mistakes. Following the jukebox formula and leaning heavily on classic musical-theatre tropes means the show sometimes slides into careless, casually offensive storytelling.
Frank Howson’s script uses the US civil rights movement to frame Darin as a “good guy” (he did fight for black comedian George Kirby to open for him at the Copacabana, for example), and as audiences take their seats at the end of interval, audio of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech plays to impress upon us Darin’s “good politics”. However, Kirby is not an onstage character and doesn’t get to perform for us before the many indulgent Darin performance numbers set at the Copacabana, turning Kirby’s talent and achievement into a footnote to Darin’s white saviour nobility moment.
This fact rings extra hollow when you consider the overwhelming whiteness of the show’s ensemble cast and the fact that Frankie Avalon, Dion and Buddy Holly are all named characters given a chance to perform on the Dream Lover stage. Later, Darin’s big band arrangement of Simple Song of Freedom features white performers dancing and singing backup while wearing Afro wigs. This tone-deaf approach isn’t excusable in a new work, even one set in the past.
And then there’s the problem with Sandra Dee. Hannah Fredericksen does remarkably well with her underwritten part as Dee becomes another example of fiction’s feminine stereotypes: the long-suffering wife to a creative genius husband who never puts family first.
Dream Lover is so insistent on following the beats of classic musical romance that it still attempts to stage Darin and Dee’s first romantic encounter as something sweet, even as it’s clearly predatory. Dee was only 16 to Darin’s 24 when they met and wed, and in this theatrical rendition, Darin follows Dee across the stage as they sing Call Me Irresponsible, with Darin grabbing at an increasingly uncomfortable Dee. It’s not so much a meet cute as it is sexual harassment. A more playful number with both characters on equal footing would be more heartwarming and plenty cute, while still allowing room for friendly adversary and banter.
Still, Fredericksen manages to give Dee a sense of personhood and dignity, even when Howson’s interpretation doesn’t encourage it – and in fact seems determined to dismiss her feelings when they matter most. There’s no real need to have her character comfortable for sex with Darin within minutes of sharing her devastating secret of childhood sexual abuse – even in the ever-compressed measurement of musical-theatre time – but Howson’s words and Phillips’ staging can’t resist tying a neat bow on the topic and moving on. Dee and Darin sing a tender duet of one of his hits, and as the curtain falls, they kiss with a heretofore unseen passion. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
It can be difficult to call out this lazy, outdated storytelling when there are many things that Dream Lover gets right, with its talented cast, full-bodied big band sound (though seeing an all-male band and almost entirely white cast is startling), catchy numbers and Vegas-tinted aesthetic, but it’s time we stopped giving musicals a free pass for retrograde politics just because they frequently look and sound fantastic. Dream Lover could – and should – aim higher.
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