Musical review: Anastasia The Broadway Musical
A stage adaptation of the Meg Ryan-led 1997 cartoon brings standout performances and memorable songs to a storyline that’s far from revolutionary.
An Adelaide winter doesn’t ever quite drop to the temperatures of a Russian one, but for the whole month of August, the Adelaide Festival Theatre is simulating the dark, glittering cold of St. Petersburg in a century past with Anastasia The Broadway Musical.
The musical, which first opened on Broadway in 2017, was inspired by the beloved 1997 animated film of the same name, and begins during the twilight of the Romanov imperial reign. Amidst skirts swishing across ballroom marble, and against a backdrop of falling snow and candy-striped turrets, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna – the Tsar’s youngest daughter –and her regal family are obliviously happy, living lives of luxury. Of course, anyone in the audience who has flicked through a history textbook knows that this happiness is doomed to end in violence.
Cut to ten years later, and St. Petersburg is now Leningrad, the Romanovs have been murdered, and red now rules. But rumours of Anastasia’s survival flit through the city streets, and it is whispered that her grandmother, the Dowager Empress (Nancy Hayes) – the only living Romanov left, deteriorating in a Parisian apartment – will pay handsomely for her discovery. Indeed, Anastasia is, miraculously, alive – she is a street-sweeper with amnesia who believes her name to be Anya. She becomes involved with two conmen, Dmitri and Vlad, who scheme to pass her off to the Dowager Empress as the lost Duchess – not knowing that that is, in fact, precisely who she is. So follows adventure, self-discovery, and, of course, romance.
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Georgia Hopson as Anya does a wonderful job of anchoring the show – her rendition of the original film’s centrepiece ‘Journey to the Past’ brings the house down. Robert Tripolino makes a charming Dmitri, and in general the cast is slick and spirited. But for me, the standout is Joshua Robson, who plays Gleb, the complex and zealous Deputy Commissioner of the Bolshevik army. Robson has a tough act to follow in Ramin Karimloo – who played Gleb in the original Broadway production, possesses a voice that melts ice, and is most theatre kids’ favourite Phantom – but he succeeds with flying colours, bringing welcome depth and pathos to a show that could be accused of being shallow.
Because, truthfully, a certain suspension of disbelief – and morality – is necessary to enjoy Anastasia, and a narrative built haphazardly around songs that shine. The show is essentially a piece of royalist propaganda, tinged with an outdated Red Scare mentality which does nothing to interrogate the Romanovs’ obscene and unethical wealth – and makes no mention of the impoverished conditions that their citizens suffered in.
But it is still easy to give in to. Most stage productions adapted from iconic movie musicals are weighed down by boring new additions to their tracklists, with songs that sound like they’ve been gathering dust in the crannies of the Disney vaults. This is not the case with Anastasia. Songs penned specifically for the stage production – such as ‘In My Dreams’, ‘Crowd of Thousands’, and ‘Stay, I Pray You’ – happen to be just as winning as the classics from the animated film, which renders Anastasia’s lack of nuance easier to forgive. And realistically, most audience members are not here for the plot or the politics: they are here to indulge in childhood nostalgia, and they are here for the tunes and dazzling frocks. And boy, do those frocks dazzle.
Anastasia The Broadway Musical continues at the Festival Theatre until August 30
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