When fans of the spicy Julia Roberts and Richard Gere-led 1990 rom-com Pretty Woman rocked up to the Melbourne premiere of the movie-turned-stage-musical at the glittering Regent Theatre, they were rewarded with an exciting surprise appearance.
Not by the stars, but by a very special car. The stretched white limo Gere’s corporate raider Edward emerges from, via the sunroof, to climb the ladder to the apartment of Robert’s sex worker, Vivian, despite his acrophobia, in the Romeo & Juliet-adjacent climax to director Garry Marshall’s beloved 1990 film.
As the biggest box office hit of the genre, just pipping My Big Fat Greek Wedding when adjusted for inflation, Pretty Woman is a behemoth of the form. ‘Big. Huuuuge,’ as Vivian would say. It’s surprising, then, that it took almost 30 years to join the big bucks-attracting craze of being adapted into a stage musical.
‘You’re late.’
‘You’re stunning.’
‘You’re forgiven.’
Pretty Woman: the Musical – quick links
Better the devil you know?
With music and lyrics by Canadian pop rocker Bryan Adams and his song-writing partner Jim Vallance, Pretty Woman: the Musical is set to a book from Marshall, who sadly died before it was completed, and original screenplay writer JF Lawton.
Debuting at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago in 2018, it transferred to Broadway later that year and then London’s West End in 2020. Samantha Barks played Vivian in all three, opposite Steve Kazee, Andy Karl and Danny Mac as her Edwards.
Pretty faithful to the film, with these movie musicals crowd-pleasers first and foremost, it’s a fun, if fairly lightweight show that’s immeasurably improved for its fantastic local casting.
Stepping into the shoes of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere
Samantha Jade played Kylie Minogue in the miniseries INXS: Never Tear Us Apart and we should be so lucky she’s our Vivian, with the triple-threat absolutely knocking it out of the Regent and on to the limo-parked street.
It’s no easy task, going up against the megawatt stardom of Roberts, but Jade will have you in the palm of her snapped-by-jewellery-box hands.
That the show slightly retools the film’s darkest moment to give Vivian a much better fighting chance is totally sold by the strength of Jade’s performance. She’s a delight to witness in full fighting-her-corner flow.
As are the mighty Michelle Brasier, as Vivian’s unflappable flatmate and sex work guardian angel Kit de Luca, and Tim Omaji as an assorted Greek chorus, including Barnard ‘Barney’ Thompson, the stern and snooty Beverly Wilshire Hotel manager who’s soon wrapped around Vivian’s little finger. Â
If Ben Hall doesn’t quite bring the oomph and abundant charisma of Gere, he’s still a perfectly amiable Edward, with the movie’s sturdy bones ensuring you’ll be rooting for him to get over his all-business ways and spend the rest of his days with Viv. It’s fair to say the show gets pretty steamy and is well worth your cold, hard cash, for a one-night-only or a whole week.
Will local audiences walk on by?
It’s likely that the immense popularity of the film Pretty Woman will place this staging of the musical, produced by Suzanne Jones with local direction and choreography adapted by Rusty Mowery and Jennifer Dean, in good stead. But there’s always a risk that the saturation of such shows can crowd out even the lowest-hanging fruit.
While these movie musicals tend to pack them in, there has been a worrying sign that the combined crises of the demolition of arts funding and the spiralling cost-of-living, which is affecting both producers and punters, has made the model less of a sure bet recently.
Australia’s theatre scene is still reeling from the shock curtailing of the great night out Beetlejuice, with music, lyrics and a titular turn by local star Eddie Perfect, and also Back to the Future. Both hailed from beloved film franchises that have more than proved their money-making muscles, so their failure to go the distance on tour down under was devastatingly unexpected, leaving many cast and crew out of work.
Perhaps part of the problem is that this trend’s pipeline is also increasingly clogged, just as there appears to be a broader cultural realignment back towards original stories over IP resurrection.
We’ve already seen Cluedo (in fairness, a board game before it was a non-singing 1985 movie) on Australian stages this year. A raft more are waiting in the wings, including Mrs Doubtfire. The upcoming My Fair Lady is a different beast altogether, having started life as a straight play, George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 show Pygmalion, with the Audrey Hepburn-led 1964 movie already a musical, too.
But many that fit the bill precisely have landed on our shores in recent years, including Moulin Rouge, The Lion King, Groundhog Day, 9 to 5, Billy Elliot, The Bodyguard, Bring It On, Kinky Boots, Saturday Night Fever and Cry-Baby. Baz Luhrmann’s glittering adaptation utterly transformed the Regent, remaining a high bar for the jukebox end of the form, with Heathers a sterling effort on the original song front.
It remains to be seen if Pretty Woman can stand out from the crowd as much as Vivian did while working Hollywood Boulevard’s red-light district. Adams and Vallance’s score is snappy, but it’s not as lyrically earwormy as it could be.
The team will be hoping that oodles of nostalgic goodwill is enough in troubling times. As Vivian would say, and hopefully audiences agree, ‘I want the fairytale’.
