Review: Stop The World, I Want to Get Off by The Wimberley Players
by Michael Meigs
Nathan Villareal's agile clowning and appealing tenor voice are at the heart of the Wimberley Players' production of Stop The World, I Want to Get Off, playing weekends through August 23. As Littlechap, the Everyman in this circus-themed musical entertainment, Villareal gives us a cocky Cockney social climber, resembling actor/pop singer Anthony Newley, who put the show together with composer Leslie Bricusse in 1961.
The show is an interesting mix of genres, part cabaret and part medieval morality play. The white-face pantomime makeup appears to be a direct imitation of the visual stylings of French mime Marcel Marceau, who had become an international star in the decade preceding Stop The World. Littlechap and the rest of the cast use some amusing pantomime gestures, including a quirky little sequence of salutation, crossed-hands and quiver to suggest that randy Littlechap is successfully seducing a woman character.
Part of the joke is that this show is the opposite of a pantomime: it's a musical with both words and lyrics, featuring ballads that entered immediately into the canon of popular song. I never saw Stop The World, the unsuccessful 1966 film version of it, or the short-lived update and revival attempted in 1978 by Sammy Davis, Jr. But the 1960s were themed by Tony Bennett, Barbara Streisand, Sammy Davis, Jr. and others with recordings of Newley's Once In A Lifetime, Gonna Build A Mountain and, most memorably, What Kind of Fool Am I?
Director Jay Jennings from Texas State has assembled an able and willing cast behind Villareal. The women costarring as Littlechap's wife and conquests are experienced and confident, and the young persons as Littlechap's daughters and the chorus are appealing.
This script deals with the timeless theme of selfish striving, presented in a fantasy world -- but the references are unmistakeably to the early 1960s. Almost fifty years on, we experience something of a time warp effect.
Playing his central character the little chap Littlechap, Anthony Newley was more or less openly mocking himself. In the play this perky little guy from the slums of London knocks up the daughter of a wealthy British manufacturer. The action shows us his cheeky, protected climb up the corporate ladder at the same time that he's traveling the world and seducing "typical" women abroad. He is clever and glib, but he's an amoral little cad who badly neglects his wife Evie (Carole Hofstad) and his second daughter Susan (Nicole Bennett). As his end approaches, he realizes that he has never loved anyone but himself (cue: What Kind of Fool Am I?).
Newley was an impoverished Cockney of Jewish ancestry who got into acting school only because he accepted employment there as an office boy. Noticed by a producer to whom he was serving tea, Newley was cast in a series of roles that led to a career as a film regular and a pop singer. He was a notorious womanizer. In the words of his Wikipedia biography,"Newley was known for his dalliances, which included Diana Dors, Barbra Streisand, and chorus girls too numerous to mention."
The morality play shows Littlechap's rise and near comeuppance. As Littlechap realizes and regrets his shortcomings, there's a moment of near repentence: we see a mysterious Man With A Black Umbrella enfolding him and pulling him through a curtain, an image directly drawn from medieval mystery plays. Littlechap being Littlechap, he appears to slip from hell's clutches and to bounce out to entertain us once more on stage.
Morality plays inevitably use stereotypes. Newley's choices for these were spot on for Britain of the early 1960s but they appear thin to us today. The United Kingdom had lost its empire and was a bleak scene at the time, riven by class differences. On the international scene the UK seemed little more than a geeky little brother. In Littlechap's industrial sales trips abroad, he meets, tangles and tangos with Britain's nemeses: Anya the rich-vowelled Russian cold warrior, played with delicious camp by Amber Lackey, who looms over the little chap; Ilse the appalling blond pigtailed strutting Nazi, played by Dawn Youngs; and Ginnie, Julie Dearrington's cute send-up of the seductive, tiny-voiced Marilyn Monroe.
Stop The World, I Want To Get Off is a sprightly entertainment, but one with references and nuances that probably puzzled younger members of the cast at first. Those of us with a few wrinkles had the opportunity to smile at the time warp and to hum some of those Newley ballads afterward. Indeed, what kind of fools were we? And how much have things changed for the little chaps of today?
Thanks to the Wimberley Players for receiving me so enthusiastically, especially to Judith Laird, Linda Addeo, and director Jay Jennings. Jim Gillock kindly provided the images for the show and for this review, and he checked to make sure they were received!
EXTRA
Click to view program for Stop The World, I Want To Get Off by Wimberley Players
Stop The World, I Want to Get Off
by Anthony Newley
Wimberley Players
