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"Guns-n-Flowers" ® Gunsnflowers web design ©
| Paradise City Theatre: Panties Productions Directed by: Belinda Cornish Starring: Celina Stachow, Jocelyn Ahlf, Dana Wyley, Brianna Buckmaster, Jesse Gervais, Andrew Bursey, Tom Edwards, Garret Ross, Dana Andersen Where: Varscona Theatre Running: Thursday through April 20 Tickets: 433-3399 - - - EDMONTON - Strapped in the chair of the city's gas chamber Why I'm here I can't quite remember ... -- Paradise City, by Guns N' Roses Musical theatre doesn't always find its muses in the warm nooks of modern life where June and Moon are rhyming away. Even so, the collaborations of Axl Rose, Slash, Duff and the boys constitute something of a departure, possibly a test case, for the form. Witness Paradise City, the new metallic musical opening Thursday on the Varscona stage, and unchaining in the process a theatre program credit you've never seen before ("music and lyrics by Guns N' Roses") and a whole bunch of GN'R songs "like you've never heard them." This is, as Jocelyn Ahlf points out, "the kind of show boys would normally be producing." Instead, Paradise City is a production created by Edmonton's popular new five-female theatre co-op, the Panties, supplemented by a full complement of Manties, a cluster of the town's hottest male performers including Jesse Gervais, Andrew Bursey, Tom Edwards and Dana Andersen as "The Truck Driver." Belinda Cornish, who wrote the show and directs it, explains that Paradise City was one of those "wouldn't it be funny if ...?" ideas that just wouldn't quit. "We were messing around, jamming in the dressing room before Chimprov (a weekly long-form improv comedy night at the Varscona). Chris Craddock lept into full musical theatre vibrato to do You Could Be Mine," a song with such lyrical ruminations as "you could be mine/ but you're way out of line/ with your bitch slap rappin' and your cocaine tongue/ you get nothing done." "We figured hearing it sung as a loungie, torchy number would be so hilarious," says Ahlf, whose new play Hump! got a Panties Production premiere earlier this season. The idea was instantly a kick; there was a moment when it became irresistible. So, inspired by the way Chimprov is "an idea factory: you think it you do it," Ahlf and Cornish soon "hashed out the beginnings of the plot. ... We wanted to make something more than a one-off joke." It is possible that GN'R will not be replacing songwriting teams like Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hart, and the Gershwin brothers any time soon. But Dana Wylie, to whom fell the task of "reinventing in some fashion" a whole string of Guns N' Roses hits, was surprised by the quality of the songs. "For rock lyrics, they're actually clever!" she discovered. "And when you listen to them the melodies are actually quite nice! I love these tunes now." Because brevity has never been one of Axl's virtues, Wylie has done a lot of "cutting and splicing. "November Rain is an epic," she says. "There's a verse, then an hour goes by, then another verse, with three big classic guitar solos." Unlike her Panties cohorts, who horrified their parents regularly by cranking up the records, English-born Cornish wasn't into Guns N' Roses as an act of rebellion in her teen years. "She had no memories, no attachments," says Ahlf. "So she inserted songs that worked at particular dramatic moments. ... Cheesy is so good in musicals." Cornish reckoned, for example, that You're Crazy, "would work great as an argument between a couple." Set in a hard-core bar where a cute bumpkin (Bursey) arrives and shakes things up, Paradise City transmutes heavy metal into "lovely heartfelt ballads." Sometimes the reverse alchemy happens. Don't Cry, for example, an actual Guns N' Roses love song, is sung by a godfather type to one of his henchmen, as a threat. The song that's had the most startling sea-change for the show, Wylie figures, is My Michelle ("your daddy works in porno now that mommy's not around"), now a soft-shoe number. The title song Paradise City, now a climactic gospel number, is a close second. Source of information = canada.com |
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