Shrek just keeps on giving, doesn’t he? We can’t get over the ogre. DreamWorks’ first spoof fairytale animation appeared in 2001, with Mike Myers voicing the truculent emerald antihero, Eddie Murphy as his garrulous Donkey companion and Cameron Diaz as the combative Princess Fiona. There have been four sequels so far with a fifth just announced, plus the Puss in Boots spinoffs.
In 2008 it was turned into a Broadway musical by David Lindsay-Abaire (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesoro (music) which came to the West End in 2011. Now it’s back in London, remounted at the cavernous Eventim after a regional tour. Though cheerfully well-meaning, and likely to find a captive family audience for the summer holidays, it’s pretty lame.
In theory Shrek should be a surefire candidate for musical adaptation: the original movie had a score full of pop hits and the films it pastiched, from Disney and others, are full of mockable tunes. Our theatres brim with shows that have expanded the bankability of existing intellectual properties by adding songs, from Back to the Future to Mrs Doubtfire. Unfortunately, this feels less like the reinvention of a much-loved classic in a new medium, more like a lazy rip-off.
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The songs are unremarkable, the occasional flashes of wit in the lyrics swamped by inanities: Fiona shares with us that she is “a bit bipolar” but also a “gifted bowler”. Sorry, what? The story has been lightly tinkered with (there’s a joke about Jude Bellingham in there for some reason), but the message that we’re all beautiful in our own way is rammed home. The sets are a skimpy collection of poorly projected animations and flown-in flats inside a cramping frame of thorny branches, designed to reduce the vastness of the Eventim stage.
The direction, by Sam Holmes and Nick Winston, requires the cast to belt out the numbers and the dialogue with panto-style emphasis. Winston’s choreography is all elbows and high-kicks. Sentiment is laid on with a trowel, neutralising all that was sharp and sardonic about the original. The lavatorial humour is also overdone: Princess Fiona soils herself during a farting competition with Shrek, for instance.
I feel sorry for the actors, inevitably stuck doing poor imitations of the original voice cast. In the lead role, Antony Lawrence is lumbered with a fat suit and a mask that makes him virtually expressionless. Todrick Hall has plenty of sass and swagger as Donkey but few witty lines to back him up. As Fiona, Joanne Clifton has to perform one number with a semi-inflated deer, a malfunctioning prop bird and a troupe of tap-dancing rats (don’t ask). All have fine, strong voices but favour volume over comprehensibility.
Shrek was originally based on a children’s book by William Steig, who I presume pinched the name from Max Schreck, the German star of the 1922 film Nosferatu. This latest iteration of the story is truly “schrecklich” – terrible.
Eventim Apollo, to Aug 30; eventimapollo.co.uk
