Hyperstitional Madness: Kubrickean Delirium
Harry Bailey
The Times
August 21, 2008
Stan the Man at Musical Theatre@George Square, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dominic Maxwell
It starts with a singsong at a masked orgy and ends, 60 toe-tapping,
mind-bending minutes later, with a soaring production number in which
a character is symbolically reborn as a starchild floating in space.
In between, Stan the Man does for the life and works of Stanley
Kubrick what We Will Rock You did for the works of Queen. Well, sort
of. Sure, this show riffs on ideas suggested by the American film-
maker’s greatest hits: Dr Strangelove, The Shining, 2001: A Space
Odyssey, etc. It plays on ideas about perfectionism and control:
Kubrick was famously demanding, and rarely left his home. But,
crucially, it has an emotional, metaphysical and musical agenda of its
own.
The time? Now. The setting? Out of season at Kubrick Court, a hotel
converted from Kubrick’s sprawling Hertfordshire home. An ambitious
young theatre director, Katie Sawbrick, is there with her cast to do
final rehearsals on Kubrick’s Rubrik, her musical devoted to the film
director’s life and works.
But why do the hotel lifts keep filling with blood? Who is the
mysterious hotel porter who keeps butting in with suggestions? Will
the members of the Kubrick estate, due to arrive to decide whether the
show is fit for the West End, like what they see? Or have Sawbrick’s
issues with her own late father, who died the same day as Kubrick in
1999, poisoned her views of Kubrick – and of all men?
The set-pieces are extraordinary, no question. One number, recalling
Kubrick’s days as a chess hustler, is good enough to make Tim Rice and
the boys from Abba weep. But if that’s all that Stan the Man were
about, it would just be Mamma Mia! with spacewalks. Instead, its
creators, Showstoppers Musicals, use this mind-bending yarn to explore
ideas of perfectionism, control and letting go. They flirt with the
supernatural. But the real ghosts, they suggest, are the ones we let
haunt our heads.
No praise is too high for the cast, who jump between characters and
musical genres as the finely honed script – nine years in the writing
– demands of them. What might just be some tediously clever-clever
concept is turned into something with a life of its own. It’s their
path to glory. Watch them take it.
Tonight: George Square Theatre 0131-662 8740
— NB: This review is a complete fabrication. Stan the Man does not
exist. Or it doesn’t until tonight, when Showstoppers Musicals,
directed by Ken Campbell, will turn this review into a one-off,
improvised musical. Campbell and the cast have been told not to read
the paper today: they will hear this review for the first time at 11pm
tonight, then improvise a show around it. The season continues, with
other fake reviews, until Sunday.