Now for my third review of this Broadway trip and my first matinee after starting this review site. Which means that it is a two show day for my last whole day in New York. The first show is “Water for elephants the musical” which is currently playing at the Imperial theatre. Which opened on 21st March 2024 and is set to close its broadway run on 8th December 2024 before embarking on a US tour.
This show is based on the 2006 Novel by Sara Green which again I have not read or even aware of the story, so once again entered the theatre for the 13:00 start and took my seat in Orchestra Row L seat 104 not knowing anything about the story. This musical production has music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co and a has a running time of 2 hours and forty minutes.
The show starts within a modern day circus and Mr Jankowski (Christopher Russo) who begins to regale the current circus workers the story’s of his past. We are then transported back to 1930s where a young Mr Jankowski, Jacob Jankowski (Kyle Selig) jumps on a train out of town. Without being aware that it is a circus train of the famous Benzini circus. After some convincing Jacob gets to stay a night so he can head out of town. It quickly transpires that Jacob is a nearly fully qualified vet after having to miss the final exams due to his vet father and mother dying in car crash. The circus ring leader and boss August (Paul Alexander Nolan) persuades Jacob to join the circus as their vet to look after the vast array of animals that made up the 1930s circus show. Jacob meets the circus leaders star of the show and wife Marlena (Isabelle McCalla) and her horse. Shortly after due to the poor work conditions the horse has to be put down by Jacob. This results in August having to find a new star of the show and buys the first available animal which happens to be an elephant named Rosie. While attempting to train Rosie, Jacob and Marlena start to fall in love. The first act concludes with the realisation that Rosie can perform when spoken to in Polish. A grand reveal of the whole elephant concludes the first act.
The second act involves a successes story of the new star act with Rosie. Jacob is treated to lavish parties with August and Marlena. Even though he has a new star act August continues to mistreat both Rosie and Marlena. Both Marlena and Jacob grow closer while Jacob tries to break it off for the sake of the whole circus. This is unsuccessful and August finds out about the affair and demands his right hand man Wade (Wade McCollum) to get rid of Jacob and his friends Walter the clown (Michael Mendez) and Cam (Stan Brown). Both of these were the reason Jacob was accepted on the circus train in the first place. As Jacob is with Marlena off the train, Wade continues to get rid off (Kill) Walter and Cam. The show crescendos with a large stampede of all the animals believed to have been caused by Wade due to the guilt. This stampede goes down as the greatest circus disaster of all time and destroys and kills everyone apart from Jacob, Marlena and Rosie. Who in the aftermath continue to live together for the 50 years before Marlena dies. We then rejoin at modern time in which Mr Jankowski is offered to join the new circus show and get out of his nursing home and join the circus again.
Now for the theatre review part.
First of all the set and props, which were surprisingly lacking for a broadway show. There was very little set design as a whole providing a very basic staging. However this show was not relying on the staging to give impact. This type of staging means that this production is very well suited to a tour production as mentioned at the start this is the next stage of this production life. This means that the touring audience will not actually miss out on any of the staging from the Broadway production. The main set/props are two scaffolding towers which are used to replicate the train. This is done very effectively due to the actors movement and lighting.
Lighting is a huge part of this production and is used instead of set design to set the scenes. As well as stage lighting, the use of shadows are very impressively used throughout this production. Not only in order to set scenes but also to portray the animals and scales very effectively.
The use of puppetry throughout this whole production is brilliant. Due to the vast amount of animals needed for the circus a few are portrayed by actors in suits but the rest are all puppets controlled by the actors. The use of these puppets for me rivals War horse and Lion King. Camel’s dog which is handled and controlled by a number of the cast is very impressive along with the other animals that make up the circus crew. However the stand out has to be Rosie the elephant herself. Who for most of the first half was only portrayed by a trunk or a leg here and there had its grand reveal at the end of act one. This reveal reminded me of the King Kong musical reveal which causes the American broadway audience to have an audible reaction. In this case of large cheers and applause. Very much like war horse you forget that Rosie is in fact a puppet and start treating her like a part of the cast as you start to feel compassion for her.
Not only is the puppetry amazing the use of physical theatre and especially acrobatics and circus style performers were breath taking. Instead of the ensemble having normal dance breaks and or supporting the songs and main characters. For most parts of the production the ensemble who I am going to call he circus performers from now on. These circus performers were the main characters and the main point of interest for the show. I really like how it replaced dance routines with circus/acrobatic routines. Unlike cirque du soleil which I have seen their Broadway show Paramour amany years ago. The routines themselves were not the purpose they symbolised and supported the show and the story. For example the death of the horse in act one is portrayed by an amazing aerial acrobatic routine performed by Nick Zelle. The whole production relied on physical theatre in which even the title principal performers of Isabelle and Kyle had to partipate in as well as perform brilliantly vocally. I can only imagine of the extra training they had to undertake in order to complete this successfully.
Before I move onto the music and lyrics and then the performers. I have to touch on some of the amazing transitions that occurred. It was these transitions that moved the show from the 1930s to modern day. They were so obvious but seamless at the same time. With either a simple light transition. Or one transition which consisted of Paul Alexander Nolan physically transitioning between August and the modern day character of Charlie by literally stepping out of the ring master costume while leaving it floating in the middle of the stage being supported by the rest of the cast.
Now for the music and lyrics and musical part of the musical theatre. For me this was not a major part of the production and unlike normal musical theatre shows, the show was not relying on the songs to progress the story, instead to just accompany it. This becomes more obvious when you look at the cast recording which is available on all major platforms. As it only has 19 songs around an hour of content for a two hour and forty minute show. I personally don’t think this impacted the production as it was relying more on the physical theatre than the songs. However I was a little disappointed as I expected a broadway musical. But it did not distract from the show at all. Having said that there were some stand out songs and musical performers. One came from Wade and his a capella country esc accompany in songs such as The road Dont make you you young. Even though it was not as in keeping with the rest of the show, i really did enjoy it. My favourite track has to be Isabelle singing “What do you do”.
Overall this was a great Broadway show not necessarily the best Musical theatre show I have seen. But the physical theatre and acrobat performances make it a great show and I recommend seeing if you can on tour or if we are luckily enough for it to come to the UK. I expect not initially West End but possible a touring production.
I give this production 3 out of 5 stars. A great story with amazing physical theatre and acrobatics with a bit of musical theatre thrown in. Not a standard broadway musical but still worth a watch.
Further information of “Water for Elephants” can be found on their website.
A SPURDLE reviews 