Sydney Reviews

Hopson, Robson and Dobson. Sounds like a lyrical law firm but it’s the headline cast of transplanted Broadway show, Anastasia, based on a Disney animation and purporting a plot about an amnesiac Tsarist.

Georgina Hopson plays the title role with the aplomb of a prom queen with a smile she can really get her teeth into. Joshua Robson is Gleb, head over heels hammer and sickle Stalinist, mortified that the object of his affections could be silver spoon silver tail enemy of the State. That is a gun in his pocket and he is pleased to see her.

Rodney Dobson is Vlad, avuncular and nostalgic for pre Revolutionary Russia. Add to Vlad, the younger Dmitri played by Robert Tripolino, desperate to escape Communism and embrace Capitalism, without qualm of capitalising  on a sweet street sweeping amnesiac.

It’s Romanov and a duet, when amnesiac Anya is coached by shysters Dmitry and Vlad to assume the identity of the sole survivor of the Russian royal family executed by Russian revolutionaries in 1917.

The first act plods along with sugary score and lollipop lyrics, resembling a mashup of My Fair Lady and The Producers, with Dmitry and Vlad channelling Higgins and Pickering and Bialystock and Bloom. You half expect to hear Springtime for Stalin or The Rain in Ukraine.

And what’s with the Yank accents. It’s Vlad not Brad, Anya not Janet, Gleb not Jeb!

The second act fairs better thanks to Nancy Hayes as the Dowager Empress, Rhonda Burchmore as her PA, the Countess Lily and a marvellous mini production of Swan Lake led by Sophia Bae.

Apart from the Tchaikovsky sample, the vanilla lyrics and music gets an uplift with the Kander and Ebb influenced Land of Yesterday, a cabaret club number with all that jazz razzamataz.

Anastasia is a spectacle and the technical prowess is spectacular, the lighting and back projections, the mechanical revolves and railroad carriages startlingly executed.

One might conclude a hit and myth.