WHEN American playwright Neil Simon, who is renowned for his comedies, decided to adapt a well-regarded 1957 Italian film into a stage musical set in New York, people wondered whether it would be worth seeing.
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And, as things turned out, the musical, Sweet Charity, has been a global hit since it premiered in New York in 1966.
A 2014 Sydney revival, which was the first production by the new Hayes Theatre Company, was so popular that it transferred from the Hayes venue to the Sydney Opera House Playhouse Theatre for an extra three-week run. It then toured to Canberra, Melbourne and Wollongong.
The popularity of the show has made it a hit with people aged from the teens. And the enthusiasm that young theatre performers have for Sweet Charity certainly came out when I chatted to the people aged 15 to 18 who are appearing in a Hunter Drama production that will be presented at Newcastle's Civic Playhouse from Thursday, October 22 to Saturday, October 24.
Unsurprisingly, the Hunter Drama staging sold out well in advance, with people who couldn't get tickets hoping that the COVID-19 restriction of having only 50 per cent of seats available to try to stop people from getting the coronavirus is removed before the show opens.
The Hunter Drama production has two alternating casts, with a total of 34 performers, drawn from its Senior Musical Theatre classes. Musical theatre teacher Alison Hodge is the director.
Charity is played by Amelia Carpenter in the Charity cast (Friday and Saturday, at 7pm) and by Imogen Downing-Donnelly in the Sweet cast (Thursday, 7pm, Saturday, 2pm).
Amelia points to Charity as "brimming with life, with more inside than meets the eye". And Imogen notes that she is "misunderstood".
The Italian film that was the basis of the storyline, Nights of Cabiria, looks at the ups and downs of an ever-hopeful prostitute.
Neil Simon, however, made his Charity a so-called taxi dancer, who has very different experiences with each of the men she meets.
The term "taxi dancer" is a reference to dancers who could be hired to perform at weddings, meetings and other events, with taxis taking them between the dance hall where they were based and the venue where they had to dance.
Luke Barker, who plays Oscar, one of the men who get to interact with Charity, points to their meeting in a lift which breaks down, with them being the only occupants, as being an enlightened moment in his life, as he is having all sorts of problems in his job as a tax accountant. And he is the one who eventually refers to her as Sweet Charity.
The first man that audiences see is her current boyfriend, who pushes her into a lake in New York's Central Park after stealing something from her. Passers-by ignore her calls for help, with another young man subsequently rescuing her.
She later meets an Italian film star, Vittorio Vidal, with unexpected things happening in their get-together.
Many of the places that Charity goes to, by herself or with others, have smile-raising names.
One is The Rhythm of Life Church, which turns out to have a hippie culture. Not that Charity takes much notice of this, because the place where she works is known as The Fandango Ballroom. And she and Oscar visit Coney Island Amusement Park, which is a real place, with a threatening incident involving a parachute happening, but with it appropriately being very amusing.
Neil Simon persuaded musician Cy Coleman and lyricist Dorothy Fields to put together a bright range of songs. And many of them are still performed at concerts.
They include Big Spender, with the girls at the Fandango Ballroom trying to get the attention of the visiting males, If My Friends Could See Me Now, with Charity noting that she has good fortune, The Rhythm of Life, which is eagerly sung in the supposed church of that name, and There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This, with Charity and two other dancehall girls reflecting on how much more engaging their lives could be if they didn't have to be taxi dancers.
The story also has the characters experiencing unexpected things, such as the life-threatening accident Charity and Oscar have taking part in the supposedly enjoyable parachute jump.
Unsurprisingly, Sweet Charity has been a major award-winner.
While the original New York production only received one Tony Award award - going to Bob Fosse for Best Choreography - it was competing with two other major new shows that year: Man of La Mancha and Mame.
But, since then, it has been a major global award winner, with a 1986 Broadway revival winning four Tonys, including Best Revival, and trophies for the leading actor and actress, and the costume design. And the 2014 Sydney revival collected three Helpmann Awards, including Best Direction of a Musical.
FRINGE FESTIVAL INFO SESSION
THE 2021 Newcastle Fringe Festival production team will hold an information and Q&A session at one of the event's venues, Carrington Bowling Club, this Sunday, October 11, from 1pm to 2pm.
Applications to present shows at the festival close on November 13, with the event being held from March 17 to 21.
The bowling club is at 1C North Cowper Street, Carrington.