Ruthless

Everybody is ruthless in Ruthless, but some are more ruthless than others.  Naturally the most ruthless wins.  This musical is about How to Succeed in (Show) Business by scheming, by making your own opportunities, eliminating rivals, and, yes, having some talent. 

Eight-year-old precocious, obsessively ambitious, tap-dancing Tina Denmark (Luisa Oro) is talented – so much so that her mother, Judy (Britni Leslie) only gets to answer the phone – just Tina’s Mom – and has to stifle jealousy.  Then agent and would-be impresario Sylvia St Croix (Dolly Diamond, drag queen, dominating the stage) enters their lives, determined to make Tina a Star.  Forget school, forget something to fall back on.’  Sylvia’s advice is, ‘Don’t fall back!’  Tina is desperate to take the lead role of Pippi Longstocking in the school play…  Why?  ‘It’s a lead!’

Tina’s rival, Louise Lerman (natural comedienne Olivia Charalambou) is dumpy, clumsy and untalented, but her parents are major donors, so their teacher Miss Thorn (an absolutely stand-out Stephanie Astrid John), a case of thwarted ambition and talent denied too – has to choose.  She hates children, but she needs the job.

While almost anybody can enjoy Ruthless, music theatre aficionados/tragics will get a much bigger buzz.  In its way, Ruthless is one long in-joke about the tropes, surprise reveals, choreography (Michelle David), classic characters and classic songs of musical theatre – plus knowing nods to other fabled melodramas of the past.  Here, we find twisted echoes of Gypsy, and of Mame – and of, perhaps, Mildred Pierce, but certainly All About Eve.  (There is an on-the-make character called ‘Eve’ (Olivia Charalambou hilarious again) in Act II, just so we get it.)

Here, Damian Jones’ Act I set of an all pastel ever-so-nice American home and Britni Leslie’s fluffy, full skirt costumes contrast sharply with the nastiness, ambition, sadness and, well, ruthlessness brewing beneath the Ladies Home Journal surface. 

Act II darkens the mood and set and costume go with it – all blacks and browns, moody lighting (Jason Bovaid), furs and silk.  A strange touch here is that Sylvia, such a catalyst and motivator in Act I, is somewhat sidelined – but by then the raging and ruthless ambitions of others sweep all before it.

First produced in 1992, then ‘streamlined’ in 2015, Ruthless has been a sure-fire hit elsewhere and is so now at the Alex Theatre in St Kilda.  In a sense, Ruthless was old even when it was new.  Almost every one of Marvin Laird’s songs (lyrics By Joel Paley) trembles knowingly on the brink of another well-known song from another (better?) musical – Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, et al.  Tongue even more firmly in cheek, there’s theatre critic Litta Encore (Emma Claire Waxman) who declares, ‘I Hate Musicals’. 

Director Chelsea Matheson knows exactly what she’s got on her hands with Ruthless and she doesn’t for a moment try to soften, make credible or dilute just what this show is – a send-up or spoof it may be, but it’s also a tribute and everyone involved goes for broke. 

Michael Brindley