Hard Times Hit Parade: a marathon about a marathon
The concept of the Hard Times Hit Parade is innovative and original. Set during the height of the great depression, it depicts a society that will sacrifice their well-being and their personal relationships in the hopes of winning some cold hard cash. In this case the challenge is a dance marathon and this particular marathon goes on for more than five months. However, the brilliance of the original idea is lost along the way when the show goes off on too many tangents. Coming in at just under two-and-a-half hours the show is not only a marathon for the performers, it is a marathon for the audience. As someone who has recently discovered the benefits of working with an editor, I can assure you that sometimes less is really more.
The Hit Parade script was originally written as a screenplay by Katherine Single-Dain, the director of the Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret. Her story introduces us to a huge cast of characters – including the sixteen dancers in the marathon, a host, a band, a referee, and a government official who is concerned about the sin that occurs in these types of environments. Upon taking our seats, we were immediately transported to a 1930s community dance hall, packed into the bleachers and offered popcorn and beer by the performers. I settled down to read my copy of The Hard Times, the cleverly titled newspaper which featured articles on the marathon, the economy, and the performers. The dance marathon contestants began to fill the space and they introduced themselves to us one by one. They threw dirty looks at their competition, they practiced their moves with their partners, and some single women looked for dance partners.
The performance began on a high note with an introduction by our magical host Uncle Rex (played with ease by David McMurray-Smith) and with music from the fantastic Maria In The Shower. Their jazzed up soundtrack was the perfect compliment to the performance, and they seemed capable of anything. The lead singer was incredibly dynamic, and played the accordion and the trumpet (sometimes at the same time.) Throughout the evening he appeared in drag and at one point even climbed up onto the upright bass to play his trumpet. They were the audible glue that held the show together, regardless of how many plot devices occurred.
The performers entered the space enthusiastically and performed a wonderful social dance that got the night off to an energetic start that the show never seemed able to recapture. We were then treated to the list of rules by the referee. The first rule indicated the marathons very strict guidelines – contestants must be moving at all times, with a seven-minute break every hour. As the list of rules continued it got increasingly hilarious – Rule #7 stated that contestants were not allowed to keep ferrets in their pants.
Single-Dain has a long list of previous projects under her belt, and it’s clear she’s made a lot of friends in the performance world. It became obvious that she had tried to make room for all of them in this show. Because of this, the evening quickly became weighted down with backstories that didn’t seem essential to the shows trajectory. The audience had trouble connecting with every character on a deep level. The best characterizations here were the ones depicted by consistent actions by the performers. Gertie Pearlman (the effervescent Sarah Ballard) and her partner Guy Holden (Alastair Knowles) were a perfect example of this – about four times throughout the show the host would announce another one of their sponsorship deals, and they would perform the advertisement with gymnastic levels of ability and excitement. These sponsors included Sampson's Silk Stockings (‘the silk made me do it’), Family Bleach (‘wash away your sins’), and Gin & Sons (‘if it hasn't worked yet - double your dosage!’) These two were in it to win it and were an absolute joy to watch - a lucky thing because they drew my attention for a large portion of the show. The character of Cordelia was another one of the shows highlights but sadly she was the first to depart the competition, after failing to find a suitable gentleman to be her partner. The narcissistic Marla Dean (Candice Curlypaws) seemed to have the most solo material of anyone. This made sense in the context of the show – her character was convinced she was born to be a star. But, in a show already overflowing with characters, hers irked me more than anything else. Near the end of the first half of the show, she became exhausted and had a hallucination of herself winning the contest. This sequence is hysterical, and also leads to her dismissal from the marathon. One of my favourite moments of the shows happened then – after Marla was removed from the hall by force, one of the other characters shouted out "who was that?" proving her delusions of grandeur were just that.
By this point we were already thirty days into the competition and we still had six and a half pairs of dancers (Marla's partner Charlie, played by David Yates, adopts a coat hanger to be his dance partner.) The issue of a character imagining a finale before the first act had even finished (we did not find out until after her hallucination ended that it was all happening in her mind) was that as an audience we'd already experienced a possible ending. When I began to think the show was almost over, it made the rest of the events seem to drag on.
The contestants were exhausted after a straight month of dancing, and the band was exhausted after a month of playing. The music slowed down and so did the show’s momentum. I assumed the best way to end a dance marathon would be to keep the dancers moving quickly to tire them out sooner, but the show prefers to lead us on into scenes that all landed between the creepy (the remaining 6 contestants had life size dolls attached to them,) the unnecessary (a duo of girls entered and sang a lovely ballad for no apparent reason,) and the bizarre (the producers of the marathon, Fly By Night Productions, decided a wedding would keep the radio audience listening so they trick two of the performers into getting engaged.) Though these scenes were creative and well executed, they draw us too far away from the original concept. The members of the bridal party at the wedding were no longer dancing, violating the first and most important rule of the competition – the whole reason they were there in the first place. Therefore, they should all have been disqualified then and there. This fact is overlooked by the ensemble, and seems to throw away the whole idea of the piece. These performers aren’t actually exhausted, they’ve been instructed to act tired and they need a more specific direction.
I've since been told that the performance doesn't always end the same way. The ending last night came when the government official outlawed the existence of dance marathons. It was announced that this ruling would come into effect at midnight, which was just minutes away. This revelation caused the band to play an up-tempo song for the first time in far too long, but even this didn’t inspire the competitors to dance. The 6 remaining bodies fell to the ground in sadness, as their months and months of dancing seemed to have been for nothing. Luckily for them, this happened just before the stroke of midnight before the banning of the marathon came into effect, so they all won. This felt like a cop-out to me, and seemed even less effective when the prize for winning was never even announced. As much as I hoped and hoped for another high-energy moment like the one the show opened with, it never came.
The evening is full of fantastic imagery. The video projections that opened and closed the show gave me absolute confidence that when Hard Times hits the big screen (on their off days, the cast is working on filming a version of the piece) it will be an event worth witnessing. The projections included looks into the minds of the performers, what was happening backstage during the seven-minute breaks, and what happened to the cast after the marathon had ended. These were hilarious, and the documentary style presentation helped poke fun at modern day reality TV shows as the producer interference alluded to earlier on in the evening.
The show was jam-packed with mindblowing moments – one male contestant performed a circus act inside a giant hula hoop. Though this sequence seemed poorly rehearsed, it offered a few of the night's most exciting images. There were hilarious running jokes – no one seemed to be able to remember what Melvin Mervyn's real name was. Even more hysterical were the names of the dance challenges within the marathon – I wanted to see The Slippery Fish and Leapfrog The Unicorn. These moments did their best to brighten the way to the anti-climactic finish. They also helped the show stay away from feeling pretentious.
One especially poignant moment came near the end when the one lesbian couple in the contest decided to leave the competition – their reason? "It's just not fun anymore." This thought seemed to echo my sentiments exactly. Even though Hard Times boasts one of the most original concepts I’ve seen in recent memory and the cast is stellar in every way, it runs about an hour too long and the show buckles under the weight of its own ambitions.