Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Musical at Hart House Theatre

There is so much opportunity to watch live theatre in Toronto, ranging from the big name shows put on by Mirvish and Dancap, to slightly smaller professional companies such as SoulPepper and Canadian Stage Company, to community theatres like Etobicoke Musical Productions and Curtain Call Players.

Recently we stumbled upon the Hart House Theatre, run by the University of Toronto. They were performing the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, based on the 1988 comedy starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin as a pair of con men in the French Riviera who prey on wealthy women looking for excitement and adventure.

Lawrence is the more experienced, debonaire con artist who pretends to be an exiled foreign prince trying to raise money for a revolution to reclaim his throne. He has the cooperation of a French police inspector named Andre who takes a cut of each scam. Freddy is a small time con who has recently arrived in town and initially looks up to Lawrence as a mentor, but eventually enters into competition with him, with the loser vowing to leave town. Their target is an American heiress named Janet and the competition is to determine which one can first get her to give them $50,000. When they later discover that Janet is not actually an heiress, they change the bet to whether or not Freddy can get her to sleep with him.

The 2005 musical version follows the plot of the movie quite faithfully, but adds some extra scenes and songs for Andre and his developing relationship with Muriel, one of Lawrence's early marks. The appropriately titled first song is a slick jazzy number that quickly establishes Lawrence's style and sophistication, and why he is so successful at his scam, since he is just
"Giving Them What They Want". The women follow with a mock tragic, but actually extremely funny lament about their encounters with the "prince". In "What Was A Woman To Do", they describe him as "Magically long of lash; Tragically short of cash". The theatrical fourth wall is broken when one of the female "ushers" joins in on the song from the audience.

Freddy's first big number is a hilarious rap/rant called "Great Big Stuff" where he rapidly rhymes off all the things he could do if he made as much money as Lawrence. He ends the song with the plea "I just want someone to love me .... for my money!!!".

Freddy's scheme to scam the money from Janet is to pretend to be a pyschosomatically traumatized war veteran who needs therapy to be cured. At one point, Freddy and Janet decide that what he actually needs is love, and they sing the purposely corny and schmaltzy duet "Love is My Legs" which mocks the traditional big ballad love song found in typical romantic musicals.

In my opinion, dramatic musicals rely heavily on the music and orchestrations to set the mood, while a good comedy's success lies primarily in its lyrics. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has witty lyrics that advance the plot and make you laugh out loud as you hear them.

Herein lies the problem with the Hart House Theatre. The acoustics were not the best so we strained to distinguish the words being sung. That many of the characters were speaking with various European accents exasperated the issue. In spite of this, the show was so much fun to watch and the leads were very strong actors with good singing voices.

It was great to see a relatively new musical playing in Toronto and again I feel blessed to live in a city that provides so many opportunities to see different shows. I recently found out that the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is actually a remake of a 1964 David Niven/Marlon Brando/Shirley Jones movie called Bedtime Story. I found a store that rents this movie so I hope to check it out soon.