Phillip "Pip" Burley — who adapted "The Slipper and the Rose" for the stage — told an excited group of performers on Thursday night, "We've come 6,000 miles to see the show, which is pretty eccentric, really, and it's been worth it."
The occasion followed Hale Centre Theatre's performance on Thursday, the U.S. premiere of "The Slipper and the Rose."
Burley and his wife Christine (who had played Palatine, one of the step-sisters, in one of the first British production a few years back), flew into Salt Lake City on Wednesday to see how the romantic musical was going in its first production on this side of the Atlantic.
The Burleys toured the West Valley City venue and, after learning that the production was double-cast — something not typically done in most theaters — they watched performances on both Wednesday and Thursday nights, meeting both casts in the theater's green room for brief post-show conversations.
"We thoroughly enjoyed it last night (Wednesday) and tonight (Thursday)," he told the cast. "What can I say? I think you all did it beautifully and this show really depends on three things — the fact that it's a great romance, a great comedy and, of course, it has magic. If you get all those three right, then you've got a great show."
Earlier in the evening, during the intermission, Burley said how impressed he was with Hale Centre Theatre's technical wizardry, especially the new "flying" system that brings the Fairy Godmother across the audience and into Cinderella's dreary life.
"In England, we have a strange thing called pantomime," Burley said, "and you probably don't know what they are over here, but they're a bit like 'Cinderella,' except that the men dress up like women and you get television soap stars suddenly turning to the audience and coming out of character and doing their thing — and this is supposed to be for kids.
"But you know kids. They cough and they talk and they chatter and they lose their concentration. But they don't with this. There were a lot of children here tonight . . . little children, maybe 2 or 3 years old, and that sat there completely taken in by it.
"You know, there's this contract between the performers and an audience. The contract is that you maintain the illusion and the audience buys it — and that's what this show does."
Burley congratulated the cast and director Bruce Bredeson on creating "a wonderful piece of illusion. Once the audience gets into it, they go right on to the very end."
He noted that the whole show "depends on Cinderella and the Prince and their relationship. If you don't believe they can fall in love with each other, then the whole show is meaningless. And I just thought you did tremendously well."
During a question-and-answer period with the actors, one of the performers asked what Burley thought about their British accents.
After a burst of laughter from the group, Burley said they didn't really have to worry about using any kind of "proper" accents or dialects for "The Slipper and the Rose," because it's set in the fictional European country of Euphrania. "And none of us really knows how Eupranians would talk."
Then he added,"And I'm sure our American accents are no better than your English ones. l was brought up on a diet of American films and American shows"
Another cast member asked if Burley had collaborated with the Sherman brothers — Richard and Robert — who wrote the score for the popular 1976 film version. Burley said that he didn't really work that closely with them. The score had already been written and it was just a matter of working the songs into a stage setting.
"You'll never find out from them who writes the music and who writes the lyrics," he added, as both brothers do both.
Burley also said the popularity of Sherman brothers' music is on a roll, with stage versions of "Mary Poppins" (which recently opened to rave review in London's West End), "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (still playing in London after more than a year, and now also on Broadway) and "The Slipper and the Rose" (which has had 50 to 60 productions throughout Great Britain over the past few years).
Of all the productions, the one at Hale Centre Theatre is the first to be "in the round," which Burley found to be interesting.
Two pluses for HCT's setting are that it's more intimate and it makes for quick, smooth scene changes.
He noted that the show usually requires large sets and lots of scenery. When done in a traditional "proscenium" theater, the act of changing scenery can slow down the action.
He's directed the show twice in England and he noted that every director makes his or her own choices when it comes to staging.
"I might have done things a little differently than Bruce," but he felt that, over all, the Salt Lake production was energetic and nicely staged.
Chatting briefly Friday morning before checking out of their West Valley City motel, Burley said he and his wife were impressed with Salt Lake City's friendliness, he said. They spent part of Wednesday touring Temple Square and the next day visited the Gateway Plaza. "Visiting Salt Lake City isn't something we would normally do. We're not skiers. But this has been a real treat."
E-mail: ivan@desnews.com