Review: Stand by Me
Timeless cavalcade of hits
SHOW MUSICAL
Stand By Me
Music: Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller. Conductor and arrangements: Lasse Hirvi. Choreography and direction: Tuomo Luhtanen. Artistic planning: Jukka Virtanen. Set design: Oskari Torvinen. Costumes: Sari Salmela. Lighting: Kari Leppälä. Sound: Mauri Siirala. Cast: Caron Barnes, Marjo Leinonen, Sasu Moilanen, Nina Tapio, Gary Revel jr, Charles Salter/Mikko Vihma, Sami Saari, Aki Sirkesalo, Marika Tuhkala. Helsinki City Theatre. Premiere at the Savoy Theatre 4.2.
You take a hefty dose of blues, a slightly smaller dose of rockabilly, mix in a reasonable amount of rhythm & blues and spice it up with a handful of country & western and a splash of swing. What do you get then?
Well, nothing less than rock & roll. But of course, the boys Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had no idea about that when they were involved in creating the genre in the early 50s. They were just trying to make “good rhythm and blues”. Of course, our white boys could not dream of what a commercial hit the “black” music they concocted would one day become.
Today we know better. Rock & roll didn’t just come to stay, it came to permeate a lot of all the “light music” that was created thereafter, the pair horses Leiber & Stoller became the foremost songwriters before Lennon & McCartney – according to many even after them – and their immortal earrings came to be performed by such not entirely unknown talents as e.g. Elvis, The Coasters, Drifters, Ben E. King and the Beatles.
High-quality singing
It says something about the strength and timelessness of Leiber & Stoller’s songs that it is possible to enthrall an audience for a couple of hours without the addition of any actual external ingredients other than the visual element. The music itself is enough, especially when it is performed with such virtuosity and geist as in the song and dance performance Stand By Me.
Tuomo Luhtanen has choreographed with a light hand, adapted to amateurs in the field, but without compromising on the possibilities of positive kinetic energy, and Sari Salmela’s ingeniously varied, period costumes add an extra little silver lining to the aesthetic whole.
Thankfully, no intrigue has been woven, but the music is allowed to roll on under its own weight, a bit like a collective concert – “show” it is called – to the accompaniment of conductor Lasse Hirvi’s enormously competently executed arrangements, at least as competently performed by his well-oiled septet.
The high-class cast sang and acted with life and desire and a hefty dose of know-how, whether it was a solo number or, why not, a male a cappella quintet. Vocally, Caron Barnes was in a class of his own, while our homespun “soul king” Sami Saari turned out to have an unresolved comedian within him.
Hirvi had, with a great deal of effort and trouble, selected about thirty songs from the rich production and he could have easily doubled the amount without any fluctuation in the level of quality.
However, the sample we heard now sat well, the variation was sufficient and of course we got to hear all the classic melodies – some in ingenious fresh Finnish language costumes signed by e.g. Aki Sirkesalo – from On Broadway via Three Cool Cats, Hound Dog, Love Potion # 9, King Creole, Jailhouse Rock, Ruby Baby and Trouble and culminating in the “signature”, Stand By Me.
That’s what I call a hit qualade that’s good enough.