Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Tiny Little Town
Theatre Movement Bazaar
Genre: Musical Theatre, Physical Theatre
Venue: Bedlam Theatre
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
The award-winning Theatre Movement Bazaar (TMB) transplants Gogol’s Inspector General to 1970s small-town America. This exuberant musical comedy offers a timely commentary on corruption and cover-ups, from the creators of Big Shot and Grail Project. Tiny Little Town embraces laughter with biting wit, beautiful songs, and energetic physicality.
Adapted by Richard Alger and Tina Kronis, with music by Wes Myers and lyrics by Alger, this new musical is directed and choreographed by Kronis. TMB is renowned for original works that combine dance, text, cinema, and media into complex performances, infusing classic texts with humour, movement, and song.
“We bring classic texts to life through humor, movement, and dance. Our approach allows source material to resonate without stifling playfulness,” says Tina Kronis, Artistic Director. In TIny Little Town, Theatre Movement Bizarre have lit a glorious fire under the musical format.
Review
The town council are in a panic. Rumour has reached this quiet, wretchedly content backwater of America that a government inspector is on the way. The town’s dirty secrets are in serious danger of being exposed, and the mayor and his equally corrupt colleagues are bound for big trouble and probably the clink. Gogol’s classic text is the source for this high-octane musical from Theatre Movement Bazaar.
For well over a decade, Tina Kronis and Richard Alger have lovingly and carefully adapted classic texts and infused them with TMB’s unique approach, rooted in physical theatre. We gave an award to TMB back in 2011 for Anton’s Unclues and highly reviewed other productions such as Grail Project. In Tiny Little Town, much of that earlier work is in evidence as they turn their attention to the form of a ninety-minute musical.
Imagine you spend a long time patiently creating a near perfect sauce that contains everything you know and love about food and cuisine, developed and honed over years, and then pour it into and over your latest dish. That’s what Kronis and Alger have done here. They know how to make entire casts move together, to tightly coalesce around a single movement or musical, physical, or vocal set piece, and then collectively burst apart into individual action. This is a true variety show because there isn’t a second throughout in which something interesting, inventive, quirky, thrilling, funny or fun isn’t happening on stage. And, all the while, the darker themes of Gogol’s Inspector General, are clearly present, like an insistent note in a complex and intersting wine.
The classic form of a Broadway musical is the raw material, the home default, for so much inventiveness, fun, and abandon, physical playfulness, tight choreography, mischief with lyrics and verbal interplay, physical knockabout, sight gags, and sideswipes, that the audience are often whooping with delight, leaning into the sheer spectacle, or just having a lot of damn fun themselves. Yet this musical, all of a piece, coheres properly around Gogol’s satirical story that has stood the test of time. Yes indeed, the glorious concoction, the unique style of many years that is Theatre Movement Bazaar’s signature “flavour”, now in a distilled form, has been poured like an alchemist’s secret ingredient into Tiny Little Town, and they have turned musical lead into shining gold.
Still, it is what I expected. TMB are back at this, the big Fringe, after a number of years. A welcome return, a delighted audience, a standing ovation.
In the melodies and libretto, penned by Wes Myers and Richard Alger, the music draws on Latin beats, but these two are not averse to the insider trading moods of the Casbah. The musical variety is spicy, a strength that allows for foot-tapping, stomping choreography, infused with the occasional Eastern and East European themes to tip a respectful hat to the Gogol original. More traditional Broadway is in the mix, and song placement is wisely put to the service of the evolving theatrical narrative. I did a bit of audience watching – they were loving this, and I sensed an appreciation that the songs were not intervals in the narrative – they advanced it and also helped explore themes arising in that story. In some ways, the stories are commentarties on those themes and the characters before us. These are likeable, sometimes grotesque people. If there is any area for further finessing, it is to decide when character acting bubbles over too much into caricature.
As with previous TMB productions, which have a decent-sized cast on stage, there is too much happening. I only say that in the sense that there is deep complexity here. Performers not at the centre of the action are not just standing around waiting for their turn to move or speak. This is layered complexity in design and direction so, if you go a second time, you’ll notice all kinds of stuff you missed the first time round. This, once again, is a many-footed beast called movement, both together and separate, as every performer has a part to play, something to do, every second of the show.
Transposed to an American backwater town, there is still an uncluttered mainline into the heart of Gogol’s original. The mood, intent, and narrative of Tiny Little Town is that original story treated with love and respect in writing and musical adaptation. Those loyal to the original will not be disappointed. This is Gogol, in spirit, cleverly and appropriately updated, which brings it new and timely relevance, given what is happening across the pond in our more recent times.
Corruption and sleaze bounce back on the mayor and his people with appropriate karmic justice as the town’s leaders get the inspector they deserve. I won’t say any more without leaking spoilers into this review. But that core conceit makes for much of the story’s comedy, and the satire is well handled as our inspector and his sidekick here hold up an ironic mirror to the town’s leaders, who panic at their comfy game being finally up. Character comedy adds to the physical clowning, individual and collective gesturing, with the cast often assuming the role of chorus, surrounding individual or smaller group set pieces. This is tightly crafted and masterclass movement-based musical theatre. That’s the cuisine that is TMB. It is indeed a bar, setting out its stall of shiny, valuable, intriguing, and interesting things. What creates the excellence is the synergy, the tight discipline in direction, script, and skills of this troupe.
Tiny Little Town, when all is said and done, has many of the elements of a traditional, expected Broadway musical. Its depth lies in the political finger-poking and parody at the heart of Gogol’s original story, and the successful transposition into an uncomfortably familiar corrupt little American town. Further layers are added in the clever lyrics, well-applied and placed musical styles, razor-sharp script, gag placement and infusion into the basically fun and interesting story. This is a comedy musical that manages to hold gravitas in the themes yet be light entertainment at one and the same time. TMB have done it again. It will sell out at the Fringe just as the mayor and his cronies have done in their Tiny Little Town. Outstanding for its alchemical magic as physical theatre infused into a good ‘ol musical. A must-see, yet again, from Theatre Movement Bazaar.
