Miss Congeniality: The Unauthorised Concert Musical is an idea so good that you wonder why no one has thought of it before.
Perhaps they have? This version is, per its title, unofficial, and such shows tend to remain somewhat under the radar, especially if the IP holder is reluctant to license an official version.
The biggest issue that performance company Jencapella are up against here is that the original film has a running time of around 1 hour and 50 minutes. Here, the creative team has decided to condense the action to a mere 50 minutes. Therefore, numerous decisions have had to be made about what from the film to include and what to omit. The addition of music is also a factor, as a scene that could be thirty seconds on screen could be expected to be longer when adapted to a musical form.
For anyone who has missed out on the Sandra Bullock-starring cult classic, a summary: Grace Hart is an FBI officer. An undercover operation goes wrong, and Hart ends up sidelined by her colleagues, placed on coffee duty. One of the FBI’s cases concerns ongoing threats being received from a person calling themselves ‘The Citizen’. Hart realises that the ‘Miss United States’ beauty pageant is the intended target of the threats, and is dispatched to be plucked, tucked and sucked into a Vera Wang dress and high heels, to be ‘Miss New Jersey’ in the final of the contest.
Assisted by Victor (Michael Caine), Hart, now masquerading as ‘Gracie-Lou Freebush’, is shuffled through the competition, via a number of comedic scenes, including an interview with one of the hosts, Stan (William Shatner). Grace eventually saves the day, and, after the dust has settled, is awarded the ‘Miss Congeniality’ sash, for being the most pleasant and helpful contestant.
It’s a great movie that both critiques beauty contests and shows that the contestants are real women, with exterior lives and concerns, and that the contest really is a ‘scholarship programme’.
This musical version, therefore, has a fair amount of ground to cover. There have also obviously had to be decisions made about how many people to bring to Edinburgh, meaning that we’re down to just Grace and three other contestants in the beauty pageant. The team have done well to give some of the film’s female characters a more developed backstory than they had previously, and if this musical is going to be expanded, there’s some lovely initial work here that can be built upon.
One of the aspects which made the original movie so endearing was the quiet diversity on display. The pageant contestants weren’t all under the age of twenty and were of a mix of ethnicities. Infamously, Miss New York was a lesbian, and Grace had a subtle romance with her colleague Eric. Here, this is not the case. We accept that this may be due to the makeup of the company generally, but there’s really no excuse to have eliminated the queer content, especially given how fleeting it is in the original.
The songs do appear to be well-written, and there’s a nice bookending, with the final song ‘One of the Girls’, mirroring the show-opener, ‘One of the Boys’. We say appear, because, as is becoming a feature at this year’s Fringe, the track is too loud for the unamplified voices to be heard over. This leads to some straining, and members of the ensemble join in from backstage, creating the somewhat strange effect of a black drape appearing to be singing at you.
There’s been a good attempt at retaining all the important plot points, and there is also enough time for the infamous ‘you only need a light jacket’ moment. The actors playing Kathy and Stan are having a lot of fun and have a great rapport. It probably will help if you’re familiar with the original movie. So much has had to be edited out that you really need to know who most of the characters are in advance.
Overall, this is a good idea that could do with some finessing in terms of the delivery.
Miss Congeniality: The Unauthorised Concert Musical continues at 10:30 am in the Annexe at The Space @ Symposium Hall, daily until August 9.
