Paint Your Wagon at Liverpool Everyman
Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor
With a loud crack of a whip, the award-winning Everyman Company open their second season with a major revival of Lerner & Loewe’s Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon.
Paint Your Wagon celebrates the daring, colourful and rowdy world of the California Gold Rush of 1853 and promises to be a toe-tapping and lively family show. With a live band, the show is filled with infectious numbers such as I’m On My Way, There’s a Coach Comin’ In, I Talk to the Tree’s and the smash hit Wandrin’ Star – made famous by Lee Marvin’s version which reached number one in 1970, keeping the Beatles’ Let It Be off the top spot.
Experienced gold miner Ben Rumson stakes his claim to the land in the Californian Hills, founding Rumson Town for him and his young daughter Jennifer to live. With no more than 400 people living in the settlement, rumours of gold veins buried across the land spread. Ambitious and with the motivation to send Jennifer to school on the east coast, Ben works hard to make the town a success, as miners arrive every day in search of gold. But in a world as volatile as this – will Ben be able to keep his community together?
Director Gemma Bodinetz, winner of Best Director at the UK Theatre Awards 2017, and the creative team behind the Company’s whirlwind 2017 production of Fiddler on the Roof are reunited to re-create the same intimate and electric atmosphere of last year’s stunning musical set in-the-round in the Everyman auditorium.
With over forty different characters in the original production, the Everyman Company with a cast of fourteen will play a variety of characters from miners to fandango dancers.
Director Gemma Bodinetz said: “Traditionally performed with over 40 performers, we are having great but exhausting fun doing this great musical justice with just 14. We hope that we are simultaneously true to the joyous spirit of the original, whilst also revealing its gold in a fresh way for a whole new generation of prospecting theatregoers.”
Paint Your Wagon promises to be a sensational hoe-down of a show, a celebration of love and a party with the audience at its heart.
