By Will Cox
Eight years after becoming a huge cult hit, musical The Grinning Man is making its first English-language foray outside the UK in Melbourne.
Indie theatre-maker Salty Theatre is taking on the play and launching it in St Kilda’s Alex Theatre. It’s quite a distance from Melbourne’s inner-city theatre district, where you can currently catch Grease, Wicked, and Chicago. But then again, so is the play.
Maxwell Simon stars in The Grinning Man at the Alex Theatre in St Kilda, Melbourne.Credit: Penny Stephens
Based on the 1869 novel The Man Who Laughs, a lesser-known work by French author Victor Hugo (whose magnum opus Les Miserables also inspired a musical you may have heard of), The Grinning Man follows Grinpayne, an orphan and travelling circus performer with a permanent smile carved into his face. Telling his story every night by puppet show, Grinpayne heads forth into the world to discover his origins and his destiny.
The music is a little bit steampunk, a little bit Balkan. Composer Marc Teitler cites Tom Waits as an influence. “No one can see past my hideous grin,” Grinpayne sings. “I can’t put a name to the monster within.” He has all the hallmarks of a tragic hero and a tortured outsider – a goth Quasimodo (incidentally, also a Victor Hugo character).
Founding director Tom Morris cites the cult 1932 film Freaks, about a travelling circus, as an inspiration. “We wanted to reflect on what a more contemporary version of that story might be,” he says. “Something with real storytelling ambition, but also an outsider feel and an experimental edge.”
The musical originally launched in Bristol, UK, in 2016, receiving critical acclaim. And then something interesting happened.
“The story of an outsider was attractive to people who feel out of step with the society they’re living in.”
Founding director Tom Morris
“We noticed very early on that people started dressing up as Grinpayne and coming back to see it again,” says Morris. “People often do that in London, but not in Bristol.”
The play quickly developed a large, young following.
“This included a lot of people identifying as non-binary or transgender,” says Morris. “It’s not as if it was made to be marketed to any demographic at all, but people just discovered it. The story of an outsider was attractive to people who feel out of step with the society they’re living in.”
“It’s great we have new stuff coming through at this level,” says lead actor Maxwell Simon.Credit: Penny Stephens
Morris has form creating experimental and unconventional works. He’s best known as the director of the stage adaptation of Touching the Void and War Horse, which debuted in London and toured in Melbourne in 2012. As in War Horse, puppetry plays a part. Grinpayne’s backstory is told through puppetry via a show within a show, which becomes a show within a show within a show.
“There’s something that happens to an audience’s imagination when the audience is required to imagine that something that is manifestly not alive, is alive,” says Morris. “In Melbourne, they’re doing the puppetry in very different ways, which will be exciting to see.”
The star of Melbourne’s Grinning Man is Maxwell Simon, who, after supporting turns in Muriel’s Wedding: The Musical and The Boy from Oz, finds himself in a lead role – albeit with a bandage across his face disguising Grinpayne’s frightening visage.
“It limits your expressive ability, and I’m still figuring out how to navigate it,” says Simon. “But [Grinpayne’s] scenes are so epic and ginormous.”
Simon revels in the play’s atypical approach. “It’s got a Tim Burton/Danny Elfman vibe,” he says.
He sees it as more of an indie film than the blockbuster musicals in the city. “There’s still that big commercial stuff, but that’s all a bit repetitive,” he says. “It’s great we have new stuff coming through at this level. It’s risky, it’s quirky, it’s not mainstream.”
Teitler says: “In a way, it’s perfect musical theatre. Musical theatre has that culture of smiling all the time. Well, here’s someone who can only smile.”
Teitler, whose work has been featured in TV shows including Game of Thrones and American Horror Story, is credited with finding the character.
He saw a film poster for the 1928 film adaptation of the novel and was captivated by actor Conrad Veidt’s grotesque, theatrical smile.
It’s not the first time that a striking image of the character has inspired a bit of pop culture. It’s also said to be the inspiration for the comic book supervillain the Joker, who has been endlessly reinvented as a figure of horror and a tragic antihero.
“It’s part of the story of the novel, that people respond to this smile,” says Teitler. “It’s the most beautiful thing. It’s bigger than us. It’s spoken to people in ways we hadn’t expected. They identified with him as an outsider, and with that theme of broken beauty.”
Morris says the play is in safe hands in Melbourne, led by director Miranda Middleton. “Every question Salty Theatre ask makes me excited to see what comes out of it,” says Morris. “I’m very impressed by their rigour.”
The Grinning Man is on at St Kilda’s Alex Theatre from May 2-19, with preview performances from April 25.
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