Be Happy! (the musical)
- Director: Ventura Pons
- Writer: Ventura Pons
- Producer: Ventura Pons
CGiii Comment
A gay musical...what's there not to like!?! Well, in this instance...practically everything.
Where to start with this one...writing, acting, songs and singing, each as bad as the other. Ventura Pons, a significant director, has gone off-piste with this one...and, landed tits up in the middle of an avalanche!
Let's start with the writing...it's as if Señor Pons wrote the script in Spanish and then let Google translate it into English, apart from there being only a thread of a story, some of the lines will have your jaw whacking the floor in incredulous disbelief! Now...when the writing is this bad, the acting suffers...boy, does it suffer! Gary Wilmot is - most definitely - not an actor whereas Siân Phillips is...whatever was she thinking!?! Did anyone actually read the script before they signed the contract?
The songs...well, they are all over the place...literally, just when you least expect it, they burst into song! It's all rather discombobulating...and not a happy note in any of them! Be happy? Grab the Prozac! Misery...absolute and abject misery.
Sometimes...when a film is so bad, it's funny. Nah, not this one...this is just plain old bad.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
Peter, a freudian psychiatrist married to a Finnish actor, Mika, David, a young British gay living in Banyoles, addicted to Grinder, and Coco Lamour, a Parisian French actress. Peter is a friend of Maria, also a Freudian psychiatrist, and Betsy, David's mother, living in Cadaqués. Maria prepares a trip to spend some days with Betsy. David works at a computer company in Girona directed by a very talented young Indian, Usha. David has a great crisis with his partner, Daniel, a Mallorcan living in Barcelona. Albert is a famous British writer retired in Begur passing the mourning for the loss of his partner. Gilda, a great actress, half Scotish half German, lives in Mallorca and is very close to Joan Laínez and MGMC. At her house every day there's a great party. Everyone is worried about the ending of the love story of David and Daniel, the young guys. But, as Shakespeare says "All's well that ends well" on a trip of the whole group to Mallorca.
Cast & Characters
Sian Phillips as Maria;
Karme Malaga as Coco;
Usha Jadhav as Avni;
Vicky Pena as Betsy;
Gary Wilmot as Peter;
Juha Sorola as Mika;
Billy Cullum as David;
Sara Gomez as Banyoles Singer;
Minnie Marx as Gilda;
Pamela Field as Pamela;
Thomas Delgado-Little as Tom;
Mallorca Gay Men Chorus as MGMC;
Joan Lainez as Joan;
Matthew White as Albert;
David Bocian as Caribbean guy;
Joan Guri as Young Man;
Toni Valles as Daniel;
Javier Roqueta as Fat Man;
Ofir Chinchilla as Banyoles Singer;
David Costa as Cor de Teatre Director