Groundhog Day

Imagine you were given a gift: the gift to relive the best day of your life over and over again. Another chance to open the envelope of good news; another go at holding the blanketed baby; another opportunity to take that tender kiss. Well, let’s be frank: eventually the whole thing would get boring. After re-creating your wedding scene for the thousandth time, you would want to quit the picture, punch the director and run off with the girl playing the bridesmaid.

Now, imagine you were given a curse: the curse to relive the worst day of your life over and over again. Another chance to do that job you hated; another opportunity to talk to those people; another fucking Monday. Well, this would be a whole lot worse; there would be no redeeming quality to this bleak picture. You would be trapped in the cinema re-watching this selfsame shit-show in a suicidal fit of abject melancholy.

If you knew what life would bring, would it be worth waking up for?

For all of the fear unpredictability brings, it makes life worth living. If we know what is coming in life then is there any point in turning up, clocking in? With thudding predictability the order of things we may as well turn off the alarm and let existence play out. We need the coming of the new day to bring about new experiences- good or bad. It is the good encounters that enrich us, sustain us. It is the bad ones that give the good ones value. Without the yin, we can’t have the yang. Without the rough, we can’t have the smooth. As Dolly Parton says, ‘If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.” 

Phil Connors in Groundhog Day is a man who must relive the worst day of his life. He is a weather forecaster assigned to report on small-town Punxsutawney’s annual celebration, Groundhog Day. The festival gathers the townspeople to watch its groundhog, aptly named Phil, leave his temporary home to predict the weather: if he sees his shadow and returns to his hole, it means a long winter; if he doesn’t see it, it means an early spring. Connors takes it as a personal insult that he has to relive this day once a year: why should he a sophisticated member of the metropolis be brought down to report on small-town ephemera? When Connors is told a storm has led to enforced road closures, that there is no way of getting home, he is furious: isn’t there a special lane for VIPs? Resigned, he holes himself up in a B&B and readies himself for an early morning getaway. Except when morning comes Connors can’t. Someone, somewhere has cut the pendulum on Grandfather Time, which leaves our antihero suspended in the black hole of February 2nd ... Groundhog Day.

Phil Vs The Town. Pic. Manuel Harlan

The film co-written by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis is one of my favourites. Bill Murray in the starring role does a great job at neutralising the character’s acid-tongue with a twinkly charm. When I heard the news it was being made into a musical, I was intrigued. When I heard it was being made into a musical with Tim Minchin penning the music, I was sold. Minchin’s skill as a pianist and humorist allows him to create songs that are musically virtuous and comically potent. As a devout atheist and rationalist, his stand up skewers religion and fate. An example of this is his love song If I didn’t have you. Here, he attacks the idea that people are meant to be, opining (“If I didn’t have you, I would probably have someone else”) and goes on to list how your 'soulmate' is determined by your wealth, looks and location. The conceit sounds cruel and heartless, but it ends romantically with the line: (“But with all my heart and all my mind, I know one thing is true I have just one life and just one love and, my love, that love is you.”) Minchin was always going to be the perfect fit to help adapt Groundhog Day because he can satirise the small town mentality of worshipping false prophets, as well as celebrate the emphasis these communities put on love and friendship. The sardonic side of Minchin then is channeled in Connors spewing bile on the town’s customs and beliefs, and the sentimental side of Minchin is depicted through the communities care and compassion in the face of unwavering hostility.

The work in adapting Groundhog Day wasn’t done by Minchin alone. He is one third of the talent responsible for the endeavour. The other two are Danny Rubin, who co-wrote the original film and wanted to retell the story in a different form, and director Matthew Warchus, who worked with Minchin on the smash-hit musical Matilda. The three met four years ago on what Minchin describes as ‘like a Tinder date, trying to figure out whether we wanted to work with each other.’ Unlike a Tinder date it was a relationship that was to last the distance with the musical the end result.

Having Rubin on board means the original isn’t tampered with that much. All the jokes you enjoyed from the movie are here. The plot has largely stayed the same with just a few tiny tweaks. What is different is the scope of the piece. In the film Connors fills every scene: it is his Road to Damascus story of how he goes from being small-minded about the small town to having his mind opened by big hearts. However, in the musical we discover how Rita’s childhood (Phil’s producer) affected her love life; this feminist number has Minchin venting parental rage at the fairy stories little girls are filled with. Also Nancy, the nondescript attractive girl in the movie, is given the space to air her grievances at the beginning of Act 2. In this number, the actor comes out of character to lament a role that is based on looks rather than talent. Again, Minchin sneaks big ideas on gender into a supposedly silly comedy.

Rita (left) is given a bigger role. Pic. Manuel Harlan

Props need to go to set designer, Rob Howell, who is so inventive at turning major incidents in the movie into quirky set pieces. Phil’s bar room epiphany, that without time there are no consequences, is a gleeful highlight in the film. The dilemma for a theatre adaptation is how do you stage Phil’s drink driving and ensuing police chase? Without spoiling anything, all I will say is if the theatre doesn't allow you to go big, then go small. In fact, what makes Warchus’ Groundhog Day special is that for all its big budget chutzpah it retains an intimate smallness.

Groundhog Day is a triumph: a production that celebrates the little people that comprise the little towns; drawn by Minchin and Howell, creatives that haven’t corporatised their vision to committee, but built from their own hands a little work of genius.

Groundhog Day closes at The Old Vic on September 17th