The Portal series of video games are two of the most culturally lasting games made in the last decade. Valve Software’s first-person puzzle series debuted in 2007 and gained popularity thanks to its unconventional characters, memorable writing, and inventive gameplay. The games require players to navigate a dangerous science facility run by a passive-aggressive and darkly funny computer. Aided only by a gun that fires two-way portals instead of bullets, the player-character Chell is challenged to traverse physical space in mind-bending ways.
Portal 2 expanded the game’s gameplay, characters, and story and was released in 2012 to critical acclaim. It’s been over two years since then, and so local theatre group The Geekenders decided to make something for Portal’s hungry audience by adapting Portal 2 into an unlicensed musical that sees the game’s plot, characters, and humour redone for the stage.
While the stage adaptation was conceived and written by Geekenders artistic director Fairlith Harvey, who also plays the malevolent computer GLaDOS, the production was co-directed by Davin Reid and Jessica Mayhew, who had the unenviable task of adapting a video game that features a silent protagonist into a full 15-song stage musical.
Despite the difficult task, the cast and crew were welcomed by a hungry and receptive audience who echoed every line, erupted at each reference, and seemed to almost know the lyrics to songs they’d never heard. The show’s three-night run from January 30 to February 1 saw The Rio Theatre continually sold out, packed with costumed attendees and an audience that was clearly composed mainly of fans.
If you’re a fan of Portal, you were in comfortable territory. The show opens with Chell (Patrice Bowler/Erin Mudry) coming out of stasis and meeting the lovably dumb AI Core Wheatley (Graeme Thompson) as he directs her through the game’s whimsical opening almost shot for shot. The first act of the show is full of moments taken straight from the game, and the cast did an admirable job of keeping these familiar scenes fresh, thanks largely in part to Thompson’s performance. Thompson’s Wheatley is an endearing underdog who completely drives the first act – a necessity due to the main character Chell’s muteness. The stage adaptation allows the robot characters like Wheatley to take on many more human characteristics than they could in the game, allowing the audience to view old scenes in new ways. Wheatley, who now dons a boardwalk vest and a pair of slacks, displays a new physicality with Chell that emphasizes their relationship and makes his character arc that much more interesting.
Chell presents a few challenges as a character to an amateur stage musical, not the least of which is the fact that in the game she can bend space using her portal gun. The musical solves this problem in a simple but effective way – by casting two Chells and keeping one in the wings. This allows Bowler and Mudry to share stage time as the orange-jumpsuited protagonist by jumping in and out of the wings of the stage to take the place as the other walks off. Mute though she is, Chell is featured in a few musical numbers, the most memorable being a duet between the two actors as they move in and out of portals.
The first act follows the plot of the game very closely, and thus contains mostly robot characters who have been humanized for the stage adaptation. The personality cores have become constant comic relief, and echo the transformed furniture from Beauty and the Beast, being at once personified objects, plot devices, as well as functioning as a chorus. The other major robot character is the villainous GLaDOS, who is given a fantastically evil performance by Harvey channleing Pat Carroll’s Ursula, which is fitting given her introductory song is an adaptation of Poor Unfortunate Souls from The Little Mermaid.
One of the most exciting parts of the show was the adapted songs taken from Disney, Broadway, and contemporary music, with lyrics primarily rewritten by James Dunlop to fit the Portal story. The songs indeed make up a great part of the appeal of the show, and many of the rewritten songs are just as clever and catchy as the originals.
Unfortunately, not all of the singers are able to quite keep up with the timeless material, and the singing is often the weakest part of the show, despite the power of the performance and clever lyrics. However, the duet songs generally fared better, as Thompson, Bowler, and Mudry have great chemistry, as do Reid and Harvey in the second act as Cave Johnson and Caroline respectively.
Most of the dialogue is directly adapted from the video game and much of the new dialogue is welcome, but some of the show’s recurring jokes and humour can miss the mark. A lot of the early humour comes from the personality cores, who tend to each have one running gag that gets old far too quick. The space core in particular may test audience’s patience with the shrill repetition of the word “SPACE!” being his only joke. Thankfully, more often than not the rest of the show’s humour had the audience laughing, especially the self-aware jokes written for the adaptation.
Act one ends with a twist that sends Chell exploring the oldest and deepest floors of the Aperture Science facility and discovering the backstory of GLaDOS and the founder of Aperture, the enigmatic Cave Johnson. Much of this act is spent in flashback with Cave and his assistant Caroline, and their scenes were some of the most compelling of the show. Reid steals more than one scene with his superb Cave – riffing on the larger-than-life personalities of Howard Hughes and Walt Disney with a touch of the evil found in Donald Draper. Harvey was great playing Caroline, as she was able to play the character distinct from GLaDOS in a way that did service to both.
The musical ends back with Chell and features her climactic final boss battle as it is in the game – which also highlights the difficulty in adapting gameplay directly onto the stage. Even as someone who’s played the game, the musical’s conclusion is difficult to follow. And for people who never played the game, it may be the one scene that assumed too much of its audience.
Despite this, Portal 2: The Musical is probably the best stage adaptation of Portal 2 Vancouver could hope for. It manages to humanize a game where many characters are never seen, it manages to retain almost all of the memorable scenes and dialogue while adding much of its own, and it manages to make the plot of the game enjoyable to both fans of the game and fans of theatre.
Glass City Archive 