Abigail's Party - Review

Stratford East, London

****

Written by Mike Leigh

Directed by Nadia Fall

Tamzin Outhwaite

Tardis-like, Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party takes us back in time nearly 50 years in his eviscerating glimpse into UK suburban life. Played out over a Demis Roussos soundtrack and accompanied by cubes of cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks, one starts to get a hint of the 1970s culture and attitudes that this play so brilliantly showcases.

Tamzin Outhwaite dominates the play's action (that never leaves her front room) as Beverly, dressed like a wannabe Greek goddess and trying desperately, futilely, to bring a whirl of glamour into her dull marriage to estate-agent Laurence (Kevin Bishop) by having invited the neighbours round for drinks, nibbles and endlessly proffered cigarettes.

In her inept attempts at sophistication, Beverly is a Hyacinth Bucket crossed with Sybil Fawlty, but unlike those two giants of the UK’s comedy landscape, she is a woman with a darker and more vulnerable side. She cannot restrain herself from outrageously provocative flirting with neighbour Tony (Omar Malik), a former professional footballer who in terms of his masculine sexuality, possesses everything that she perceives the inadequate Laurence to lack. And yet, in the play’s finale (no spoilers here) Beverly reveals herself to be both deeply loving of, and possibly emotionally dependant upon, her husband. Beverly is an inspired creation by Leigh, and in Outhwaite’s interpretation, truly one of the most exciting performances to be found in London today.

The supporting actors are similarly excellent in their contributions to this domesticated evening from hell. Ashna Rabheru plays Angela, Tony’s wife. A nurse by profession, yet dominated brutally and bullyingly at home by her husband, Rabheru captures Angela’s naïve yet knowing complexities with a fine understanding. Laurence in his own way is as ghastly as his wife and Bishop does well to capture his aspirational, faux cultural-wisdom alongside his thinly veiled racism.   There is just a hint of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, as he and Beverly spar in the ring of their unhappy union.

Completing this exquisitely observed quintet is Pandora Colin as divorcee neighbour Susan and mother of the (unseen) 15 year-old Abigail who has been left at home across the road, hosting her eponymous rowdy teenage house party. 

Stratford East’s Artistic Director Nadia Fall directs with perceptive wisdom, her work enhanced by Peter McKintosh’s wonderfully evocative set and costume designs.

Fabulous writing, wonderfully performed – and all at an affordable ticket price too. This production of Abigail’s Party is what a great night at the theatre is all about. 

Runs until 12th October

Photo credit: Mark Senior

South Pacific - Review

Sadler's Wells, London

*****

Music by Richard Rodgers

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan

Directed by Daniel Evans

Julian Ovenden and Gina Beck

Transferring from its acclaimed revival at Chichester last year and returning to the London stage a decade after the Barbican last staged it in 2011, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific has opened for a month’s glorious residency at Sadler’s Wells. 

Daniel Evans has retained his lead performers from a year ago, with the chemistry between Julian Ovenden’s Emil de Becque and Gina Beck’s Ensign Nellie Forbush still vibrant and vocally stunning. Likewise, the love that grows between Lt Joe Cable (Rob Houchen) and the Polynesian Liat (Sera Maehara) is equally well defined. Of course, what sets this show apart is the United States’ racist culture that Rodgers and Hammerstein sought to challenge in their musical adaptation of James A. Michener’s original story.

75 years on from when the show premiered on Broadway many will find its handling of the racism of America’s Southerners and WASPS, problematic. Equally, the comparative youthfulness of Liat’s character does not stand up to close scrutiny in the post-MeToo era of the 21st century. It is however important that from a cultural perspective, the show should be recognised as a wonderfully curated museum piece. It was written for its time and should be enjoyed in that context.

Musically this production of the show is as wonderful as it was by the seaside last year! The songs are classics and to hear them sung, in a venue as acoustically fine as Sadler’s Wells and by voices such as these is a delight. The surprisingly powerful and unexpected melancholy that Joanna Ampil’s Bloody Mary brings to Happy Talk is one of the production’s more haunting highlights.  Another notable performance comes from Douggie McMeekin as the loveable Luther Billis, providing excellently timed comic relief.

Peter McKintosh’s set, paired with Howard Harrison’s lighting, are incredibly imaginative and make you feel as though you are right there on a sunny Pacific island. This alone is worth the visit to Sadler’s Wells as well as to regale in the show’s beautiful music and dance. It really will be some enchanted evening.

Runs until August 28th

Photo credit: Johan Persson

42nd Street - Review

Theatre du Chatelet, Paris


*****

Music by Harry Warren
Lyrics by Al Dubin
Book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble
Directed and choreographed by Stephen Mear

Dan Burton and the Company

There can be few more impressive openings to a musical than Stephen Mear's treatment of 42nd Street. With the orchestra (magnificent under Gareth Valentine's baton) having played the overture’s first few pages the curtain rises teasingly, just a yard or so, to reveal a stage full of dancing feet tapping out the show's melodies. With a company numbering nigh on 40, the sight and sound of this unexpected treat, performed with pinpoint, perfectly drilled precision, is simply breathtaking. Rarely has a show set its stall out so impressively in the overture and then gone on to exceed expectations as the evening plays out.

The story behind 42nd Street is a classic, corny even, meta-musical fairytale. It is 1933 and Peggy Sawyer, a young and gifted dancer from Allentown, Pennsylvania who has no showbiz experience wants to be cast in the new Broadway show Pretty Lady. Its genius but tyrannical director Julian Marsh is on his uppers after the Wall Street crash and in desperate need of a hit. Marsh overlooks Sawyer, and casts Dorothy Brock, a leading lady of years gone by as his star because Brock's sugar-daddy boyfriend has bankrolled Pretty Lady's production costs.

As love rivalries smoulder amongst the cast, Brock breaks her leg at the last minute. As Marsh is about to close the show, the ensemble persuade Marsh him to choose the talented Sawyer as Brock's replacement and of course she and the show become an instant hit.

Whilst the story may be corny, Mear who directs and choreographs has demanded production values that are anything but. Emerging talent Monique Young plays Sawyer and she brings a coquettish insouciance to the role matched only by her sensational footwork, handling her vocal solos with a confident charm and magnificent poise.

Sharing the honours as the show's other leading lady is Ria Jones' Brock. Mear knows Jones well (she famously understudied Glenn Close in his Sunset Boulevard earlier this year) and his understanding of the woman's gift has delivered yet another example of on-stage excellence. Jones hams up Brock wonderfully when she has to, yet shows off the full Rolls-Royce potential of her vocal majesty with her interpretations of I Only Have Eyes For You and the act one closer of the show's title number. As an aside, Jones is one of those occasional performers on London's cabaret scene who truly merits the description "unmissable".

Dan Burton who plays Sawyer's love interest Billy Lawlor is another of Mear's regular ingénues, last seen in the West End's Gypsy. Arguably the best of his generation in musical theatre dance, Burton has a grace in his movement that has to be seen to be believed alongside perfectly pitched, mellifluous vocals. Alexander Hanson's Marsh completes the quartet of key roles and he brings a believable gravitas to a part that can so easily become a cliché in less talented hands. Elsewhere in this magnificent company, Jennie Dale (yet another Mear regular) shines in support as Maggie Jones.

Dan Burton and Ensemble

It’s not just the cast that make this production quite so special. Valentine's orchestra is lavishly furnished, while Peter McKintosh's sets display an imaginative detail that can all too often these days be reduced to an economy of projected images, but here at the Theatre du Chatelet, are displayed in fabulous constructions of steel and backdrops.

And then of course there's the show's famously big numbers. Keep Young and Beautiful, We're in the Money and Lullaby of Broadway are done to a perfect turn. Mear fills McKintosh's stagings (and Philadelphia's Broad Street Station, complete with massive working clock stuns on its own) with a plethora of bodies that define flawless synchronised harmony.

The Chatelet’s producers have lavishly and tastefully invested a fortune in their cast and creatives and it shows. If you can beg, borrow or steal a ticket to Paris, go. This production of 42nd Street is quite simply musical theatre perfection - there's no better show to be seen this side of the Atlantic.

Runs until 8th January 2017

Harvey - Review

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

****

Written by Mary Chase

Directed by Lindsay Posner

Maureen Lipman and James Dreyfus

There are few shows in town more charming than Lindsay Posner's re-working of this 1940's all-American fable. Widowed Veta Simmons lodges with her daughter in the home of her wealthy brother Elwood P Dowd. Yet much is amiss, for as Simmons strives to keep up a genteel facade of normality, Dowd's closest confidante is Harvey, an invisible giant rabbit and much of the play hinges upon the anguish that his behaviour causes to his loved ones. 

This parable of the savant, who in today's jargon would be classified as somewhere on the autistic spectrum and yet who sees his world with a clarity denied his fellows, has already been explored in Rain Man and Forrest Gump. Yet Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winner preceded those modern classics by some decades and as her Harvey lifts the curtain on a petty-minded small town, so we see Dowd's noble and chivalrous pursuit of all that is good in life, shine out as a beacon amongst his morally flawed peers, all signed up to the rat-race.

James Dreyfus is Dowd bringing a comic pathos to a beautifully created character. We laugh at the witty excellence of his performance though with a compassionate chuckle rather than the poking of cruel fun at a Bedlam lunatic. Dreyfus convinces us of his belief in Harvey and at the same time plays the straightest of bats as his (and the company's) pinpoint timing sees the plot's farcical elements unfold delightfully.

Opposite Dreyfus is Maureen Lipman's Veta. Amongst the best actors of her generation, Lipman commands our sympathy as she strives to find a suitor for Myrtle Mae her grown daughter, whilst supporting her brother's mental frailty. We feel her frustration at the difficulties she has to manage, yet at the finale we almost weep at the loving compassion she shows her sibling. Powerful stuff indeed, although glossing over the physical abuse Veta inadvertently suffers in the local sanitarium, as comedy rather than the ghastly brutality that it truly represents, is perhaps the script's only flaw. It was to be another thirty years before Jack Nicholson's Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was to define how the cruelty of mental institutions should truly be portrayed.

Dreyfus and Lipman lead a marvellous troupe. Ingrid Oliver's Myrtle Mae nails the awkward self-centredness of a girl on the cusp of womanhood, whilst Sally Scott's psychiatric Nurse Kelly is a clever portrayal of cutely cognisant compassion. David Bamber is psychiatrist Dr Chumley, a medic who undergoes a Damascene conversion of his own with Bamber giving the complex role the comic mania it deserves. The play's endgame sees Linal Haft, in a tiny role, play a cab driver whose revelatory monologue moves both hearts and minds. (And those eagle-eyed and over 40 may recall Haft’s Melvyn, the much put-upon son to Lipman's Beattie in the BT 1980s ad campaign.) 

Peter McKintosh's set displays an ingenious elegance as interlocking revolves shift the action between home and clinic, whilst meticulous design in both costume and wigs set the time and tone perfectly.

Old fashioned for sure and with American accents that occasionally grate, the show is a curiosity of a production, but nonetheless bravo to the Birmingham Rep and its co-producers for having taken it on the road. When late into the second act, as Dowd reveals that during his lifetime he has known what it is to be “smart” as well as what it is to be profoundly pleasant, it is with a moving wisdom that he reports (and we feel chastened), that "being pleasant" is nicer. An allegory with the feel-good warmth of an adult fairy tale, Harvey makes for excellent theatre performed by a fabulous cast.

Runs until 2nd May 2015

Guys and Dolls - Review

Chichester Festival Theatre

*****

Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser
Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows
Directed by Gordon Greenberg

Sophie Thompson and Clare Foster

Chichester's newly re-launched Festival Theatre hosts its first musical with a sparkling revival of Frank Loesser’s musical fable of Broadway, Guys and Dolls. A show built around New York’s everyman and everywoman, Kenneth Tynan described Guys and Dolls on its 1953 London opening as the Beggar’s Opera of Broadway. 29 years later, at London’s National Theatre, Richard Eyre defined the work in a stellar, seminal production that paved the way for Broadway musicals to occupy a deserved place in the subsidised theatre repertoire. Now, some 30 years on from that revelatory South Bank production, American wunderkind Gordon Greenberg revives this tightest of tales of gamblers, lovers and the sheer confounding beauty of the human condition.

Based on Damon Runyon’s short story The Idyll Of Miss Sarah Brown, the book charts 24 hours in four of the unlikeliest of New York’s star crossed lovers. Clare Foster is Sarah Brown, a missionary who is to yield (albeit with the assistance of copious quantities of Cuban Dulche De Leche) to the wickedly chiselled refinement of Jamie Parker’s incorrigible gambler Sky Masterson. Elsewhere on Broadway Miss Adelaide, a 40-something night-club singing broad, played with sardonic hilarity by Sophie Thompson bewails her 14 year engagement to the cutest of low-lifes, Nathan Detroit, famed for running the city’s finest floating crap game. Around these four gems, a cast of missionaries, homburged hoodlums and scantily clad Hot Box debutantes, all serve to paint a cosily familiar picture of the post-war USA.  

Jamie Parker and Peter Polycarpou

Peter Polycarpou is Detroit and it is a delight to see this stalwart of British musical theatre at last take on the mantle of a leading man to open a show. Squat and hen-pecked, Polycarpou captures the impossible ironies of Detroit’s life, with a voice and comic timing that are perfectly poised. His contribution to the three-part harmony The Oldest Established is flawless whilst as a hustler desperately seeking 1,000 bucks so he can rent a venue for his crap game, there are moments that suggest a reprisal of his Ali Hakim, also from the National from some years back.

Foster delights as Sarah, coaxing an intimacy from her post-Cuba duet with Sky, I’ve Never Been In Love Before, that was breathtaking, whilst Parker’s Luck Be A Lady was dreamily suave yet defined the passion behind his love for Sarah.

There is excellence throughout Greenberg’s company. Nick Wilton’s Harry The Horse was built for double-breasted pin stripes, Harry Morrison’s Nicely Nicely Johnson is every inch the water buffalo that his character should be, (even if the showstopping encore for Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat did seem just a tad pre-planned) whilst amongst the Hot Box ensemble, Anabel Kutay leads her dancing generation with a cameo as the Havana Diva that is jaw-dropping.

Peter McKintosh’s simple set design of classic posters of the era, each framed by marquee lights suggested a nod to John Gunter’s 1982 festival of advertising-neon. Alongside, Carlos Acosta and Andrew Wright’s choreography opens up the trademark numbers with panache, whilst still allowing a spot of table dancing to be wafted into Take Back Your Mink. My only complaint: For such a shiny stage floor and so many wonderfully be-spatted Guys, where was the tap routine? When this show transfers to London (as it surely must) no doubt the Acosta/Wright team can rectify!

In our troubled world Guys and Dolls, this most frothy of fantasies, is a wonderfully whimsical tonic. It’s a place where, as Adelaide and Sarah dream of changing their men post-wedding and Sky Masterson’s mantra is that no matter how desirable, “no doll can take the place of aces back to back”, the story remains gloriously grounded amongst recognisable characters.

The show is selling out fast – and rightly so. The Festival Theatre audience rose as one to salute the cast (and luxuriously furnished 15-piece band) on press night. Musicals don't get better than this. 

Runs to 21st September 2014

Photos by Johan Person