The SpongeBob Musical - Review

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

**

Based on the series by Stephen Hillenburg

Book by Kyle Jarrow

Directed by Tara Overfield Wilkinson

The company of The SpongeBob Musical

There are some great moments in The SpongeBob Musical - but they’re not enough to make a great musical.

The denizens of Stephen Hillenburg’s anarchic, aquatic Bikini Bottom made for one of television’s finest creations in recent decades. But where Nickelodeon’s cartoons brilliantly mirrored the shallow fallibilities of humanity with their sharply written satire that ingeniously appealed to both kids and adults, this onstage treatment is left floundering.

Lewis Cornay in the title role puts in an adequate caricature of the pineapple-dwelling lead. But it is left to Tom Read Wilson’s inspired, tap-dancing(!) 4-legged Squidward, Chrissie Bhima’s Texan squirrel Sandy Cheeks and Richard J Hunt’s Eugene Krabs to take the honours for lifting the show to occasional bursts of finely crafted wit.

As for Irfan Damani’s Patrick Star, SpongeBob’s closest friend and a critically important featured role in any take on Bikini Bottom, producers take note: a T-shirt and a beanie cap do not a starfish make. And for tickets that can cost up to £99, the scenery is shambolic. With no playlist in the programme individual songs are hard to credit, although to be fair the onstage band put in a decent shift.

There's barely enough entertainment for the children here and nowhere near enough classy dialog for the grown-ups. Soggy.

Runs until 27th August

Photo credit: Mark Senior 

George Takei's Allegiance - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London

*****

Music & Lyrics by Jay Kuo

Book by Marc Acito, Jay Kuo & Lorenzo Thione

Directed & Choreographed by Tara Overfield Wilkinson

Aynrand Ferrer

Making its London premiere, George Takei’s Allegiance is an inspired story that blends history and humanity together with some cracking tunes into an evening of powerful entertainment.

Takei was a young child when along with another 120,000 American citizens of Japanese heritage, he was interned as an enemy alien following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Allegiance explores the period through the eyes of a fictional family of Japanese Americans, with Takei taking a sidelined but critical role as Sam the family elder, looking back at his wartime experience.

If the show’s lyrics are occasionally simplistic they are more than made up for by the cleverly crafted narrative that weaves two love stories into a backdrop of honour and pride, alongside the incredulity and horror of patriotic Americans being interned for no other reason than their heritage. With a respectful acknowledgment to the slaughter of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the show outlines a carefully-crafted observation on the United States’ complex wartime relationship with Japan.

Telly Leung plays the young Sam, magnificently convincing both in his patriotism and his love for the WASP nurse Hannah, played by Megan Gardiner. The standout performance of the night however is delivered by Aynrand Ferrer as Sam’s sister Kei. Her character is given some of the story’s most painful arcs that she absolutely smashes - alongside a singing performance that ranges from taking the Charing Cross roof off with its power, through to a softer heartbreaking intensity. Credit too to Gardiner who is as strong, albeit in a smaller but nonetheless essential role.

Jay Kuo’s melodies are an astonishing combination of styles that range from Japanese themed numbers through to dance-hall swing and which provide an ingenious snapshot of the time through its music. Delivered by Beth Jerem’s six-piece band, the compositions are a delight.

It is not often that Charing Cross stages such a gem - but Tara Overfield Wilkinson has helmed and choreographed just that. See it if you can, George Takei’s Allegiance is an outstanding work of musical theatre.

Runs until 8th April

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

Falsettos - Review

The Other Palace, London


****


Music & Lyrics by William Finn
Book by William Finn and James Lapine
Directed by Tara Overfield-Wilkinson

Daniel Boys

When the patriarchal Marvin leaves his wife and young son for another man his family life is thrown into disarray. Trina, his frazzled spouse hooks up with Marvin’s psychiatrist Mendel, Marvin’s lover Whizzer is reluctantly inducted into the family’s day-to-day activities for the sake of maintaining some sense of normalcy as 10 year old Jason find himself caught in the middle of the pandemonium. 

William Finn and James Lapine’s Falsettos, originally envisioned as a pair of one act chamber musicals, really is a show of two halves. Act one, while slightly disjointed, is a fairly breezy affair, filled with pithy recitatives interspersed with zippy ensemble numbers. It’s all good fun, but while the show is funny, cutting and witty, as the interval arrives it also seems a little bit directionless. 

Not so in the second half. Picking up two years later and introducing Marvin’s delightful next door neighbours, caterer Cordelia and doctor Charlotte (‘the lesbians next door’), Falsettos delves into the confusion and chaos of the AIDS crisis. It’s a gut-wrenching decent – the darkening tone jarring uncomfortably with production designer PJ McEvoy’s kitschy set, with its cartoonish colour palette washed over with blinding bright primary coloured lighting. Tara Overfield-Wilkinson directs the turn from mayhem to tragedy perfectly, seamlessly balancing the laughs and the tears.

And, of course, the production is elevated by an outrageously good ensemble cast. Daniel Boys gives a masterfully complex performance as Marvin, a man who is constantly in the middle of a precarious balancing act with Oliver Savile charming as Marvin’s sardonic and seemingly self-absorbed boyfriend. Meanwhile Laura Pitt-Pulford’s Trina is as brilliant as ever, the jilted wife putting on a happy face for the sake of her family. 

Having picked up a cult following amongst UK musical theatre lovers after its well-received 2016 Broadway revival, the UK premiere of Falsettos was massively anticipated, and this production goes a long way to showing just why. It’s a shame though that it has been marred by controversy, with some in the UK’s Jewish community  calling out the lack of Jewish representation within the production’s cast and creative team. As the story centres closely upon the Jewish experience, including a touching subplot that centres on young Jason’s looming Bar Mitzvah, it remains essential that the show never dips into distasteful parody. There’s definitely a lesson to be learned here for future iterations of this show and indeed, others. 

Judging the production at face-value though, Falsettos is well sung, ultra-smart and ultimately gutting. Those who buy a ticket will have plenty to look forward to.

Runs until 23rd November
Reviewed by Charlotte O'Growney
Photo credit: The Standout Company