Sometimes in the post Christmas slump, when you’re tired, stuffed (with food) and maybe a little hung over, all you really want in the way of entertainment is something elegant, classy and reflective, a show that gently washes over you. All well and good, but if that’s your idea of a fun time, then best to avoid the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre where this adult panto, featuring the cream of alumnae from the UK edition of RuPaul’s Drag Race, requires you to scream your lungs out, get indiscriminately sprayed with lube (yes I’m afraid so), and participate in a Mexican wave, be upstanding for a mass sing-off of Kylie’s ‘Padam Padam’ smash hit and generally check your inhibitions in with your coat. This show is a lot…and it’s also pretty impossible to resist.
Miss Mopp’s script for Sleeping Beauty is a pretty basic recounting of the well worn story, serving mainly as a framework on which to hang the outsize personalities, ad libs and performance skills of a selection of Drag Queens and Kings, each of whom rises so fabulously to the occasion that the show becomes an almost total pleasure. Chris Clegg’s rambunctious production lovingly incorporates many of the familiar panto traditions – the “he’s behind you” ghost routine, audience singalong, running gags, the frantic ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ song challenge – just served up with added bitchiness, and even more high camp than this already flamboyant genre usually sails in on.
It’s also genuinely witty, and, although definitely conceived as a garish playground for adults, it’s considerably less crude than the other current version of the same story, Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick over at Charing Cross. Presumably as the run is so short, it rather looks like every expense has been spared on a set, but the sheer brio of the performances and the joyful inclusion of some well chosen pop songs with suitably tarted-up lyrics means that the delighted audience seldom notices. The overall effect of the production, which comes at you like a spangled steamroller, is of a West End theatre being transformed into somewhere like the RVT on a particularly good night. The comedy comes thick and fast, and if it doesn’t all fully land that may be down to the sometimes muffled sound quality, but there are some seriously fine mirth makers at work here.
There are ongoing jokes about lost watches, and winning WhatsOnStage awards, also a wonderful running sight gag involving a rainbow coloured confetti cannon that fires every time Michael Marouli’s lovably tetchy Good Fairy enters, yet somehow always manages to take her by surprise. Kitty Scott Claus is a queen of dead-pan delivery and her titular Princess Beauty gets funnier and funnier the more she tries to disengage from the chaos surrounding her, even getting upset because she’s more involved in the show than she thought she’d be (“I thought I’d be sleeping through most of this”). Kate Butch brings classy comedy chops to her mother, Queen Camilla, armed with some off-colour jokes about her marital predecessor (her name begins with a D and she’s had a terrible musical written about her) and a glorious hauteur that runs in delicious counterpoint to the indignities she’s forced to endure. LoUis CYfer is authentically hilarious as a bumbling but enthusiastic King Clyde and Kemah Bob’s non-binary, American Prince, or rather Prinyx, is a triumph of gormless bewilderment.
If you had to create a personification of camp, you’d probably come up with something very like Victoria Scone. Their green-haired, black leather clad, permanently bad-tempered Carabosse is a brilliant comic creation, deeply lovable despite being so thoroughly nasty, and one who could probably have their own entire show. Their singing is terrific, resulting in them snarling “did you forget you were supposed to be booing?” when the audience goes nuts at the end of a particularly impressive belty number. I also adored Ophelia Love as the inauspiciously named Villager No.4, a tragically overlooked diva-in-waiting hilariously desperate to wrestle the spotlight from her better known co-stars. When she gets her moment, it’s in a skilfully bastardised version of the ‘Roxie’ number from Chicago, and she’s so good at selling the material and negotiating the Fosse-esque choreography, that she is a considerable improvement on some of the dodgy “celebrity” casting that got to play Roxie Hart during the Kander and Ebb musical’s original London run.
The show has a distinct feeling of having been thrown together, but by people who know what they’re doing and understand exactly how much glitter will stick. The air of what’s-going-to-happen-next hysteria only really fizzles out in the final moments, where a barely rehearsed curtain call left everybody looking a little uncertain on both sides of the footlights. That’s a small glitch though in what is otherwise a couple of hours of really smashing entertainment.
“Isn’t this shit?!” gleefully leers Yshee Black’s adorable, eccentrically debauched Muddles (formerly Buttons) to the roaring crowd near the end. The only possible answer to that is “oh no it isn’t!”
I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I wrote one of these lists, but here we are. In 2023 I’ve seen 168 professional stage productions across a dozen international cities and towns, predominantly in London, but also taking in Paris, Dublin and New York. I’ve also made a conscious effort to get to more UK regional venues, something I’ve shamefully neglected in the past, and I’m so glad I made the effort, and can’t wait to get to even more in 2024. Sure, the capital is saturated with theatrical riches but I’ve loved exploring the unique stage delights of Manchester, Bath, Sheffield, Leicester, Chichester and others, and have encountered some really terrific work.
It has been quite the challenge to pick out the top twenty new (to me) productions of the year that I found the most exciting and enjoyable. It’s a hugely personal list, so there are some massively acclaimed shows that I haven’t got round to seeing yet (hello Almeida Cold War and the West End’s Stranger Things: The First Shadow), or that for one reason or another didn’t quite hit the spot for me.
The following selection didn’t quite make my Top 20 but were utterly outstanding and deserve honourable mentions. The Donmar has had a superb year, and although only one show made my list, the timely reconsideration of Lilian Hellman’s vintage anti-fascist drama Watch On The Rhine featuring an incandescent Patricia Hodge, Clyde’s, the Lynette Linton-directed British premiere of Lynn Nottage’s gritty but warm story of working class, post-penitentiary African Americans, and the current David Tennant hot ticket Macbeth, were/are entirely deserving of the critical acclaim heaped upon them.
The brilliant Linton, who is also building up an impressive screen cv, was one of the names bandied about to take over the running of the National Theatre, but that job went, as we know, to the hugely popular Indhu Rubasingham. So for now, Lynette remains, with her dynamic associate Daniel Bailey, at the helm of the Bush, that crucible of excellence in West London, which has enjoyed another dud-free year on their watch, championing Black British, Asian and other Global Majority voices of real quality and originality. A Playlist For The Revolution was a unique gem that looked at the effect of student demos on urban life in Hong Kong, the triumphant Red Pitch returned ahead of a richly deserved West End transfer in 2024, and the year closed out with a pair of fine, funny, bracingly intelligent monologues, Marcelo dos Santos’s Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen with Samuel Barnett firing on all cylinders and Kwame Owusu’s refreshing, sensitive Dreaming And Drowning.
Other really exciting new writing I’ve enjoyed this year includes Nina Segal’s highly original, bitingly funny distillation of Ibsen in Shooting Hedda Gabler over at Kingston’s Rose Theatre, and the vibrant£1 Thursdays, Kat Rose Martin’s mouthy, big-hearted tragicomedy about modern female friendships, that nearly took the Finborough’s roof off late in ‘23. Soho Theatre hosted FlawBored in It’s A Motherf***ing Pleasure, an outrageously funny but thought provoking look at disability and the way it’s perceived, and Lauryn Redding’s delicious self-penned coming-out solo musical Bloody Elle.
The National’s Dancing At Lughnasa and the Almeida’s Portia Coughlan were magnificent revivals of poetic, sometimes harrowing Irish texts that were every bit as fine as their original productions. The latter was possibly even something of an improvement, partly down to a painful, coruscating performance in the title role by Alison Oliver, who coincidentally was also in Lughnasa. Another gem at the National, and still currently playing, is the uneven but hugely enjoyable new family musical The Witches, inspired by the Roald Dahl book with an inventive Dave Malloy score and a performance of breathtaking venomous camp by Katherine Kingsley as the Grand High Witch.
Further afield, Gina Beck’s luminous Maria in a lovely Chichester revival of The Sound of Music, and the compulsive but worryingly prescient French success Farewell Mr Haffmann, about Jewish persecution in Nazi-occupied Paris, in a UK premiere with a stellar cast at Bath, were both major highlights. In New York, I especially enjoyed Larissa FastHorse’s biting black comedy taking down political correctness and cultural appropriation The Thanksgiving Play (FastHorse is the first Native American playwright to be produced on Broadway) and the magnificent Ben Platt-led revival of Jason Robert Brown’s enthralling, quasi-operatic Parade.
The return of multi-award garlanded Groundhog Day to the Old Vic, the European premiere of the game changing Tony winner A Strange Loop and the West End upgrade for Operation Mincemeat all dazzled, delighted and deeply moved but none of them sadly make the list as they’re not “new” to me.
Anyway, about that list…..and it’s in alphabetical order, not necessarily preference…..
*
1. ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST – Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – ended 8 April, then at Theatre Royal Haymarket 12 June to 9 September
Photograph by Helen Murray
Daniel Rigby gave a heroic, ferociously energetic turn of astonishing comic attack and invention as the Maniac in this Dario Fo-Franca Rame police corruption 1970s farce brought bang up to date in this thrilling new version by Tom Basden. As chilling as it was hilarious, this co-prod with Sheffield Theatres ripped up the rule book most satisfyingly.
*
2. A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM – Lido 2 Paris, Paris – until 4 February 2024
Photograph by Julien Benhamou
Equally inspired by the ancient Roman comedies of Plautus and old school American burlesque, this Sondheim-Gelbart-Shevelove confection is a non-PC delight in this glorious new production led by a perfectly cast Rufus Hound as Pseudolus. Cal McCrystal’s screamingly funny, lunatic vision honours equally the show’s Broadway roots and this Parisian venue’s storied history. A joy.
*
3. A MIRROR – Almeida Theatre, London – ended 23 September – at Trafalgar Theatre, London from 22 January 2024
Photograph by Marc Brenner
Jonny Lee Miller returned magnificently to the stage in this slippery, unsettling, ultimately jawdropping Sam Holcroft political thriller that turned the entire venue, in Jeremy Herrin’s shapeshifting production, into a kitschy wedding hall in a fascist state. As entertaining as it’s alarming, and with a terrific, catalytic performance by Tanya Reynolds, this is a must-see for anybody who missed it in Islington.
*
4. DEAR ENGLAND – Prince Edward Theatre, London – until 13 January 2024
Photograph by Marc Brenner
This National Theatre transfer is one of those rare, spinetingling theatrical events where literally every element – writing, performances, staging, design, concept – is in tune. James Graham’s terrific, rich play is ostensibly about football but is really about the state of the nation and where the UK stands in the world. Rupert Goold’s flashy production matches the epic sweep of the script, as does the cast led by an unrecognisable Joseph Fiennes as an uncanny Gareth Southgate.
*
5. FAT HAM – American Airlines Theatre, New York City – ended 2 July
Photograph by Joan Marcus
Gorgeous, inventive riff by African American writer James Ijames on the bard’s best known play. This is knowing, sassy, devastatingly witty, surprisingly touching and camp as Christmas. In this transfer from NYC’s Public Theater, Marcel Spears made an adorable Broadway debut in the title role, with a stunning (and Tony nominated) Nikki Crawford as his hi-glam, ball-busting momma. Surely a London premiere must be in the works?
*
6. FUN HOME – Gate Theatre, Dublin – ended 1 September
Photograph by Ros Kavanagh
Róisín McBrinn’s Irish premiere of this searingly beautiful Tesori-Kron coming-of-age/coming out musical based on Alison Bechdel’s pictorial memoir, was about as different from the NYC and London originals as it was possible to imagine. It was stunningly effective though, making the heart soar before breaking it. Frances McNamee and a career-redefining Killian Donnelly led a marvellous cast. A real workout for the tear ducts and the soul.
*
7. GYPSY – The Mill at Sonning, Sonning Eye – ended 15 July
Photograph by Andreas Lambis
A wonderful surprise to find the brassy spirit of Broadway in a rural Thames-side water mill converted into a charming dinner theatre. Joseph Pitcher’s flawless account of this quintessential American backstage musical didn’t even feel scaled down so fresh and inventive was this take on it. Rebecca Thornhill led from the front as a more glamorous-than-usual Mama Rose with Evelyn Hoskins as an entrancing Louise. An absolute gem.
*
8. LA CAGE AUX FOLLES – Regents Park Open Air Theatre, London – ended 23 September
Photograph by Mark Senior
Tuneful, romantic, risqué and with a great big heart, this Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein Broadway charmer felt almost like a new musical in this, the last production of Timothy Sheader’s tenure in the Park. Reimagined to be set not in the usual St Tropez but a seedy 1970s Blackpool, it was funny, saucy and entirely winning. Choreographer Stephen Mear proved again why he’s the best in his showbiz field. A tonic for the soul.
*
9. MISS SAIGON – Crucible Theatre, Sheffield – ended 19 August
Photograph by Johan Persson
Freed from the bombastic constraints of the big Cameron Mackintosh stagings, Miss Saigon came across, in Robert Hastie and Anthony Lau’s high concept, video-heavy rethink as way more bleak and cynical in its depiction of war and the American involvement in Vietnam. Not as much of a tearjerker as earlier incarnations maybe, but tremendously powerful; one of many terrific new ideas was having a female Engineer, given a truly sensational performance by Boublil-Schonberg vet Joanna Ampil.
*
10. NEXT TO NORMAL – Donmar Warehouse, London – ended 7 October – at Wyndhams Theatre, London from 18 June 2024
Photograph by Marc Brenner
It took over a decade for it to get here from Broadway but it was sure worth the wait. A challenging look at mental illness and loss, powered by a driving rock score, Next To Normal hits with the emotional impact of a sledgehammer yet proves strangely exhilarating, especially in Michael Longhurst’s multilayered production. A flawless cast was headed by New York’s Caissie Levy delivering a full throated, open hearted tour de force that eclipsed memories of Alice Ripley’s less relatable, but Tony awarded, turn in the original. Fingers crossed Levy returns for next year’s West End run.
*
11. ROMEO AND JULIE – National Theatre/Dorfman, London – ended 1 April – then 13 to 29 April at Sherman Theatre, Cardiff
Photograph by Marc Brenner
Another Shakespeare riff, but this one closer to home. Gary Owen’s potty-mouthed, urgent modern love story was set on the unequal, unjust streets of the Welsh capital. Callum Scott Howells and Rosie Sheehy had us roaring with laughter one moment then sobbing into our programmes the next. Tough, angry but essentially sweet, this wrapped so much beauty and ugliness around a core of steel.
*
12. SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY – Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – ended 22 July
Photograph by Manuel Harlan
On the surface, Jocelyn Bioh’s acclaimed off-Broadway comedy was a cheeky, warm- hearted satire on the way American culture permeates global lifestyles and attitudes, but it had a lot of pithy, sometimes uncomfortable things to say about outside influences on young Black womanhood. Monique Touko’s UK premiere was fully alive to all the humour, idiosyncrasies and inconvenient truths of the cracking script and was fabulously cast. Enchanting, bittersweet and surprisingly hard hitting.
*
13. SLEEPOVA – Bush Theatre, London – ended 8 April
Photograph by Helen Murray
Yet another story of young Black womanhood, and this one equally fresh, surprising and delightful, but set in present day London. Matilda Feyişayo Inibi’s lairy, lovely look at female friendships and future aspirations was a total blast in Jade Lewis’s vital, tangy staging and featured a quartet of fine young actresses led by rising star Bukky Bakray in an assured debut. If Red Pitch is getting its West End transfer, can this be next please.
*
14. STANDING AT THE SKYS EDGE – National Theatre/Olivier, London – ended 25 March – at Gillian Lynne Theatre, London from 8 February 2024
Photograph by Johan Persson
So many people couldn’t get into this during its brief National season after word spread about what a tear-stained, goose-bump inducing sensation this Chris Bush-penned musical distilled from Richard Hawley’s collection of bluesy, rocky, endlessly exciting songs, was. The upcoming West End transfer is likely to be a big fat hit all over again, as Robert Hastie’s stunning Crucible Sheffield production crosses the river, buoyed up by a well-deserved Best Musical win in this year’s Olivier awards. Unmissable.
*
15. STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S OLD FRIENDS – Gielgud Theatre, London – until 6 January 2024
Photograph by Danny Kaan
Cameron Mackintosh’s Christmas gift to discerning West End musical theatre lovers and Broadway babies everywhere, this is an uplifting, deeply moving, slickly produced look at Sondheim’s greatest hits. A couple of hours of showbiz heaven led by one of the great Steve’s muses, Bernadette Peters, with revelatory work from international MT superstar Lea Salonga, and a cast of some of the West End’s very finest, including Bonnie Langford, Janie Dee, Gavin Lee and Damian Humbley.
*
16. SUNSET BOULEVARD – Savoy Theatre, London – until 6 January 2024
Photograph by Marc Brenner
Already the stuff of showbiz legend, this was the moment pop star Nicole Scherzinger proved she is a musical theatre leading lady for the ages, in an unforgettable powerhouse turn as a drastically reimagined Norma Desmond in the melodramatic but intoxicating Andrew Lloyd Webber tuner culled from Billy Wilder’s cinematic saga of curdled Hollywood dreams. Director Jamie Lloyd created a thrilling, noir-ish multimedia staging, with roaring, frenetic Fabian Aloise and, in Tom Francis, a young male lead to make the angels weep. The whole show, but especially Scherzinger, will be talked about for decades. Broadway surely beckons in 2024.
*
17. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON – Southwark Playhouse, London – ended 1 July
Photograph by Juan Coolio
Brilliant, inspired transformation of the F Scott Fitzgerald tall story of a man born old who ages backwards, into a magical, mystical Cornish folk tale, with real theatrical bite, a stomping, haunting score and a devastating emotional impact. Already glorious in its 2019 premiere, Jethro Compton and Darren Clark’s beautiful piece was expanded for this new version into an entrancing, deceptively ingenious full scale British musical that may yet turn out to be a true world beater.
*
18. THE LITTLE BIG THINGS – @SohoPlace, London – until 2 March 2024
Photograph by Pamela Raith
Based on Henry Fraser’s memoir chronicling his transformation from teenage sportsman to acclaimed painter via a life-changing accident which left him permanently in a wheelchair, this is a real original and a genuine treat. A new British musical with massive heart, showbiz flair, characters to root for, and thumping good tunes. Inclusive, exhilarating and even educational, it’s a real charmer. Take tissues, you’ll need them.
*
19. THE MOTIVE AND THE CUE – Noël Coward Theatre, London – until 23 March 2024
Photograph by Mark Douet
A West End transfer was a no-brainer for this National Theatre triumph. Jack Thorne’s engrossing backstage drama about the conflicts and friendship between Sir John Gielgud and Richard Burton when mounting their now-legendary Hamlet in 1960s New York, is gossipy, elegant and compulsive. Sam Mendes’s opulent staging features astounding work from Mark Gatiss and Jonny Flynn as Gielgud and Burton respectively.
*
20. THE SHAPE OF THINGS – Park Theatre, London – ended 1 July
Photograph by Mark Douet
Who could have predicted that Neil LaBute’s smart, slick and sick examination of coercive relationships and the boundaries of art would play so much better in 2023 than in its 2001 original outing?! In Nicky Allpress’s razor sharp staging this felt hot, urgent and relevant, and featured detailed, haunting performances from Luke Newton, Amber Anderson, Carla Harrison-Hodge and Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy. Essential, nasty and dazzling.
We may be into the last two weeks of 2023, but it’s undeniable that David Tennant is giving one of the performances of the year in the new Donmar Macbeth. This play, at this venue for the first time, and including the stage return of Cush Jumbo as a striking Lady Macbeth, would have been highly anticipated anyway, but Tennant’s presence turns it into a major cultural event.
He’s worth the hype, giving us a charismatic but preoccupied soldier who goes on an entirely convincing journey from initial bewilderment via unassailable bravado (“none of woman born shall harm Macbeth”) to dead-eyed acceptance. He makes the uncertainty, the cruelty and the vaulting ambition of the character all of a piece in a truly compelling performance. More than that, you see the precise moment where this Macbeth realises he’s a dead man walking, and it’s simultaneously chilling, and makes for tremendously satisfying theatre.
Tennant‘s Thane is at the centre of a production by Max Webster, a director who has form with mixing intelligence and raw theatricality and overlaying well worn texts with a crisp layer of anachronism, that is simultaneously vitiated and slightly sabotaged by a couple of bold central ideas. The most obvious is the use of binaural sound: every audience member experiences the performance wearing headphones, allowing Gareth Fry’s vivid sound score and the haunting, ethereal Celtic-inspired music to penetrate right into the ears and brain.
It’s an interesting, and intermittently very effective, conceit, sometimes reminiscent of the sound and light installation adaption of the novel Blindness with which the Donmar reopened during the Covid pandemic. The “weird sisters”, the witches who accost Macbeth on the blasted heath and hail him as the future King of Scotland, are the primary beneficiaries of this approach: instead of being physically impersonated by actors, they are a series of disembodied voices, so close that their plosives set off a chain reaction from your inner ear to the hairs on the back of your neck, then on down your spine. They sound seductive, soothing….yet deeply troubling. The murder of Lady Macduff (Rona Morison, delicate but mighty) and her children is done in pitch darkness with only the terrifying sounds, and our imaginations filling in the blanks: it’s horrific and deeply upsetting, and so it should be.
The constant thrum of underlying noise, the black modernish costumes, starkly dramatic lighting (Bruno Poet) and perhaps most of all, the use of Shelley Maxwell’s stylised movement, gives the overall sense of this Macbeth being more of a dark satanic ritual than a conventional play. There’s an air of shuddering suspense and dread that grips and discomforts. When the atmosphere explodes into action (terrific fight choreography by Rachel Bown-Williams and Ruth Cooper-Brown), it feels genuinely dangerous.
Having the actors mic’d and beamed straight into our ears is a reminder of how much covert whispering and how many duplicitous asides there are in this most bloody and dark of tragedies and thanks to the technology, we don’t miss a single word, even the most desultory murmurs. Personally, I would like to hear the voices acoustically from time to time though: the Scottish accented delivery of the verse here is uniformly exquisite. Tennant’s command of the language is particularly beautiful, fully alive to the poetry but making perfect sense of every line, living inside of it. His version of the “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy, just after learning of his wife’s death, is perhaps the most effective I’ve seen.
The second defining central concept explored by Webster is the idea of the Macbeths having lost a child, and being haunted by that loss. It’s psychologically acute and speaks directly to much of Shakespeare’s writing for Lady M, but feels a little over-egged by the end of the two hour, interval-free evening, with a small boy taunting Macbeth on the battlefield or peering through the gloom behind the clear back walls of Rosanna Vize’s simple but striking dais set. Those see-through walls serve a useful dramatic purpose too, as the supporting cast stare from the other side or sometimes bang disconcertingly on them like the collective conscience of the two principal characters.
Cush Jumbo’s fine Lady Macbeth is clad in figure-hugging white, in vivid contrast to the darkness of the other costuming, but this disturbed and disturbing figure is no angel. Jumbo points up her intelligence and pragmatism but also an undercurrent of real brutality. Interestingly, the robust strength she demonstrates earlier renders her vulnerability and distress in the famous sleepwalking scene all the more powerful. Jumbo and Tennant don’t have the sexual chemistry Saoirse Ronan and James McArdle brought to the 2021 Almeida production for Yael Farber but that feels deliberate, this coupling feels driven more by status and ambition.
The supporting cast are uniformly strong. Nouf Ousellam is a fiery, heroic but human Macduff and Cal MacAninch brings authentic depth and colour to Banquo. Jatinder Singh Randhawa works hard as the Porter and is cheeky and likeable despite being saddled with some rather belaboured audience interaction.
All in all, despite a couple of reservations, this is a fascinating, atmospheric Macbeth and Tennant is predictably brilliant but brilliantly unpredictable. A superb end to an excellent year at the Donmar.
Here’s something fresh, funny and more than a little touching. Kat Rose-Martin’s big-mouthed, big-hearted play explodes like a firecracker, leaving behind it trails of melancholy, hilarity and irresistible human feeling. Rude and blisteringly honest, it’s a no-holds-barred study of female friendship, the uncertainties of being a teenager, and the importance of not necessarily settling for the life you think has been mapped out for you.
The title, £1 Thursdays, refers to the weekly mega-cheap club night that Bradford 17-year-olds Jen (Yasmin Taheri) and Stacey (Monique Ashe-Palmer) regularly go to at their local, to get puke-drunk on shots, dance the night away and compete with each other as to how many snogs they can rack up. The year is 2012 (Vicky Moran’s vital, supple staging is punctuated by ear-splitting blasts of dancefloor fillers from a decade ago) and these young women are the products of a city on its uppers where everybody’s just getting by, living for the weekend (or, in Jen and Stacey’s case, for Thursdays).
Rose-Martin’s dialogue – salty, unadorned but witty – has the unmistakable, unsentimental ring of authenticity. If sometimes the characters offer up their innermost feelings a little too quickly, it’s never less than engaging. It makes for the same compulsive viewing as a soap opera, although a teatime TV show would probably never have this much swearing in it.
It’s played at a hell of a lick, sometimes a little too fast for clarity, but both the writing and the delivery capture the urgency of youth: the intensity, the disaffection, the feeling of wanting everything right now. Most essentially, it conveys the camaraderie and the love between these two women. Ashe-Palmer and Taheri are wonderful, so natural it feels they’ve really been friends for years, besties who scrap like she-wolves but inherently have each others back. That set-up, so convincingly done, is important as it makes it all the more powerful when circumstances and expectations rend the friendship asunder, as life has a way of doing.
At times reminiscent of other coming-of-age plays – there are shades of Andrea Dunbar’s Rita, Sue And Bob Too, Willy Russell’s Educating Rita and Stags And Hens, even Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing here – £1 Thursdays repeatedly confounds expectations in the most pleasing ways. Jen’s relationship with her mother (Sian Breckin, wonderfully warm and eccentric) is, for all the former’s wayward behaviour, so loving and respectful, and suffused with so much affection. Ashe-Palmer, equal parts sunshine and steel, brilliantly conveys the contradictions in Stacey, a gifted dancer with an underlying neediness and self-sabotaging lack of confidence despite all her outward bravado, who makes a disastrous relationship choice.
Similarly, Taheri’s Jen is so much more than a hard-scrabble, sexually advanced-beyond-her years kid with a big attitude; she’s a prodigious mathematician, easily tossing out answers to complex sums that would make other students’ eyes glaze over. There’s a beautiful scene where she has a university interview and gets a tantalising glimpse of what her life could be, and it’s genuinely moving, so honest and organic is Taheri’s performance…this is acting of the highest order. Joseph Ayre impressively differentiates between the wildly differing roles of Stacey’s potentially abusive boyfriend and the kind, if vaguely patronising, uni interviewer who startles Jen into some seismic life changes.
Moran’s staging is full of inventive touches, from direct audience engagement, to sections of slo-mo choreography that suggest the temporary anaesthesia of intoxication only to be brought up sharp and short by the sudden, stark intrusion of brutal “real” life as the girls roll out of the clubs into the streets, or the STI clinic. Lighting designer Rajiv Pattani bathes it all in the dingy, queasy hues of nightlife, and Ethan Cheek’s set of the sort of retractable queue dividers found outside almost every entertainment venue in the land and semi-opaque curtains, is ingenious.
Ultimately, this is Ashe-Palmer and Taheri’s show, and they make irresistible, surprisingly sympathetic central figures that you find yourself really rooting for. They have a confrontation scene, terrifically well written, that is as electrifying as it is painful to watch. As actresses, they are the kind of talents that people write things for.
Sandwiched chronologically between A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures, first seen in New York in 1976, is generally considered to be one of the most challenging of the Sondheim canon, and is certainly produced less often than its waltzing and throat-slashing siblings. Matthew White’s visually attractive but dramatically inert new staging, a co-production between the Menier and Japan’s Umeda Arts Theatre (where this version was first seen in Osaka and Tokyo) demonstrates why. It contains much to admire but only intermittently soars.
An attempt at imagining, from a Japanese perspective, the effects on the “floating kingdom” of outside interference, led by America in 1853, on a country isolated for centuries from the outside world, Pacific Overtures was always about as far removed from the traditional Broadway musical as it’s possible to conceive. This version begins in a museum filled with historical Japanese artefacts, the narrator (or ‘Reciter’ as the conventions of Kabuki theatre which so informed Harold Prince’s original vision, would have it) being the tour guide (a charming, sparky Jon Chew in decidedly modern dress and coiffeur).
Figures from the past – the ruling Shogun and guards, a fisherman, a samurai and his wife, sundry merchants – waft onto the traverse stage in formation, lending a ceremonial air as we are transported back to a rigorously disciplined, delicately unspoilt pre-modernisation Japan (“We sit inside the screens /And contemplate the view /That’s painted on the screens /More beautiful than true…As the centuries have come, they’ve gone / In the middle of the sea”). The lyrics are elegant, simple but never simplistic, with fiendishly clever internal rhymes, not all of which get across here, alas.
Sondheim’s music for Pacific Overtures is some of the most ravishing and ingenious even he ever created, enhanced by Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations which meld East and West, strings and percussion, to produce aural bliss. It’s a phenomenal score, lyrical yet edgy: delicate and exquisite as a silk screen but thrillingly bombastic when it needs to be.
John Weidman’s book is a much drier affair. It filters the seismic change in Japan’s relationship to the outside world through the friendship between samurai Kayama (Japanese stage and screen star Takuro Ohno, in his UK debut) and fisherman Manjiro (a haunting, gorgeous-voiced Joaquin Pedro Valdes). As a script it has a cool detachment from much of the drama in the story, playing out instead as a sort of ritual, an approximation rather than a flesh-and-blood saga. For it to really captivate (as it did in the stunning, entirely satisfying Donmar-Chicago Shakespeare Theatre production twenty years ago), it needs to have a meditative focus and emotional clarity, both mostly missing here where the long, narrow stage and Ashley Nottingham’s busy but uninspired choreography repeatedly work against the intensity and delicacy of the unique material.
As Western influence bleeds into Japan, Kayama succumbs to external influences, coming to resemble the epitome of a European/American gentleman while Manjiro moves in the opposite direction, reclaiming his national identity with due pride and ferocity. ‘A Bowler Hat’, the song that depicts these developments is a mini-play in itself, and beautifully staged here, in a moment where form, content, style and craft all combine to telling effect. It’s a perfectly pitched sequence in a production that elsewhere suffers from a frustrating inconsistency of tone, particularly in the performances.
Rising star Valdes is flawless, as is Kanako Nakano as Kayama’s doomed wife. Elsewhere, the performance styles from a gender-switching cast tend to range from blank to the point of blandness, to the kind of shameless, broad mugging that wouldn’t look out of place in a school play, accompanied by some worryingly pitchy singing. A notable exception is the witty, delightful ‘Please Hello’ number which shows Sondheim at his most bravura depicting a quintet of international admirals courting Japan for trade deals, each in their (perceived) native musical styles, all punctuated by deafening blasts of cannon fire from their attendant warships. We get a flamboyant Sousa-esque cake walk for the American, a merry clog dance for the Dutch, a Gilbert and Sullivan pastiche for the English, a folies bergères-type frolic for France, and a wonderfully morose and extravagant Mussorgsky-style dirge for Russia (Lee VG, brilliant). It’s the nearest thing to a showstopper this unconventional score has, and proves an irrepressible treat yet again this time around.
The piece has been cut to an interval-less 105 minutes, arguably the biggest casualty being the excision of the masterly ‘Chrysanthemum Tea’, a bleakly comic play in song form that sees a disillusioned Shogun’s mother slowly poisoning her own son. With that gone, Pacific Overtures becomes a largely humour-free evening, apart from the aforementioned ‘Please Hello’. Neither the potentially riotous but essentially icky ‘Welcome to Kanagawa’, where a brothel madam instructs her young employees in ways to amuse the visiting American sailors, nor the transcendent ‘Someone In A Tree’ land as pleasingly as they can, thanks to some wearyingly heavy over-emphasis. The thunderous finale, ‘Next’, usually uplifting yet sinister with more than a touch of melancholy as modern day Japan exultantly takes on the rest of the globe, also lacks feels muted, detrimentally impacted by the bizarre decision to bisect the already limited playing area with a projection screen, thereby scuppering both choreography and sightlines.
Paul Pyant’s lighting and Ayako Maeda’s costumes are gorgeous, and Catherine Jayes’s fine nine piece band, under the baton of Paul Bogaev, sounds much larger and lusher than it is. Even in a less than ideal production, Pacific Overtures remains a fascinating, bracingly original piece. Shorn of some of its power and excitement, it feels like a stunningly accomplished score tethered to an episodic, uninvolving text and some questionable racial tropes. Sondheim completists should undoubtedly make their way to Menier for this, but the uninitiated may find themselves wondering what all the fuss is about.
If the title makes you wince, much of the content will really make your eyes water. Let’s be perfectly clear: Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick! is puerile, crude and basic. It also has more genuine laugh-out-loud moments per scene than probably anything else on the London stage right now.
Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper’s adult pantomimes for Above The Stag had achieved something approaching cult status and the team’s offering for this festive season looks set to continue that tradition of merry smut and surprisingly high production values. Perhaps the biggest shock for the uninitiated is how much respect and know-how the creatives have for the traditions of panto. Far from just being an endless parade of unbridled single entendres and jokes about anal sex (although there’s plenty of all that), Sleeping Beauty has rhyming sections, the obligatory “there’s a ghost behind you” gag, well crafted songs, plenty of opportunities for the audience to boo and hiss, and, in Matthew Baldwin as world-weary, man-hungry Queen Gertrude, one of the classiest Dames in the business.
Baldwin is the real deal: screamingly funny but with an undertone of real pathos, his Gertrude treats her fellow cast members and the audience with a haughty disdain that the roaring, enraptured punters can’t get enough of. Every withering put-down and catty aside lands, every outrageous outfit is suitably outlandish: my favourite was a LGBTQ+ bastardisation of Cecil Beaton’s creation for Audrey Hepburn in the Ascot scene from the My Fair Lady film, although the tarted-up Marie Antoinette finale look was also spectacular. Crucially though, the comedy is never overplayed, which makes it all the more delightful, and one always feels that, for all the frivolity and salaciousness, there’s always something at stake for this marvellous monarch. As in previous years, Baldwin is worth the price of a ticket all by himself.
The casting throughout is strong: Chris Lane is suitably ripe and nasty as the baddie Prince Camembert, a priapic monster with killer comic timing and, according to Queen Gertrude, quite possibly tertiary stage syphilis. Tom Mann invests Prince Arry (the gender-swapped titular Beauty) with just the right combination of gormlessness and enthusiasm, and Jordan Stamatiadis is great fun as his perpetually randy fairy godmother. There are stand out turns also from Matthew Gent as a salt-of-the-earth stable man and his better off descendant (the plot straddles several centuries for reasons too convoluted to go into here), Nikki Biddington as his spirited daughter(s) and Myles Hart as a technicolored alien with a libido as pronounced as his Caribbean accent.
Any show that features parodies of My Fair Lady’s Ascot Gavotte and Jellicle Songs from Cats is clearly put together by a team that knows their musical theatre as well as their willy jokes and pantomime. For all the on-the-nose crudity of the humour, it’s interesting that the biggest laugh is arguably a gag about Beyoncé performing in Tottenham, and, outrageous as much of the script is, it’s seldom actually cruel. Andrew Beckett’s well judged production includes nifty choreography by Carole Todd and a fabulously garish Belle Époque-meets-traditional panto flats set by David Shields.
Unless you’re exceptionally prudish (and, really, what would you be doing at a show entitled Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick! if you’re easily offended?!), it’s pretty hard not to have a rollicking good time here. Swearing aside, most of the humour isn’t that far removed from what Julian Clary gets away with regularly in the annual Palladium extravaganza. Go for the dirty jokes and flamboyant performances, but you may be surprised at the amount of craft on display too. Huge fun, massive in fact.
As with any classic – and Evita, first seen on stage in 1978, is surely now regarded as a classic modern musical – echoes of earlier productions inevitably hang over any new version. So it proves with Nikolai Foster’s determinedly contemporary new staging of the Rice and Lloyd Webber rock opera at Leicester’s Curve. The use of projected images sometimes recalls the iconic Harold Prince original while anybody who saw the Jamie Lloyd open air production in Regents Park is likely here to be transported back by the modern sneakers and monochrome leisurewear of the ensemble and by Adam Murray’s muscular, angular choreography.
That said, Foster’s vision, epic and frequently laser-focused, is as remarkable for the new ideas it throws at the piece as it is for its (perhaps unintended) continuation of earlier tropes. There is little, if any, attempt to contextualise the action in Argentina or in the 1940s when the real life Eva Peron was at the height of her powers as wife of the ruling dictator. The visual aesthetic here is stark, spare and majestic: a gargantuan staircase is wheeled around the vast space, a video screen wall flies in and out, batteries of lights (stunning work by Joshie Harriette) rain down on the performers or blind the front stalls, simultaneously glamourising the action while mercilessly exposing the less admirable aspects of the Peronist regime, a stage wide gantry bearing the ruling militia descends from the flies to suggest absolute power and also constant surveillance.
Staging the waltz where the narrator Che (Tyrone Huntley) directly challenges Evita over her motives and morals as a TV interview is a brilliant idea, as is the concept of having the ruling classes, the aristocracy and the aforementioned military men, as, respectively, a bunch of trashy drunks and feckless, towel-flicking frat boys. Not everything lands, but clearly a lot of original thought has gone into this reimagining. The bare metalwork of Michael Taylor’s set is often reminiscent of the Regents Park Jesus Christ Superstar, especially under Harriette’s rock stadium lighting.
In all honesty, I’m not sure how clear the storytelling would be to somebody unfamiliar with the work, and some of the concepts feel a little half-baked. Is the frequent live filming and direct address to camera intended to suggest that Eva was a latter day equivalent to a social media star? Was she the first influencer?! Having Che emerge from the front stalls to question the status quo (“who is this Santa Evita? Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow?”) is an interesting choice but isn’t fully followed through, leaving the usually wonderful Huntley as a frustratingly ambiguous figure. He sings beautifully, albeit a little too cleanly, but isn’t sardonic or edgy enough to really pose an ideological threat to the Perons, and never seems clear whether he’s applauding Eva or admonishing her.
Martha Kirby’s Eva gets better as the evening progresses. As the youngster desperate to escape her hicktown existence for the bright lights of the big city, she lacks the requisite fire, but she convinces later as a smooth operator capable of manipulating her way to the top, even if the staging doesn’t really give her many opportunities to demonstrate this. It’s a very passive interpretation of a role that can, and probably should, be a performance-driving firecracker. Still, she works the camera like a real star and meets the considerable vocal demands of the role with ease and sweetness, maybe a little too much sweetness: when she belts at the top of her range, as in the rabble rousing sections of the ‘A New Argentina’ act one closer, she’s authentically thrilling, mainly because she, for once, sounds dangerous and raw. Foster’s direction does so little foreshadowing of the illness that kills her (the real Eva Peron died of uterine cancer, aged 33) that anybody who didn’t know the story might find her very swift deterioration somewhat bewildering.
The only one of the three leads who is fully inhabiting their role at present is Gary Milner as Juan Peron. He’s dashing and charming on the surface but suggests a core of bullying, ruthless darkness and also a fundamental weakness, as though acutely aware that the lions share of his popularity is down to his charismatic wife. Since the 1996 movie version, the pleasant but hardly essential ballad ‘You Must Love Me’ has become part of the standard stage score and it works better here than ever before by turning it into a duet for the Perons, Eva in failing health and Juan attempting to comfort her but with one eye on his dwindling power.
Dan Partridge’s swaggering Magaldi, the tango singer who seduces the underage Eva and unwillingly takes her to Buenos Aires, is like a boyband reject in this modern iteration, and it’s a highly effective take. Having Peron’s Mistress appear much earlier than usual (she’s on Peron’s arm at the charity concert where he meets Eva) is another inspired idea, and makes her rejection all the more cruel, a point reinforced by Chumisa Dornford-May’s exquisite, powerfully emotional rendition of the beloved ‘Another Suitcase In Another Hall’ number.
The choral singing throughout is exciting, although Adam Fisher’s sound design would benefit from upping the volume several notches, and using teams of youth performers to swell the crowd scenes is an intelligent move, adding to the monumental feel of the production. Foster has the ensemble stationed all over the auditorium at points which adds to the general feel of us all being collusive in the Peron’s rise to power, and it’s just a shame that the musical performance is so aurally underwhelming on the whole, which is no fault of the the fine singers but rather that a nine piece band inevitably sounds a bit thin given the scale of the staging and the symphonic demands of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s galvanising, fascinating score.
Fans of a traditional Evita will mourn the period trappings and glamour (even the Jamie Lloyd version gave us the iconic white ball gown and scraped back peroxide blonde, albeit only in the final moments) and it’s a shame that the music doesn’t always sound as powerful as it should, but this is an undeniably fresh, bold look at a familiar piece. Here it’s less about Eva Peron as a historical figure and more about the corrosive, changeable nature of fame and mass manipulation. It may miss some of the notes one has come to expect but it has its own dynamism, and is frequently astonishing to look at.
Here’s a pre-Christmas treat to freeze the cockles of your heart. Rightfully acclaimed and sold out at last year’s Edinburgh Festival and now ensconced at the Bush Theatre for a six week run, Marcelo Dos Santos’s hour long solo play is an exhilarating exercise in zestful nihilism, elevated by a truly astonishing central performance by Samuel Barnett.
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is presented like a stand-up comedy routine, one where the unnamed comedian (Barnett) stops and starts, snarls and kvetches, as he filters his existential crisis through a selection of modern day gay neuroses that are likely to strike a chord in many onlookers. He gives us emotional disconnection to the point of sociopathy, slavish worship of the body beautiful, feelings of ongoing inadequacy, the mixed blessings of online connections, self hatred and more… it’s mostly blisteringly funny, and when it isn’t, it’s just blistering.
The subject matter really isn’t that original, but the treatment is, especially in Matthew Xia’s stylish, technically adroit production. The design (Kat Heath), lighting (Elliot Griggs) and sound (Max Pappenheim) are spare and elegant but get flashy when they need to be. The comedian’s microphone is used like a weapon or a defence as Barnett screams and sasses into it, and the isolated moments where he puts it aside to speak, or sob, acoustically are powerfully telling.
The central character is desperate to be loved: he even puts a smiley face on a mental health questionnaire where he makes some startlingly dark admissions, in the hope of getting his therapist (“not a real therapist…a nice girl from the NHS with no detectable shoulders”) to like him. His problem, or at least a big part of it, is that he doesn’t even like himself very much. Barnett’s performance and Dos Santos’s writing do a remarkable collective job of conveying a person whose propensity for self-sabotage is immense, and who uses his undeniable wit as a constant form of self-defence. In all honesty, he’s not easy to like, despite the humour and the sometimes painful vulnerability that peeps through the motor-mouthed sarcasm, but that’s not really the point. He’s certainly thrilling theatrical company. When he gets into a sort-of relationship with an American hunk who seems too-good-to-be-true until it’s revealed that he has a medical condition that potentially makes him an unlikely match for a comedian, it’s clear that the wheels are going to come off, and part of the grim fun to be had is in predicting how that might happen (it’s pretty surprising but not entirely implausible).
Barnett is one of the most immediately likeable actors of his generation, possessed of an open-faced warmth, relatability and understated fragility that compellingly draws you in. Given that, it’s all the more astounding how much he disappears into the damaged, devious, wired figure at the heart of this play. He almost alters himself physiognomically, which of course isn’t possible especially at such close quarters but such is the magic of theatre and this electrifying performance. He’s hilarious and edgy, but when the mask of sardonic comic confession slips, he’s truly devastating. He also offers skilful brief but vivid sketches of the other figures in the comedian’s life.
Dos Santos’s script has a laser sharp precision and brilliantly walks a tightrope between comic showboating and laying bare the despair at the heart of so many super-busy youngish urbanites whose frantic activity may just be an attempt to keep the darkness at bay. It achieves a lot in a short space of time, and almost feels like it’s invoking a modern day, gay British Lenny Bruce. It’s frequently borderline obscene, and proves a much more satisfying piece of work than the same author’s current West End hit Backstairs Billy. Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is brutal and brilliant, with a bittersweet aftertaste that lingers long after the sixty five minute playing time is over. Just go.
“It’s not like we’re going to be winning any theatre awards any time soon” says Laurie Kynaston’s debauched modern day fop, improbably disguised as a Russian oligarch visiting a dilapidated stately home on the North East coast of England, in a meta moment from this strange but appealing new comedy at the Royal Court. “I highly doubt we’ll be nominated” rejoinders Natalie Dew as his Sloane Ranger-ish heiress girlfriend, also in disguise as an oligarch, this one the bearded, seafood-obsessed brother of Kynaston’s. They’ve got a point….well, unless this years illustrious ceremonies add a category for ‘Weirdest Play of the Year’.
Rory Mullarkey’s comedy starts out like latter day Oscar Wilde with upper crust characters making epigrammatic pronouncements about themselves and each other in information-stuffed language heightened to several levels above realism (“So I have you to blame for the ignominy of my son being referred to as a transitive verb” “I’d better be on my way. I have a late badminton appointment and I’m anxious to make the East Coast mainline before the clientele start getting too inebriated”). It’s often very funny, especially when the toffs are contrasted with Amy Booth-Steel’s lugubrious, Communist housekeeper, even though taking the mickey out of the self-regarding, spendthrift upper classes feels a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Mullarkey’s way with language is a thing of considerable joy, but Sam Pritchard’s production, and some of the acting, doesn’t feel sharp or savage enough as yet, although I suspect that will come as the run progresses.
The action moves from Theodore ‘Tug’ Bungay’s split level Chelsea pad (striking set design by Milla Clarke) to the family pile, Dimley Grange in Northumberland, which Tug’s mother, the fearsome Lady Agrippina (Fenella Woolgar, finding pleasing layers in what might have been a one note characterisation) is selling off to the oligarchs to replenish the coffers, leaving her free to run off to South Korea. It’s all quite bonkers, especially when a couple of Russian assassins, a ton of explosives and a lesbian love affair between Agrippina and her account manager are thrown into the mix. While it’s never less than entertaining – think Spitting Image without the puppets as reimagined by an unholy triumvirate of Tom Stoppard, Ray Cooney and Monty Python – it doesn’t ever quite lift off the ground the way farce should, and is too frantic and unfocused to allow the more serious elements (and yes that are some) to really hit home.
Technically, Pritchard’s staging is a bit messy and uncertain in tone, but manages to create a real sense of forlorn devastation in a final sequence where a newly impecunious Tug complains to his mother that he’s scared, and uncertain of his identity. Her response – “your grandfathers fashioned the whole world, just so you could be exactly as you are. It was everyone else who always had to pretend. Maybe it’s your turn now” – strikes me as the crux of Mullarkey’s play, a wishful, two-fingered gesture to a UK governed and dominated by over-privileged, under-civilised posh boys. It’s genuinely, and unexpectedly, illuminating and touching.
As the show doesn’t fully cohere at present, it’s best to enjoy it as a series of frequently inspired individual elements. For instance, George Fouracres, in the performance of the night as Tug’s deeply eccentric, globe-trotting, lovelorn best friends, gets a brilliant second half monologue, a surreal masterpiece of storytelling and comic pathos about a misremembered Soviet Union childhood, that turns out to be a total red herring, but is still something to savour.
Fouracres is sensational as a character whose antecedents can be traced all the way back to the outrageous, irresistible fops of Restoration Comedy. His Charlton Thrupp is spoilt, as childlike as he’s sophisticated, and quite mad. Fouracres invests him with a wide-eyed, debauched charm, and a baroque vocal delivery that delights in the language and finds the strangest of emphasis on words and syllables. In short, he is an unforgettable comic creation and worth the price of a ticket by himself. Kynaston and Dew are both fine actors and have some great moments but, as yet, seem a little tentative where they should be fearless. Booth-Steel is a hoot, and a welcome touch of reality amongst all the campery, and there’s nice work from Karina Fernandez and Philipp Mogilnitskiy as a couple of understandably bewildered outsiders.
The overriding sense of Mates In Chelsea is that not everyone connected creatively with the production seems to be on the same page. It’s too clever and entertaining to write off, but too scattershot to be fully satisfying. I’m tempted to go back late in the run to see if it has coalesced a little more, as at present it’s neither rollicking nor vicious enough. Still, it’s an intriguing, intermittently hilarious, evening that’s equal parts head-scratcher and side-splitter.
What with Back To The Future The Musical continuing to pack them in on both sides of the Atlantic, and the ecstatic critical and popular reception to the Old Vic’s breathtaking Groundhog Day, it would seem that time travel and musical theatre are a match made in heaven. And now we have another example of this unlikely subgenre with this likeable adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s much loved sci-fi-meets-romance novel which has already spawned a movie and a TV series.
On paper, The Time Traveller’s Wife’s biggest selling point, aside from the inbuilt fandom inspired by the book and the film, would seem to be a score by Dave (Eurythmics) Stewart and Grammy and Brit award winner Joss Stone. It’s a surprise then that the contribution of Stewart and Stone probably turns out to be the weakest aspect of the project. The songs are certainly pleasant but lack the theatrical propulsion required to really make a musical take flight: it sounds like a middle-of-the-road pop album, not a bona fide stage score, despite being magnificently sung throughout. The underscoring is suitably haunting and dramatic but there are few memorable tunes.
That this matters surprisingly little overall speaks to the intelligence and fluidity of Bill Buckhurst’s modestly scaled but frequently dazzling staging, and a pair of lead performances that soar and sparkle over and above the material. It also helps that Lauren Gunderson’s script presents Niffenegger’s fanciful narrative – budding artist and all-American girl Clare meets Henry, a boy with a unique genetic mutation forcing him to unexpectedly travel through time at the drop of a hat – with admirable clarity, further aided by explanatory projections on the walls of Anna Fleischle’s set. The smart storytelling of the first act gives way to a certain clunkiness in the second half that the bounce and invention of the staging goes some way towards covering up. Probably best not to dwell on the fact that Clare is only 10 years old to Henry’s 28 when they first meet, thanks to the messed up chronology of this tall tale. The whole thing is such a preposterous proposition that emotional connection might prove challenging, if it weren’t for the presence of David Hunter and Joanna Woodward in the leading roles.
Hunter and Woodward give us a hero and heroine worth rooting for: warm, relatable (despite the bonkers nature of the story), multi-faceted and entirely human. The central premise may be unlikely but the two stars play it like they’re in Ibsen, albeit with humour, and make something genuinely affecting out of this bizarre love story ricocheting through time. Hunter is one of this country’s most endearing leading men and brings his characteristic charm, unexpected vulnerability and off-kilter comedy, as well as a terrific singing voice, to a character that could so easily be an angsty cypher in lesser hands.
Opposite him, Woodward is astonishingly good. Similar to Gabriel Vick’s barnstorming turn in Mrs Doubtfire over at the Shaftesbury, here’s a performer finally achieving deserved West End star status following years of fine supporting work. There’s a hint of Emma Stone in Woodward’s full throttle acting choices, bright-eye feistiness and extraordinary emotional transparency, and her vocals are exhilarating. She ages up and down convincingly, is vulnerable without ever turning sappy, blazes into righteous anger with real power, and achieves an almost classical level intensity towards the end when Clare realises that the love of her life is destined to be lost forever in time. This is a performance that should put Ms Woodward at the top of every casting director’s wish list, and if she’s not headlining as Sally Bowles within the next two years, it’ll be a travesty. In the meantime, she and Hunter are worth the price of a Time Traveller’s Wife ticket all by themselves.
Tim Mahendran and Hiba Elchikhe – both fabulous singers – are adorable as the spiky secondary couple who are lifelong friends of the principal pair and there’s sensitive, nuanced work from Ross Dawes as Henry’s resentful, borderline alcoholic father. At the performance I saw, Holly-Jade Roberts, who alternates with a trio of other young performers, played childhood Clare and then Alba, Clare and Henry’s daughter, with a mature, winning combination of innocence and scrappiness.
Buckhurst’s production makes good use of the revolve, some striking projections and, best of all, old fashioned stage magic – disappearances, body doubles, levitations – that will be familiar to seasoned theatregoers but still provide a ripple of pleasure. Henry’s traversing between time zones is achieved with a white hot flash of light (Rory Beaton and Lucy Carter’s lighting is impressive throughout, as are Andrzej Goulding’s impressionistic video designs) and a crack of ear-splitting sound, and is exciting every time.
As a play with songs, it works pretty well, in no small part because it is so well acted, but it comes a bit unstuck when it tries to play by the rules of traditional musical theatre: for example, a comedy argument number set at Clare’s art gallery opening suddenly, pointlessly breaks into dance, presumably because this is a tuner and we apparently we need choreography, however inappropriate. The line-dancing wedding act one closer has a similarly over-staged feel, and the anthemic finale is stirringly sung but feels generic with the cast gazing into the middle distance while belting their faces off with the assertion that ‘Love Wins The Day’.
Less bombastic and technically virtuosic than Stewart’s earlier Ghost musical, The Time Traveller’s Wife works best when it leans into its quirks, or when there’s the anticipation of magic (illusions by Rick Fisher), and whenever the leads are front and centre. The songs are insufficiently distinctive to lift this into the realms of great musical theatre, but it’s an undeniably enjoyable night out, and Hunter and Woodward are the real deal.
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