Monthly Archives: January 2015

Review – Dick Whittington, Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, 3rd January 2015

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Where do the years go? This was our fifth annual trip to Sheffield for a theatrical weekend over the Christmas period where we take in the Lyceum panto and the big show at the Crucible. Christmas really wouldn’t be Christmas without it. It’s a family occasion, so we brought Lady Duncansby and her butler William along for the ride.

The beautiful Lyceum theatre is looking even more spick and span since the last time we visited it, and is a credit to its city and local theatre trust. That whole theatre square, with the Crucible as well as the Lyceum, plus the Crucible Corner bar where you can mingle with the stars late into the night (as we did later on) always makes me feel as though I’m coming home, even though I’ve never lived in Sheffield. In fact my only connection with the place was, at the age of 19, going to a friend’s house in Hillsborough for dinner, only she didn’t realise you couldn’t cook a frozen chicken from scratch. After a long time of thawing it in sinks full of hot water, it was finally ready to eat at 3am. Not sure how I survived the experience.

Back to 2015, and after a tasty light lunch at the Museum (which is a pub, not a museum), it was time for Dick Whittington. Ever since she knew which panto we were going to see, Lady Duncansby’s not let up with her favourite line “half past seven and still no sign of Dick” (or variations on that theme). Who said panto is for kids? I guess someone must have, as there were plenty of them in the audience, but strangely, our row was almost entirely populated with Adults Who Should Know Better. At least we resisted the temptation to buy flashing wands and princess dresses.

As ever, the star of the show was Damian Williams – one wants to call him “Sheffield’s own” but he actually lives in Tilbury. This year he played Dolly the Cook. He really understands the over-the-top spirit of the pantomime dame – gutsy, inelegant, boisterous; breaking that fourth wall like there’s no tomorrow. In all my years of theatre going and seeing pantomime dames the only one I can recall who came even close to Mr Williams for rumbustiousness was Terry Scott. Mr Williams knows that he looks like a fool, and plays up to it massively. During the course of this show he had all sorts of outré outfits, including being dressed as an East Midlands Train (and saying “East Midlands Train” as often has he could, which was pretty often – kerching!) But his most memorable costume this year, for all the wrong reasons, was his skimpy bikini, a hilariously inappropriate feat of engineering created by Helga Wood.

All the usual scenes were there, including the patter running gag between Mr Williams and Andy Day as Captain Crabstick (cue for a pirate’s “Harr, harr” every time he appears), where they named as many towns and villages in the Sheffield area that they could in five minutes whilst holding up the appropriate road sign (that scene was a particular favourite of the chap who checked us in at the hotel later on). And it wouldn’t be a Sheffield panto without the world famous Lyceum bench scene that this time featured gorillas sneaking up behind the cast. We’ll have to do it again, then, won’t we!

A highlight this year was a particularly splendid villain in the form of John Barr as King Rat, a star struck scoundrel who peppers his wicked attempts to send a plague of rats to blight the kingdom with songs from the shows, much to the delighted booing of the entire theatre. Mr Barr ends the first half performing from one of the boxes, which meant that when we pottered out during the interval to retrieve our half-time bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, we, and a family full of little kids, bumped into him in the foyer. “BOOOOOO!!!!” the children all screamed at him. “But I’m really very nice” he mildly protested with a knowing glint in his eye. That’s the magic of theatre.

This year’s fairy was played by Samantha Womack, fresh from her tricky will she-won’t she die Eastenders Christmas special (or so I understand – Mrs Chrisparkle and I see far too much live stuff to have time for soaps). With a name like Fairy Bow-Bells, I was rather expecting a cor blimey sort of wood-nymph, all apples and pears and how’s your father; but in fact she was a rather prim and proper fairy, with nothing very Laandaan about her at all. To be honest we didn’t care much for her material where her rhymes didn’t rhyme because of north/south accents – when she turned on the northern accent to make the rhyme work it sounded patronising to me. Still what do I know? Reading through her bio in the programme, I’m always disappointed when someone airbrushes out of history the fact that they appeared in the Eurovision Song Contest. Representing your country not worthy of a mention, Samantha? We don’t forget your 1991 10th place with A Message To Your Heart that easily, Miss Janus.However, I was delighted to see one of my favourite actresses, Gemma Sutton, as Alice Fitzwarren, having seen her in the last twelve months in Chicago, Drunk, and Gypsy. I’m really not stalking her, honest. She played a very earnest Alice, but not without a twinkle of mischief, and of course she has a great singing voice. She and Jo Parsons (Dick Whittington) made a cute couple and will have beautiful babies together.

The rest of the cast are all excellent, with an entertaingly bumbling Alderman Fitzwarren played by Patrick Clancy, a neatly feline Tommy the Cat played by Craig Garner (whose meow, meow, meow, meow, meow’s were enunciated beautifully), an imposingly hunky Sultan in the form of Tramaine Wright and with lots of enjoyable singing and dancing from the ensemble. I’m not sure which team of kids we saw, but they were great –and the girls making Mr Williams work hard for his living in the sweetshop scene were really funny. As you might expect, given its popularity, this year there were a number of Frozen references – I’ve not seen it but I gather they were quite clever. There was a brilliant “dick” line – see Lady Duncansby’s penchant in paragraph 3 – but sadly I can’t quite bring it to mind. I did, however, like Dolly’s East Midlands Train (kerching) comment – “all aboard, Deauville for the Continent, Skegness for the Incontinent”;and any panto that makes a reference to Tinder can’t be all bad (“We met using an online dating site. Tinder? No Tesco. I got a bag for life”.

Next year Mr Williams is back – yet again – in Aladdin. These Sheffield pantomimes are consistently brilliant. Can’t wait!

Review – Sunny Afternoon, Harold Pinter Theatre, 29th December 2014

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If you’re like me, you can’t think of the Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon without instantly singing to yourself, “the taxman’s taken all my dough and left me in my stately home”; although I always thought it was the even more savage, “the taxman’s taken all my dole and left me in my stately hole”. Those old songs really are steeped in emotion. If you grew up with the Kinks, you’ll probably find that each of their songs brings back a particular memory, a moment, or a sensation. Dead End Street always reminds me of the first time I heard it, as a little kid, being astounded at the pounding introduction and even more so at the whispering “yeah!” fade out. Days always takes me back to sharing a study with my best friend when we were at university, desperately trying to cobble together essays on English literature against the clock.

I’ve always thought the Kinks have been vastly underrated in the annals of modern culture, with Ray Davies’ songs being easily comparable to Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richard. In many respects they bridged the gap between the Beatles and the Stones. On one side, John Lennon wrote about “me” – “there are places I remember all my life…”, “is there anybody going to listen to my story….”- and Paul McCartney delicately crafted characters and places like Eleanor Rigby and Penny Lane; on the other the Stones created the full rock guitar experience with songs like Satisfaction and Paint It Black whilst still incorporating thoughtful meaningful lyrics. Somewhere between the two Ray Davies and the Kinks could give you the introspective vision of Terry and Julie meeting at the Waterloo Sunset or the observation of the tiny caterpillar in Autumn Almanac, but still offering the full on rock attack of All Day and All of the Night, the gritty realism of Dead End Street, the wistful reminiscence of Days or the feel-good humour of Lola.

So a musical featuring the works of the Kinks is a nice idea. Would it be like Mamma Mia, where the songs of Abba get mish-mashed to create an original story, or would it actually tell the story of the group themselves? The Kinks’ songs are so full of story-telling technique that I am sure they would work well in the Mamma Mia model. But Sunny Afternoon (the musical) tells the journey of Ray, Dave and their mates and how they came to get a record contract, how they got their name, how Ray started to write songs of exquisite quality, how Dave was a loose cannon, how Mick kept on feeling like he wasn’t wanted, how they weren’t accepted in America, how they dealt with female fans, and, by ending with a rock concert finale, how their songs are still great today.

Joe Penhall’s book is adapted from Ray Davies’ own original story of the Kinks, so we can assume that pretty much everything you see on stage is factually true. The songs adapt very well to reflecting the group’s birth, rise and fall; it all develops organically, and nothing feels forced or unnatural. Of course, I was just a nipper when the Kinks were at their height but I always felt I had an extra link to them as my cousin was friends with Ray Davies – not that I ever met him. So there was plenty for me to discover about the group. I wasn’t aware of the all the legal wrangles that beset the group, nor of how they came a-cropper in the States due to the Union rules, and in fact were banned from performing there. I’d also forgotten what a wild lad Dave Davies was. Some of the best parts of the show are where you see the creative process in action – how did they get those brilliant guitar riffs on the early singles? How did the Davies family home inspire Dead End Street? The music creates its own drama, and it feels very exciting.

For this production, they’ve given the insides of the Harold Pinter (I still think of it as the Comedy) something of an internal rip-out. The front couple of rows and the back few rows have been converted to cabaret tables. Additionally, the middle seats have been removed from the first seven or so rows and been replaced by a catwalk, so that the action can come further into the audience, giving a greater sensation of everything happening around you. Mrs Chrisparkle and I opted for one of the front cabaret tables – a table for two just to the right side of the stage. You certainly feel as though you’re in the heart of the action, but this location is not for the fainthearted. Steps just to the right of us led up to the stage, and as cast members bounded up and down them I frequently felt the need to grab hold of my merlotso that it didn’t topple over with the vibration. Your ears are also perilously close to a whopping great speaker – when the first few notes were played at the start of the show, Mrs C virtually leapt into the air with aural anguish and spent the next minute or so creating earplugs out of tissues. There’s a lot of looking up to do – otherwise your eyes look directly at the performers’ feet – and unless you twist your back round at about 135 degrees, you can’t see what’s happening on the catwalk. However, despite all those quibbles, I really enjoyed our perspective on the show! You become something more than just audience when you’re that close, you’re really participating too; and the impact of the music is outstanding.

The set is simple but intricate – the walls are lined from top to bottom with speakers. All around, everywhere you look, woofers and tweeters abound. The emphasis is all on the music – and, as you would expect with all those speakers, it’s loud. The show is directed by Edward Hall, best known for his work with the all-male Shakespeare company Propeller – we saw their Henry V a few years ago and I was very impressed with the company’s sense of ensemble. You very much sense it in this show too, so it must be one of Mr Hall’s strong points. The choreography is by Adam Cooper, and you can’t get much more impressive a name-check than that.

The performances are great – both musically and in the story-telling. John Dagleish plays Ray Davies and does indeed have something of the look of the young Ray about him. Quirky, funny, gritty – rather like his songs in fact. Ned Derrington and Adam Sopp play the lesser known band members Pete and Mick with great 60s aplomb and attitude, but probably the best performance of the night is by George Maguire as Dave Davies – a real, unpredictable, wild child, oozing mischief, and with an overriding desire to have a good time. From our vantage point, I could see that Mr Maguirewas Absolutely Loving It. The final scene converts into a full on concert party, with the guys reprising all the best boppy Kinks numbers and Mr Maguire encourages us all to get on our feet and bop along. When I stood up, he looked at me with a big grin as if to say “you too, old geezer? Good on ya!” It made me feel quite welcome. However, perhaps the vocal highlight of the show comes a few minutes earlier when the four guys perform an acapella rendition of Days, which only the hardest of hearts wouldn’t find emotional.

There’s another excellent double act in the show – Dominic Tighe as Robert Wace and Tam Williams as Grenville Collins, two rather posh characters who end up representing the Kinks as Management in a rather hit-and-miss manner. Messrs Tighe and Williams really play up the toffee-nosed aspects of their characters without ever drifting into caricature, and they provide a lot of fun. We’d seen Mr Tighe a couple of times before, in the touring production of Barefoot in the Park and in the excellent Charley’s Aunt at the Menier, but he’d kept his musical ability quiet in those shows, so I was surprised to discover he’s really a very good singer! And we both loved Lillie Flynn as Rasa, Ray’s wife, giving great vocal support to the band numbers but also singing solo with great emotion – her performance of I Go To Sleep was a knockout. But everyone gives strong, enjoyable performances and there isn’t a weak spot anywhere; and you have to give a mention to the terrific band, directed by Elliott Ware, and the high octane guitar playing by Pete Friesen.

There are a couple of sins of omission; although the story is primarily seen from Ray’s point of view it would have been great to have at least one of Dave’s songs there as well – preferably Death of a Clown. I also missed Autumn Almanac, which is hippy quirkiness at its best, the cynical Plastic Man and the surreal Victoria. Still, you can’t have everything. It’s a feel-good show that brings the Kinks firmly back to the limelight where they belong. Irresistibly enjoyable, a perfect party show with great music and musical performances but also telling a strong story with a good sense of its time. I spent the following four days unable to get Kinks’ songs out of my head! If you’re a fan of the group, you’ll love this show – and if you’re undecided, I bet you’ll be fan by the time you go home.

Review – The Scottsboro Boys, Garrick Theatre, 29th December 2014

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The Scottsboro Boys is based on a true story of racial prejudice and injustice in Alabama, a sequence of events that started in 1931. Nine black teenagers, none of whom knew each other at the time, were on a train going about their various business, doing or seeking work somewhere around Chattanooga, when they were accused by two white girls, also on the same train, of rape. The case became something of a cause celebre, with the boys adamantly protesting their innocence, but unfair trial after unfair trial found them guilty, even when one of the alleged victims withdrew her accusation. It wasn’t until 1937 that the rape charges against the four youngest boys were dropped, 1976 when the last of the defendants was officially declared not guilty, and, incredibly, 2013 before they were all pardoned. As the show reveals, the majority of them went on to lead variously tragic lives, in and out of prison, including suicide, manslaughter, and mental illness.

Sounds like a bundle of laughs, doesn’t it? It’s taken us a very long time to see this show. It opened at the Young Vic in October 2013 to great success, and then transferred to the Garrick last autumn, where it is scheduled to stay until 21st February. So Mrs Chrisparkle and I were pleased to get the chance to see it whilst we still could. As we were enjoying our pre-show lunch, we were talking about what little we knew (shame on us) about the case of the Scottsboro Boys, and how we expected it to be rather serious and sad. “…And it’s a musical?” asked Mrs C. “How are they going to make a story like that into a musical, without ridiculing or belittling the people involved?” A good question.

The answer is a stroke of genius. It’s not a serious, mournful sub-opera, but a song-and-dancey modern take on the traditional American Minstrel show, looking at its obvious potential for accusations of racism fair and square in the face, just as the American people themselves had to at the time. It follows the structure of the Minstrel show in great detail, with the performers sitting in a semi-circle, the characters of Bones and Tambo (named after their musical instruments) on the far ends each playing the fool, and with the whole thing MC’d by an interlocutor, in this case – unusually – played by a white actor, to strengthen the suggestion of racial injustice. It’s a bold strategy, but it really works, as, while revelling in the immense talent and skills of the performers, enjoying the comedy, and loving the music and dancing, nevertheless you spend a lot of the show considering how very un-PC all this is today.

But that’s the point – it’s that telling juxtaposition between what’s appropriate on a stage and what occurred in 1930s Alabama that is the driving force behind this show. Whilst the content is disturbing, the style is pizzazzy, and the challenge for the audience is to appreciate both equally. It’s full of surprises. There’s a moment near the end when some of the characters are telling the audience directly what was to become of them in the years and decades to follow. One character says he became a cop so he could finally find out what it was like to hold and use a gun – cue genuine laugh from the audience. Then you find out what he did with it and it was one of those Ayckbournian moments when your laughter gets caught in your throat. The ever-present unnamed lady, watching the action, occasionally adding gestures and reactions, seems an irrelevant and unnecessary add-on for much of the time until you finally realise her significance, which beautifully links the whole Scottsboro saga to the rest of the fight for racial equality in America.

It’s not surprising this is such a great production. The music and lyrics are by Kander and Ebb, creators of such masterpieces as Cabaret and Chicago (although Mrs C will point out they also wrote Curtains which we saw on Broadway in 2008 and which she, in particular, hated). Scottsboro Boys was actually one of the last shows they worked on together, as Fred Ebb died in 2004, and composer John Kander had to complete the lyrics to a few of the songs himself. Those songs have beautiful melodies but hard-hitting lyrics which bring you up short, as you might expect from the sweet/sour structure of the whole show.

Then you have direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, who put together the amazing Contact that we saw in 2002 (perhaps we should draw a veil over the fact that she also worked on the Menier’s Paradise Found – not an easy show by any means but within some rewrites of being good). Phil Cornwell’s orchestra recreates that American Dixie sound beautifully, with plenty of banjo twanging and high-falutin’ fiddling, and it’s all set on an eminently useful blank stage, with just some very versatile chairs that can link together to suggest any structure you want (plus they’re also good for just sitting on.) The backdrop consists of a couple of massive picture frames suspended without the aid of a spirit level, nicely suggestive of having to look at life through wonky angles.

Added to all that, you have an amazing cast made up of some of the finest singers and dancers you could ever hope to grace any stage. Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon play Mr Bones and Mr Tambo, dressed to the nines like a Robertson’s Golly, combining great physical comedy with verbal dexterity to recreate the traditional Minstrel show roles but doubling up as sheriffs, lawyers, attorneys and guards to emphasise the funny/serious contrast. They are an incredible double act. James T Lane, wonderful as Richie in A Chorus Line, continues to show his amazing dance skills as Ozie Powell; and gives a really heart-breaking performance after his character survives being shot by a guard.We both really enjoyed the performance of Keenan Munn-Francis as the youngest boy Eugene Williams, showing terrific song and dance skills as well as great comic timing – he’s definitely going to be Someone To Watch. But in fact all the cast perform with great commitment, juggling the dual aspects of tough injustice with sheer entertainment.

Veteran actor Julian Glover, whom I have admired ever since I saw him play Coriolanus at the RSC in 1978, gives a powerful performance as The Interlocutor. A southern gentleman dressed all in white with a touch of the Uncle Sam; slightly manic, physically still strong but with a sense of slight fragility, playing the show-must-go-on role of Master of Ceremonies, whilst occasionally stepping out of his bonhomie to become savagely aggressive to his colleagues, it’s a brilliant performance. But for me the star of the show was undoubtedly the splendid Brandon Victor Dixon as Haywood Patterson – a brilliant stage presence, great voice, and with amazing powers of communicating the character’s dignity and sadness. I know he’s had some success in America but he was new to me, and I have no hesitation in saying A Star Is Born. Overall, The Scottsboro Boys is a brilliantly envisioned show, masterfully presented and performed with wit, pathos and a helluva lot of great song and dance. We loved it.

PS. It’s a pet hate of mine, so I must say it – I would have preferred it to have an interval. At 1 hour and 45 minutes non-stop, no matter how good it is, I always end up shifting the buttocks and stifling (or giving in to) a yawn. Yes I’m old fashioned, but I like to stretch the legs, get some oxygen flowing, have a chance to chat about it so far with Mrs C, use the facilities and so on. The modern trend is to rush through the show in one gulp so you can get out of the theatre more quickly and Do Other Things. Apparently I’m in the minority by preferring to have intervals. I can live with that.

Review – Made in Dagenham, Adelphi Theatre, 27th December 2014

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Having endured a not altogether rewarding experience in the afternoon at the matinee of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, I looked forward to our evening visit to see Made in Dagenham with some trepidation. I’d heard from one friend who had seen a preview that it was ace and that we would love it; I met someone else at a party who thought it was unmitigated rubbish and extended sympathy to us that we had paid for full price tickets in advance. Surely we couldn’t be unlucky twice on the same day?

Not a bit of it. Made in Dagenham is a funny, emotional, feel-good show that takes an important aspect of social history and brings it to life with an engaging cast that keeps up high energy levels throughout the whole evening. It has been adapted from the original 2010 film, with music and lyrics by David Arnold and Richard Thomas, and the book by the ubiquitous Richard Bean. Knowing Mr Bean’s penchant for involving the public in his shows we wondered if there would be any audience participation in this one – thankfully, not.

In 1968 the female sewing machinists working at the Ford plant in Dagenham went on strike for equal pay, to bring them in line with their male colleagues. The inequality had been underlined by the decision to class the women as unskilled workers, whilst the men were skilled. Today the concept of equal pay is a given (even if in practice, it still doesn’t quite exist) but in the 1960s, many people considered it was more important, if not desirable, for men to be paid more than women. This included the government, as well as an overwhelming number of the men at Dagenham. The story is based on the fictional character of Rita O’Grady, one of the workers there who had no ambition to be anything other than a mother, wife and sewing machinist, but who gets propelled into the world of union negotiations, finds she has something of a flair for it, and ends up conducting high level discussions with the powers that be, even though she’s largely out of her depth and comfort zone. The success of the campaign, and its effect on her home and family life, are what the show’s all about.

Dagenham in 1968 was a very different world from today; a black and white world where everyone was either West Ham or Millwall and the rule of traditional roles applied in families and at work. Although the strikers altruistically lose pay in order to achieve the goals for the greater good – namely a striving for equality – these ladies are no angels. The character of Beryl, for example, makes what today would be very inappropriate sexually intimidating comments to her co-workers of both sexes. Rita’s husband Eddie is a traditional guy who expects Rita a) to be a good wife, b) to be a good mother and c) to do all the shopping and housework. As Rita’s star rises, he falls behind into a position in which he feels very uncomfortable. He knows she’s doing good things, and he knows he ought to support her as much as possible – but it doesn’t come naturally, and when it comes to the crunch, he can’t take it. He’s inadequate, he’s a failure; and his inability to cope with this change of power emphasis is totally realistic.

It’s a smart and entertaining production on all levels. Bunny Christie’s superb set conveys both the modesty of the O’Grady residence and the technicality of the factory, with its scenic motif of mechanical parts ready to be punched out of their moulds, rather like the little pieces of plastic we used to click out to create Airfix models back in the day. The costumes perfectly reflect the dowdy uniforms of the workplace, contrasted with the glamorous Swinging Sixties’ styles – such as in the Cortina advert scene. The songs are good quality and keep the story moving forward, and the performances are all terrific.

Gemma Arterton gives a very strong performance as Rita; likeable, cheeky, irrepressible in the face of adversity from the authoritative figures of government or the employer Ford, and bloodied but unbowed in her grim determination to continue despite the effect it’s having on her family. She’s a great singer with an excellent stage presence. She is matched perfectly by a very effective performance by Adrian der Gregorian as Eddie, his brash personality slowly being beaten down as he struggles to cope with his wife’s increased status. The machinists make an excellent ensemble, although Sophie Stanton is outstanding as the no-nonsense Beryl, and there is a charmingly funny performance by Naana Agyei-Ampadu as Cass, who wants to become an air stewardess – cue for a delightful twist at curtain call time.

Isla Blair invests Connie, the self-effacing union rep who sacrifices her home life and her health for the good of her members, with a sense of iconic kindness – it’s not a very exciting role, but an important one. I enjoyed Naomi Frederick’s performance as Lisa, supporting the strike unequivocally despite being married to management, fighting her own battles to be taken seriously as a strong and able woman in her own right. There’s also great support from the rest of the cast, including David Cardy as well-meaning but toothless union rep Monty and Scott Garnham as charismatic Buddy the Cortina man.

Last but certainly not least, there are those famous politicians who played a part in the story. Prime Minister Harold Wilson is depicted as a Vaudevillian parody, doing silly dances and hiding behind his props of pipe and Gannex raincoat, looking after Number One and making sure his pockets are lined before any thoughts about what’s good for the country is concerned. He’s portrayed as being against the strike, not in favour of equal pay – and as such, deserves the mockery that the production heaps on him. He’s played by Mark Hadfield, a master of this self-deprecating, self-mickey-taking kind of comedy. However, possibly the best performance of the whole company comes from Sophie-Louise Dann as Barbara Castle; hearty, confident, calculating, a huge personality, and very credible – and with an amazing voice. We loved her in Forbidden Broadway and she’s superb here.

There was only one thing that jarred for me – the characterisation of the parachuted-in big Ford boss from America. The first song of the second act – This Is America – is a hard-hitting criticism of the “Everything is bigger and better in America” syndrome, which may well be worth criticising but to me it came over as rather xenophobic; and then it gets worse when that boss starts calling a member of the UK board “faggot”, which may well have been accurate for 1968 but makes me feel very uncomfortable in 2015.

Nevertheless, you come away from this show with your curiosity piqued by the story, and you want to find more about what actually happened in this strike, and about the real life characters who played a part in it. The show makes you realise the place this particular battle has in the history of equal rights in the UK, and that equal pay to women has been beneficial for both men and women in the long run. Beautifully staged and performed, with that added dimension of social realism, I recommend this very enjoyable show whole-heartedly!

PS. Here’s a first for us: when Act Two started, the woman in front of Mrs Chrisparkle lit up an e-cigarette, and continued to puff away at it for the first ten minutes or so. I have no idea if that was legal or not – but it’s certainly very discourteous and distracting. For one thing, the blue light it emits is as eye-catchingly disturbing as any light from a mobile phone. And then the e-smoke itself clouds the vision; and there’s also the smell, which doesn’t particularly bother me but Mrs C hates it. Oi! E-cigarette users! No!

Review – Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Playhouse Theatre, 27th December 2014

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To help celebrate the festive season, Mrs Chrisparkle and I often like to go to London to see a show or two – well, it makes a change to get out occasionally. This time we decided to go the whole hog and stayed over for three nights, seeing two shows on the Saturday and two shows on the Monday. On the Sabbath Day, we rested. When I was planning which shows we should book, I noticed that Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown would be previewing during our stay. I don’t normally do previews, as I like to be sure I’m seeing the final version. Still, the potential for phrases like “hot ticket” and “smash hit” kept tickling my brain, as well as the very attractive sounding “Tamsin Greig” – Mrs C and I love her in the TV series Episodes – so the decision was made; that would be our Saturday matinee choice.

Pepa is a voice-dubbing actress of reasonable success who has been having an affair with Ivan for some time, only to be dumped by him at the start of the show. As she tries to put back together the shattered pieces of her life, she has to cope with demands of her career, her friends, and selling her flat; which includes an attempted suicide, a Shiite terrorist, a court case and the discovery that she’s pregnant. Just any old 48 hours really. And that, in a nutshell, is the show.

It is of course an adaptation of Pedro Almodóvar’s film of the same name. He is a Big Name in cinema. If you are a regular to my blog – for which thanks, and Happy New Year, gentle reader – you’ve probably guessed that neither of us have seen any of his films. I appreciate that it’s the sin of omission; occasionally we can be quite a sinful couple. But I know of many people who think his work is outstanding, so I was looking forward to a musical representation of some feisty Spanish women chucking their weight around in 1980s Madrid.

I’m not sure that’s what I got. Maybe in the minor roles; I enjoyed the smug bitchiness of Rebecca McKinnis’ Christina, and Holly James’ Matador is certainly feisty – albeit completely surreal and strangely detached from the rest of the action. One of the best performances is from Seline Hizli as Marisa, the virgin enamorata of Pepa’s lover’s son Carlos, largely because the character is quite well fleshed out, and you kind of get a sense of what makes her tick. I wouldn’t describe her as feisty – particularly as she has to spend a lot of the show fast asleep after an accidental Valium overdose – but she’s quite wise and clear thinking.

However, you can’t describe the other characters that way. Tamsin Greig does a good line in portraying Pepa’s brave “chin-up” attitude, and frequently blesses us with that perplexed/stunned/slightly vacant look that she does so well on TV; but for the most part the character is in the eye of the storm and just reacts to what goes on around her. Haydn Gwynne’s Lucia – Pepa’s lover’s ex-lover, suing him for abandoning her – is a rather miserable character, excruciatingly dominant over her son and his girlfriend, painfully unable to handle the mental stresses of her existence and wallowing in self-pity at every opportunity. Even more unattractive a character is Anna Skellern’s Candela – Pepa’s model friend – an egocentric spoilt show-off brat who cares not one jot for the plights of anyone else but herself, and, rather than her being funny, to me the character just came over as immensely tedious.

In fact, nearly all the characters come across as either unpleasant or very flimsily written which is, I think, why the show as a whole said absolutely nothing to me. We didn’t actively hate it, that would have implied a strong enough reaction; we just didn’t actively enjoy it, or even participate in it. It committed the sin of being boring – really, very boring. I desperately wanted to enjoy it, but there was nothing to grab hold of in the story or the presentation to concentrate on and cherish. The whole thing looks delightfully stylised, with its bold coloured lighting, but that masks both a clinically plain set and a remarkably empty sense of drama. You can’t call it a triumph of style over substance, because that would require some sense of triumph.

There were a few good lines, and occasional comic moments, but there were even more sequences where you just thought, what the hell is going on, this is just ridiculous. If it was trying to be quirky and clever, it failed. Musically, it has a few curiously entertaining – if downbeat and introspective – tunes, but for the most part the songs merely punctuate the show rather than move the plot forward. To be fair, it all brightens up enormously just after the interval, with the first three songs and scenes seemingly written by a completely different person, and you cross fingers that they just might turn it around and rescue it; but then you get the horrendously boring scene and song where Lucia is pleading to the court, at which point I switched off and couldn’t care less anymore.This had the effect of making the “climax” (I use the word ill-advisedly) a long, drawn-out, bizarre sequence of non-events that somehow peter out into a conclusion. I don’t know if the terrorist sub-plot is meant to have a sense of danger or excitement, or surreal ludicrousness even; but to me it came over as pathetically lame. There’s also the scene where Marisa appears to say she’s no longer a virgin. We couldn’t work out if she’d had some extraordinary mental vision or if she’d been light-heartedly raped. Either way, we didn’t think it was either believable or palatable.

The performances range from the good to the adequate; despite really disliking the character of Candela, Anna Skellern performed the patter song “Model Behaviour” with technical expertise, and I really enjoyed Jérôme Pradon’s singing of “Yesterday Today and Tomorrow”, the moment when Ivan cunningly moves on to his next woman. Tamsin Greig’s singing voice has an attractive fragility that conveys the emotion and dramatic reflection of songs such as “Island”, but I always felt she was just millimetres away from hitting the wrong note, and sadly I just didn’t have confidence in her overall performance. Ricardo Afonso gave an entertaining performance as the Taxi Driver, although I felt his singing lacked a sense of occasion or urgency – too laid back to fill the role of commentator. The excellent Dale Rapley – a wonderful Horace Vandergelder to Janie Dee’s Hello Dolly in Leicester a couple of years ago – is strangely caught up taking a few of the minor roles.

The book, music and lyrics are David Yazbek and Jeffrey Lane, responsible for the sublime Dirty Rotten Scoundrels a few yards away up the Strand. It’s fascinating to consider that the same team can create one such good work and one such bland one. The couple to Mrs Chrisparkle’s left absolutely hated it; the American tourist to my right who was “up for it” before it started just slept all the way through. I don’t suppose I was the only person who muttered the phrase “audience on the verge of a nervous breakdown” on the way out. Online research tells me that they have actually cut a couple of the songs from the original 2010 Broadway production. For this relief much thanks. Not good enough to survive, not bad enough to become a cult hit.