SWEET CHARITY

10/2/10, Menier

Unexpectedly wonderful: another triumph for the Menier.

Tamzin Outhwaite (full of fantastic energy with a wonderful light-up-the-back-stalls smile) as Charity, the ever-hopeful dancehall hostess in search of Mr Right. She finds three, all played by the same actor (Mark Umbers). The first is a layabout and a crook who chucks her in the lake before running off with her handbag full of savings; the second is a film star with whom she has a fling before his regular partner returns; the third is a bag of nerves who seems truly nice, but eventually lets her down at the last minuite, claiming he's too screwed up to marry her.

Paul saw it and complained that it's a flawed piece because there's no dramatic progression. At the end Charity is back exactly where she started, older, poorer, presumably wiser (though don't count on it). And he says the songs aren't well enough integrated and don't advance the action.
But what songs! Big Spender, the girls going through the motions of welcoming men to the dancehall robotically, is integrated. I Love Weddings at the end may not advance the plot, and could be sung about any wedding, not just Charity's, but it's a rollicking number and gives the grumpy dancehall boss a number of his own. Only Rhythm of Life doesn't really fit, but since that too is a fantastic number who's complaining?

Once again they mounted a production that filled the tiny Menier stage. There were some fine moments. The girls in their dressing room, wearily preparing for yet another night fending off the advances of lubricious men ("Dancing? We're defending ourselves to music!" in the words of Charity's friend Nicky, a great performance by Josefina Gabrielle, dark-haired temptress who sings Big Spender and rivals Outhwaite for energy). Charity hiding in the (translucent) wardrobe when the second Mr Right's Latin squeeze bursts in on them in the bedroom. The hippy love-in of The Rhythm of Life.

I'm not sure how long the Menier can continue this run of triumphant musical revivals, but we've seen La Cage aux Folles, Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music there in the past two or three years and they've all been in the range top-notch to bloody brilliant.

ROOKERY NOOK

16/5/09, Menier

2 hrs 10 mins. The "classic" Ben Travers farce from 1929 heroically revived and played at a terrific pelt. We were a lousy audience: the funny lines and the wordplay mostly went straight past us; we only laughed at the pratfalls. But in our defence as an audience I should say it showed its age. It's a pretty dull and dated piece of work.

We went with A and d, and when I said to A I thought it dated he reminded me of the prevailing mores in 1920s Britain, where the idea of a newly-married man in a cottage with a scantily-clad young woman would have been far, far more shocking than it is today. Even so...

Frace works by subverting conventions or a set of values or a system of approved behaviour that everyone accepts and signs up to, or at least understands and sympathises with. When everyone doesn't sign up, can it still work?

Noises Off, one of the funniest farces ever written, works because it subverts the conventions of naturalistic theatre, which we can all accept. When the conventions are the sexual morality of the 1920s you have a problem.

It was a bit like watching Restoration Comedy, requiring a more than usual suspension of disbelief. You understand why it might be funny, without actually being moved to laughter yourself. The genuine laughs came from those pratfalls and from things not in the text, like knowing, arch performances.

The Telegraph enjoyed it (surprise!):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/5251904/Rookery-Nook-Menier-Chocolate-Factory-review.html

The Indie agreed with me:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/rookery-nook-menier-chocolate-factory-londonbrwuthering-heights-lyric-hammersmith-londonbrthe-great-game-afghanistan-tricycle-london-1677827.html

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

16/1/09, Menier Chocolate Factory.

2hrs 50 mins - but it didn't start until 8 so it was 11 o'clock before we pitched up at London Bridge hoping for a bus. Good thing it was a Friday, not midweek. Maybe it's so the diners in the (packed) restaurant have time to finish. Dashed inconvenient.

But a top notch show. Of course, it's by Sondheim. There are some very good jokes and some very good songs, but fundamentally it's a serious (and rather bleak) piece about lost youth, lost opportunities and the absurdities of love. The first act in particular is pretty downbeat. The ageing protagonists snatch at fleshly delights; they're vain, self-deluding, and yet you feel sorry for them.

The second act - the weekend in the country - is more upbeat, bringing matters to a suitably "comic" conclusion. But is the seminary student tortured by puppy love for his youthful stepmother really going to be any happier with her than without her? What sort of resolution is there for the ghastly dragoon, a boneheaded bully and an egomaniac, and his masochistically downtrodden wife? And as for our hero and heroine, the ageing actress and her one-time beau: can getting together now, in the autumn of their lives, really make up for the 14 years of missed opportunity since they broke up?

Sondheim's rhymes are immensely clever. I especially liked the first act song in which the newly-married ageing husband runs through the options for taking his young wife's long-preserved virginity, and concludes he'll have a nap instead. (The virginity turns out to have been a useful plot device when she runs off with his lovestruck son.)

As for his old flame: Hannah Waddington - tall, blonde, truly statuesque - is terrific. She delivers Send in the Clowns as if it's a Shakespeare soliloquy: you can hear the character's mind working as the song develops. I had shivers all over as she sang, and not just because it's so familiar: it only works that well when the context is right, and here the context was bang on.

The production, for Trevor Nunn, was admirably unfussy, a circumstance perhaps forced on him by the smallness of the Menier's stage. I'm not sure what period Sondheim originally intended but the setting is what in the UK would be Edwardian: cue entertaining goggles and helmets when motor-cars are mentioned, and long, elegant, lacy cream summer dresses for the ladies.

There were some disappointments. Why, in a house this small, are the singers amplified? It allows for some atmospheric echo at the start, but it's quite unnecessary otherwise.

Maureen Lipman as the wheelchair-bound grandmother dispensing worldly-wise advice and barbed put-downs is wonderful when speaking, less convincing when singing of her past liaisons (fun while they lasted, but not really worth it, seems to be the conclusion): her comic timing deserts her when there's music involved.

And the girl playing the young wife, though a fine actress, had a dodgy voice.

Otherwise nine and a half out of ten.