Top Hat - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Music & lyrics by Irving Berlin

Book by Matthew White & Howard Jacques

Directed & choreographed by Kathleen Marshall

Lucy St Louis and Phillip Attmore

Broadway’s gifted director and choregrapher Kathleen Marshall returns to the UK to helm a gorgeous production of Irving Berlin’s Top Hat.

Berlin’s wondrous songs and the original RKO movie may hail from the 1930s, but the stage show is very much a 21st century confection that takes the film’s ridiculous plot, a narrative so corny that it is the very definition of” musical comedy”, using it as a framework on which to showcase nearly 20 of the American Songbook’s most sparkling gems.

The musical’s story sees two young Americans fall hopelessly in love, albeit their path to happiness is blocked by a delightfully entertaining spin around mistaken identities. Phillip Attmore as Jerry Travers and Lucy St Louis as Dale Tremont lead the show  and while both  deliver perfection in their song and dance, it is left to the show’s gifted supporting characters to truly flesh out the evening’s comedy drama. Alex Gibson-Giorgio plays a preening Italian fashion designer with more than an amorous eye for Miss Tremont, while James Clyde turns in a grand performance as Bates, a manservant who pops up throughout the tale in a range of disguises.

Delivering the evening’s most exquisitely defined masterclasses in stagecraft however are the performing legends Sally Ann Triplett and Clive Carter who play Madge and Horace Hardwick respectively. These two actors are just a crowd-whooping delight whose take on Outside Of That I Love You displays their experience and skill in knowing “just how” to deliver that killer lyric or gag punchline to perfection. To be truthful, the show’s jokes are as old as the hills – but in the hands of Triplett and Carter who cares? Their work puts the humour back into humanity and makes the evening soar! Stephen Ridley directs his 12 piece band masterfully, making fine work of the classic and much-loved melodies.

Top Hat does what it says on the tin. An evening of fabulous Broadway fun that will light up the country on its nationwide tour well into 2026.

Runs until 7th September, then touring

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Come From Away - Review

Phoenix Theatre, London

***

Music, lyrics and book by Irene Sankoff and David Hein

Directed by Christopher Ashley

Amidst the horrors of 9/11, there were pockets of human kindness and charity. So it was for the tiny Newfoundland town of Gander who when the United States' airspace was shut down after the four aircraft-based terrorist attacks, found itself having to accommodate 38 unexpected jetloads of passengers, comprising some 6,000+ souls (or “Come From Aways” as the locals call outsiders), for the best part of a week.

Such a flood of humanity was bound to throw up all sorts of issues ripe for a musical theatre treatment – and so it follows in Irene Sankoff’s and David Hein’s composition. Numerous threads emerge, including a love that evolves between two passengers and a neat little tale of a Gander local who realises that there were likely to have been animals travelling in the planes’ cargo holds and rescues as many as she can. Throughout the one-act show (that runs for under two hours) there’s much to warm the cockles of most of the hearts in the audience.

But for all the bitter-sweet vignettes, punches have been pulled. None of the grimmer or more tawdry aspects of what might have unfolded between 6,000 folk thrown together for 6 days (and nights) are explored and while the musical rightly highlights the shameful “othering” that one of the Come From Aways, a Muslim chef was subject to, it offers no comment whatsoever upon the ideology of hate that brought the 9/11 nightmare into being in the first place.

A sung-through piece, the numbers for the most part are tuneful yet forgettable – though that should not detract from the onstage excellence of both cast and band. A truly ensemble show, with no featured actors and all the performers listed alphabetically, standout work comes from Rachel Tucker as an airline pilot and the ever reliable Clive Carter playing all manner of wise and elderly characters. Noteworthy that all of the cast interchange between various roles throughout the evening, doing so convincingly and instantaneously in a flawless set of performances.

Flawless performances however do not necessarily make for a stimulating night. For while Gander’s generosity was unhesitating and generous, one might perhaps have expected the same response from any kind-hearted community around the world. One only has to witness the communal response say, to London’s recent Grenfell Tower tragedy or the outpourings of support that flood in for other disasters, to realise that the Newfoundland folk are not alone in their selflessness. And rallying to support the requirements of (even a few thousand) disoriented travellers, albeit from around the globe, doesn’t quite match up to the heroism say, of New York’s firefighters – many of whom gave the ultimate sacrifice on that most horrendous of days. 

Come From Away is unquestionably wonderfully performed, but its schmaltzy set pieces fail to move.


Now booking until 14th September
Photo credit:Matthew Murphy