Legally Blonde - Review

Kilworth House Theatre, Leicestershire


****


Music and Lyrics: Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin
Book: Heather Hach
Director and Choreographer: Mitch Sebastian

Jennifer Harding

Omigod - as autumn approaches and the nights are drawing in, Legally Blonde is creating a fabulously pink infusion of summer fun in the gorgeous grounds of Kilworth House Hotel’s theatre. 

From a distance the show’s story couldn’t be cheesier. Elle expects boyfriend Warner to propose to her but instead the cad dumps her, prior to his leaving town to study law at Harvard – and find a fiancée of greater intellect and social standing. Not to be put down, Elle pursues her man, studying hard and also joining Harvard Law School. What follows is a story as delicious as it is improbable, as through a combination of hard work and sassy female intuition Elle heroically wins the day.

To say any more would spoil – for actually Legally Blonde is all about brilliantly executed song and dance, the breaking and mending of hearts and the lampooning of men whose attitudes to female equality belong in the Stone Age.

Fresh up from being nominated in London’s Off West Awards for Best Female Performer of the Year, Jennifer Harding is Elle. Barely off stage throughout, the strikingly blonde Canadian drives the show with stunning vocals and breathtaking presence. We sense her indignation, resilience, passion and yes at times, a deliciously ditzy blondeness that fuels the narrative. All of Harding’s singing is a treat, with her take on the title song and its Remix, proving spectacular. 

Supporting Elle are a raft of featured characters. Greg Miller Burns is good-guy Emmet, who convinces in his transformation from geek to chic. The accomplished Jodie Jacobs is a delight as Paulette – scene stealing deservedly in her big number Ireland and bringing the house down during the Find My Way/Finale number.

Jenny Gayner puts in an eye-wateringly energetic turn as fitness guru Brooke Wyndham, a woman whose circumstances provide the opportunity for Elle to triumph. Gayner’s Delta Nu Nu Nu duet with Harding proves to be another of the show’s ridiculously memorable moments.

Mitch Sebastian directs and choreographs imaginatively – and for such a charmingly quirky venue, Philip Whitcomb’s set along with Chris Whybrow’s well-crafted sound design ensure all the action is both seen and heard as the sun sets behind the trees, with John Morton’s 11 piece band making fine work of the sugary score.

Fun musicals don’t get better than this!

Runs until 20th September

Before The Night Is Through

Landor Theatre, London

****

Book and lyrics by Olivia Thompson

Music by Christopher Whitehead

Directed by Rob McWhir

Kieran Brown points an accusatory finger

Before The Night Is Through has the potential to be a fine piece of British musical theatre. Part Downton Abbey on acid, part Punchdrunk's The Drowned Man, Olivia Thompson has fashioned a murder mystery set in the mansion of a 1930s film star, Honey Quenelle. The first half in particular shows immense promise, motives and macguffins abound with the strength of this production lying in the stellar talent of its cast. All ten performers flap with utter aplomb, whilst special tribute to Thompson herself who stepped in to fill the breach at the last minute after a cast member became indisposed.

The show is more caricature than character, with Katie Brennan's Mabel, a maid-servant clearly inspired by Baldrick and Ian Mowat's penniless aristocrat Stubby, particularly well crafted comic creations. Amelia Adams Pearce is every inch the refined Honey, defining the elegance of the era, whilst Kieran Brown's dashing detective has a cracking number A Very Touching Story, that shows the actor at his best. Jenny Gayner's flapper Farmonica is an outrageously manic creation of perfect balance and sublime comic timing, who at times suggested a 21st century Bette Davis. Gayner’s performance was only enhanced by an unplanned jewellery malfunction giving rise to a stunning pearl necklace spillage, truly something not often seen on London's fringe.

Rob McWhir again extracts the best from a talented bunch and most of Cressida Carre's choreography works too, though the torchlit dances lost their gimmick second time around. The creative star of the show however is Chris Whitehead (who also musically directs on piano) whose well created compositions were an accurate take on the era. There was a hint of ragtime and charleston to some of his melodies as well as a fabulous waltz whilst the vocal harmonies that ranged from two to eight part are exquisite. As it stands though, the show is very much a work in progress and Thompson needs to take a scalpel to her second act. It's a complicated plot that unfolds, at times too complicated and a twenty minute trim wouldn't go amiss.

But bravo to Katy Lipson for mounting the From Page To Stage season. This is precisely the sort of well crafted work that is to be encouraged and a revised, honed version of Before The Night Is Through could yet have a commercial future.

Runs until 23rd February

Jenny Gayner - Actress and producer

Jenny Gayner

Regular readers to these pages will know that I have particular soft spots for musical theatre on stage and the horror genre on screen. Since my twitter following has modestly grown over the months, I have come to discover that I am not alone in enjoying this eclectic combination and that there are quite a number of folk out there who can adore a full on jazz-hands routine on a Saturday night yet still find time for some popcorn-fuelled slashery and torture on a Sunday.

Of course, the connection between musical theatre and horror is actually nothing new. One of the longest running musicals Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom Of The Opera is at heart nothing more than a very frightening Gothic horror story set to music, yet many (most?) of those who pack out London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre or those numerous other venues where the show plays around the world, would not dream of buying a ticket for, or downloading, an 18-certificate horror tale. In a slightly different vein(!) musical theatre horror and humour have often gone hand in hand with Menken and Ashman’s Little Shop of Horrors being probably the most well known take on that particular pastiche style, though Drewe and Rowe’s Zombie Prom is another example of composers blending horror, humour and music into a quirky cocktail, whilst the same pair’s The Witches of Eastwick, famed as a musical comedy, has at its core a horrifically satanic fable. Thus the bloody fantasies of horror have a long and macabre association with the far frothier fantasy world of musical theatre’s harmonies and dance routines.  

So it was therefore a delight, on attending the press night of Chris Burgess’ Sleeping Arrangements (reviewed here) at London’s Landor Theatre earlier this year, to learn that accomplished musical theatre trouper Jenny Gayner, was not only starring in the soon to be released horror flick The Addicted, but that she’d actually gone and produced the movie too. It made for a pleasant hour as we chatted about these two very different dark and light aspects of the fantasy spectrum.

Prior to the relatively short Landor run, Gayner had already achieved a fine reputation for her work in Chicago (understudying Roxie Hart), as well as appearances in Spamalot, The Rocky Horror Show and a Manchester based production of A Chorus Line. She knows her musicals and her lengthy association with Chicago, both on its UK tour and in the show’s final London months testify to her talents. But she is also a woman who likes her horror. It may have to be bloody if necessary but above all and as with her musical theatre work, it must be built around a strong story. 

There are some films that Gayner finds too difficult to enjoy. She quotes Eli Roth’s Hostel,(based upon a horrific and true reported story, of wealthy men in the Far East who paid huge sums for the “pleasure” of torturing naive young westerners) as a film that was just too real for her liking and, notwithstanding the story’s strength, she found its reality too unpleasant to watch. For Gayner, a story needs to be credible but also fantastic. She speaks praisingly of the 2009 remake of Last House On The Left, a tale that opens with a harrowing rape and by a turn of events delivers the rapists into the hands of the victim’s parents. It’s a thrilling revenge tale, with scenes that are often graphically portrayed, yet it is also well written fantasy and knowing that the story is pure make-believe and with its heart also very much in the right place (suffice to say the villains meet grisly ends) is horror that works for her.

Gayner (l) on set in The Addicted

The Addicted will soon be available on satellite TV distribution, no mean achievement in itself for a first-time independent feature and Gayner has relished the challenge of producing a full length movie and the challenges that go with the process. Securing funding was an initial hurdle, though with independent horror being famed as a low-budget entry to movie-making, the film’s £10,000 cost was not ridiculously out of reach. Managing the sheer logistics of the movie was of course a task in itself and Gayner chuckles as she recalls frantically managing the project both from home and her Chicago dressing room! As for the film, its a gritty gruesome fantasy set around an abandoned drug rehab clinic. Suffice to say it opens with a scarily high body count but to add any more comment would be to spoil.

Its all happening for Jenny right now. The Addicted is available on satellite from September 1st, whilst the end of the month will see her solo cabaret night at London’s Pheasantry, accompanied by some stellar guests. A stylish embodiment of the classic “triple-threatening” performer, of actress singer and dancer, Gayner is all that a musical theatre professional should be, but now as an emerging producer of horror movies, she is defining herself as an innovator, keen to challenge and to explore new methods of entertaining an audience. A woman who at all times combines the professional attributes of excellence and enthusiasm, who knows… her arrival as a movie producer could yet prove addictive!

Jenny Gayner performs at The Pheasantry on September 28th , for details and tickets, click here.

The Addicted is available via satellite broadcast from September 1st

Sleeping Arrangements

Landor Theatre, London

***

Book, music & lyrics: Chris Burgess

Director: Robert McWhir

Jenny Gayner

Sleeping Arrangements is a transition of Sophie Kinsella’s novel of the same name into a new piece of musical theatre staged at that veritable genre dynamo, Clapham’s Landor Theatre. It’s a simple enough even if anodyne tale of two frustrated married couples thrown together in an Andalucian doubled booked holiday villa.  Add in the 16 year old son of one union and a gorgeous nanny from t’other to generate some adolescent Carry On capers, as well as some adult bed hopping and you have the ingredients for a passable piece of chick-lit cavorting.

Chris Burgess writes in the programme that when he first read the novel, he “couldn’t help but hear songs all over the place”. Unfortunately, it seems that sometimes these may have been other people’s songs. When Grant Neal as victim of the rat-race, pasty-faced, Philip (husband to Chloe)sings of his resentment at being just a “Nice Guy”, it sounds like a faux-Sondheim version of Kander and Ebb’s Mr Cellophane. Sam, the testosterone fuelled 16 year old wonderfully played by Adam Pettigrew has some comic moments but one can’t help but feel that Dougal Irvine nailed adolescent sexual awkwardness with so much more perception in Departure Lounge and when Liza Pulman’s Amanda (married to Hugh, keep up), legs akimbo, splendidly belts out Superwoman, she must be thinking to herself that whilst she couldn’t physically be giving any more to such an all-consuming  performance, her own lyric writing contribution to Fascinating Aida far outweighs Burgess’s efforts.

Nonetheless, this show entertains. As frustrated wife Chloe, Jenny Gayner masterfully extracts the melodrama from her lyrics and she steamily convinces as a still seductive but frustrated wife who found herself becoming a mother far too young in life. She discovers that she still holds a candle for Steven Serlin’s Hugh, a flame from many years past, also thrown into the villa booking as a consequence of the scheming machinations of an old mutual friend of theirs. When passions inevitably spill over into a stolen afternoon of lust, Serlin’s muscular naked torso (as well as his magnificent voice) will have much of the audience swooning in the Landor’s cramped aisles.  A note to Grant Neal: in the Rat Pack styled duet that he later shares with Serlin, Women Always Win Out In The End, he is vocally outclassed by the other man. Whilst Neal’s character may be a bit limp, his voice needn’t be and this needs to be stepped up into the run.

Sabrina Aloueche smoulders throughout as Jenna the at times bikini-clad provocative young nanny, lusted after by Sam whilst flirting wickedly with Philip. When Aloueche sings her voice has an electrifying unity of youth, power and pitch-perfect tone.

The show is directed by Robert McWhir, a seasoned and talented practitioner, who takes Burgess’ composition and skilfully fashions it into a watchably endearing production. David Shields' Spanish set is a delight and whilst Colin Billing’s band are four worthy musicians, Burgess’ melodies don’t give them a lot with which to make our spines tingle.

Sleeping Arrangements is simply crying out for coachloads of West End Wendies to pack the Landor during its four week residency.  The ticket price is infinitely better value than most juke box musicals to be found up West, the performances on display are at least as good (if not better) and the story is far more up to date than Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday. Don’t forget your passport!

Runs to May 12 2013