The Jewish Legacy

The Radlett Centre

****

Directed by Leon Trayman

For two performances only, The Jewish Legacy came to leafy Radlett.  Devised by Katy Lipson’s Aria Entertainments and selecting only showtunes with a kosher provenance, Aria with Leon Trayman have found themselves spoilt for choice. Like a box of familiar chocolates, (soft-centred probably, judging by the age profile of the matinee audience) their compilation was a selection of Broadway favourites taken from the canon of the last 80 years or so.

Simply staged, four singers narrated and performed a programme that opened with Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin and ended amongst the work of current Broadway talent Jason Robert Brown. Kimberley Blake and Abi Finley provided the soprano voices, Blake having two particular second half highlights. Her Adelaide's Lament from Loesser's Guys and Dolls got the comedy-pathos of the song spot on whilst Send In The Clowns from Sondheim's A Little Night Music was a beautifully noble take on a notoriously challenging number. Finley's poise was as elegant. Having given a stunning contribution to the Kander and Ebb and Disney show medleys, her bang up to date Taylor The Latte Boy from Goldrich and Heisler was a story sweetly told through song.

Tom Millen and Trayman himself were perhaps slightly overshadowed by their leading ladies. Even so, Millen's take on On The Street Where You Live gave a genuine sense of the towering romantic desperation that Lerner and Loewe imbued within the song, whilst Trayman took it upon himself to sing Brown's (mildly autobiographical) Shiksa Goddess, a song that song bluntly and brilliantly tells of its Jewish author's grappling with his guilty conscience as as he falls for the charms of a gentile girl. 'Shiksa' is an extremely vulgar term of Yiddish slang, usually lost on a non-Jewish audience. In Radlett and to predominantly Jewish pensioners, Trayman's solid performance generated as many disapproving tuts from the old folk as it did shocked chuckles. Its a clever song but perhaps too offensive for the show's likely audience. Maybe stick to The Old Red Hills Of Home in future?

The Hebrew legacy left on The Great White Way is huge and to the producers' credit they've plugged their set full of comfortable classics with a liberal serving of Streisand and Fiddler thrown in too. Matt Rampling on piano directed his three piece band skilfully though the show would have been better served with a slightly larger musical ensemble and a compere more at ease with the show's (well researched) patter than the singers who occasionally sounded too scripted.

Demanding to be re-staged, the show is an imaginative and innovative arrangement of much loved tunes that offers a grand night out at the theatre. Both acts ended with big numbers from Bernstein and Sondheim’s West Side Story, Tonight and Somewhere respectively. These two famous songs (a duo and a solo) have each been cleverly re-arranged for four voices and the quartet delivered them with soaring harmonies. It’s a cunning move by the producers, ensuring that when the curtain falls the audience leaves grinning and with a tune on their lips.

When Midnight Strikes

Gatehouse Theatre, London

*****

Book and lyrics by Kevin Hammonds

Music by Charles Miller

Directed by Grant Murphy & Damian Sandys

Midnight Strikes.....

When Midnight Strikes is that rare event on London's fringe. It's a show with a respectably sized cast of 12, each of whom is a simply perfect performer. One can offer no criticism at all upon any of the actors and whilst the show itself is well suited to the fringe, the standard of acting on display would grace (or possibly even be better than) many a West End stage.

The show centres upon the New Year celebrations that Chris and Jennifer West are hosting in their stylish Manhattan apartment. Early on, we learn that Jennifer has just discovered an unsigned note that documents her husband's infidelity and in a further revelation we discover that the note's author's handwriting matches that of an unspecified party guest. So the plot thickens as the evening plays out against a back story of a sexual whodunit.

Miranda Wilford is Jennifer and her performance is an exquisite take on someone who has been shattered emotionally, trying to get by with an attempt at a facade at her own party. She captures every minute nuance in a beautifully voiced performance of painfully anguished maturity. Directors Grant Murphy and Damian Sandys have shown perception in coaxing such understated brilliance from this actress.

The magic of this show though is how as Jennifer's life is falling apart, a series of vignettes that showcase each guest in turn, play out around her. The skill that Hammonds displays, in segueing so effortlessly from hilarity to heartbreak is a rare craft indeed and almosts suggests a mash up of Stephen Sondheim with Edward Albee. Sarah Harlington and Stephanie Parker's characters Twyla and Nicole lead a brilliant number, Shut Up, that mercilessly dissects the banal bullshit of cocktail party small talk. Parker later performs way above her years with a painfully wry What You See Ain't Always What You Get, while Ashley Emerson's Chris leads one of several sassily staged company numbers, Smoke Em If You Got Em. It is left to Lucyelle Cliffe to deliver the comedy sub-plot highspot of the night as her cleavage-spilling predatory harridan Murial, the next door neighbour in the block, virtually devours the virtually virginal software millionaire uber-geek Edward (Newley Aucutt), in the sofa based romp When I Make Love To You.

Sexual desire permeates the tale. Jessica Anne Ball is a cracking all-seeing waitress, John Hicks and Samuel Parker keep the male numbers of the cast balanced out with stunning contributions whilst Victoria Croft as hippy Zoe makes the best of perhaps the least defined character of the piece. Tash Holman's Rachel leads Tom Millen's Greg a merry dance as he tries to reignite their relationship and amidst all this mayhem there remains Jennifer's gradual descent into dignified despair.

Music is simply provided by Matt Rampling on piano with cello accompaniment. It's a simple touch that suits the elegant New York ambience of the story. If you like your romance wry, with just a twist of bitter irony, then there are few finer shows to be found in London.

Runs until 29th September