Waitress - Review

Churchill Theatre, Bromley

****

Music and Lyrics by Sara Bareilles

Book by Jessie Nelson

Directed by Diane Paulus

Evelyn Hoskins and George Crawford

After a triumphant run in the West End, Sara Bareilles’ smash-hit musical comedy continues to wow audiences across the UK with this heartwarming show arriving at Bromley’s Churchill Theatre for one week only.

Waitress tells the emotional yet empowering story of Jenna Hunterson, a waitress and baker who is in an abusive relationship. The show sees her battling to transform from an anxious wife into a strong and determined woman, with ups and downs along the way.

Bromley's press night saw both first covers stepping up to the roles of Jenna and her gynaecologist Dr Pomatter, with incredible performances from  Aimée Fisher and Nathanael Landskroner respectively.  Fisher made the role her own, playing Jenna as comedic yet endearing. She had exceptional attention to detail, particularly in What Baking Can Do and It Only Takes a Taste. Her beautiful rendition of She Used to Be Mine had the audience on the edge of their seats, with the whole theatre erupting into rapturous applause almost before she could finish her last note. Landskroner’s Pomatter was full of the awkward, nervous charm we know and love, with flawless and tender vocals.

 

Other standout performances were from Evelyn Hoskins and George Crawford, playing the geeky and loveable Dawn and Ogie. Crawford’s Never Ever Getting Rid Of Me was comedic and witty with fantastic diction. Sandra Marvin’s Becky was hilarious and full of sass, and her powerful vocals in I Didn’t Plan It brought the house down.

Waitress is as refreshing as ever and hasn’t lost an ounce of its West End charm, despite occasional sound and lighting blips. A show that’s full of cheers and tears, often at the same time.

Runs until 26th February then continues on tour

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Lock and Key - Review

The Vaults, London


**


Music and orchestrations by Bella Barlow
Book and lyrics by A.C. Smith
Directed by Adam Lenson

Evelyn Hoskins and Tiffany Graves

Lock and Key is a new musical horror story playing at the Vaults Festival, against the ominous rumbling of trains of Waterloo overhead. 

In a tale that attempts to be a modern day nightmare, Jess is ambitious junior working out her probationary period at a publishing company and keen to get on in a media career. She’s hardworking but also bullied and exploited, with the show’s action playing out as she’s working late, at 10pm, on her birthday. Her boss Samantha is a monstrous employer with no care whatsoever for Jess. There’s an office filing cabinet with a dark and grisly secret that Jess is expressly forbidden from opening. Oh, and there’s a talking  teddy bear too.

If that all sounds rather corny that’s because it is. Barlow and Smith have created cardboard clichéd characters, in a musical that’s quite possibly turned out to be more horrific than its creative team might ever have intended. Horror is a tricky genre which this blog has been keen to support over the years. Handled well, it can make us laugh, scream and be moved. Done badly, and it appears as little more than kids playing around with the dressing-up box, or to put it more succintly, like the disgusting brown substance (draw your own conclusions) that Jess discovers in the filing cabinet drawer.  

That being said Tiffany Graves as Samantha (Tiffany is also the bear’s puppeteer ) together with Evelyn Hoskins’ Jess both deliver their usual level of excellence, with performances that are far finer than the script deserves. Likewise, Tamara Saringer puts in a strong shift, ably directing her four piece band through a collection of forgettable melodies.

If a successful future is to be unlocked for Lock and Key then much work is needed on its book. The show is crying out for credible characters who engage in plausible human interaction, and horror that truly suspends our disbelief. And as for the final scene – it’s sensational, implausible and gratuitously violent. Like the contents of that mysterious filing cabinet, Lock and Key is a bloody mess.

Runs until 18th March

Photo credit: Nick Brittain Photography

Evelyn Hoskins - There Was A Little Girl - Review

Battersea Barge, London


****

Evelyn Hoskins and her band

A packed Battersea Barge saw Evelyn Hoskins deliver a slick and intimate cabaret. Elfin / gamine / diminutive - take your pick of the adjectives, Hoskins' looks famously belie her age and for a show titled There Was A Little Girl she not unreasonably opened her set, clad in a tightly fitted and collared school-girl outfit.

The Sound Of Music's Liesel (who Hoskins recently played live on ITV) was famously 16 going on 17, and only this time last year Hoskins was playing Carrie, a telekinetic teenager of similar age yet barely out of puberty - so clearly there's been a little bit of typecasting going on. But the singer has cannily and professionally exploited her charms to the full. As she sung When I Grow Up from Matilda, Hoskins brought an almost ethereal beauty to the number.

A few songs into the evening however and it didn't take long for Hoskins to shed the chrysalis of her kid's costume, literally let her hair down and emerge before our very eyes, transformed from precocious brat to twenty-something beauty. Her set list stepped up a gear too as she duetted First Date / Last Night with Jon Tarcy (previously her ITV Rolf), later duetting with Sam Lupton in a mellowed That's What's Up.

Hoskins' take on The Things That Men Don't Say offered a beautiful vocal, framed with a maturity that dispelled her trademark youthfulness - and there was to be another most charming of double acts as, whilst strumming the ukulele, she sang Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun alongside her director Frances Ruffelle. Few performers understand the nuance of cabaret like Ruffelle who had polished Hoskins' act to a lustrous sparkle, ably supported by MD James Taylor's three piece band.

A gloriously assured and virtually faultless performer, Evelyn Hoskins is a welcome addition to London's cabaret scene.

Photo credit: Claire Bilyard

Hero's Welcome - Review

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford


***


Written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn

Richard Stacey and Evelyn Hoskins

Alan Ayckbourn's latest play sees this most prolific of playwrights fire off yet another salvo of domestic dysfunctionality. Hero’s Welcome, set in a northern English town, treats his audience to tableaux of human misery staged as an end of the pier farce. 

Murray is a decorated soldier returning home from a conflict somewhere east of the Adriatic, to the town he'd fled nearly 20 years ago when he jilted the pregnant Alice at the altar. Time has seen Alice go on to marry Derek, a charmingly inadequate builder (and sensitively played by Russell Dixon) devoted to his model railway layout. Meanwhile, in a palatial house out on the hills, Brad (a former childhood buddy of Murray) has built his home, married to the desperately unhappy Kara. There's the smouldering ashes of a love triangle in here too and if all this seems familiar Ayckbourn territory, the playwright resolutely catapults us into the modern era introducing Baba, Murray's young and devoted wife displaced by war and who Murray has recently married during a tour of duty. 

Ayckbourn (much like Arthur Miller) dwells upon the human condition in his work. But where Miller applies a surgeon's scalpel to fillet out grief and emotion, Ayckbourn uses a chainsaw (or should that be shotgun?) to make his point. Whilst many of Hero's Welcome's themes are recognisable, by the time its characters have endured murder, arson (and for good measure, one of them suffers a debilitating stroke half way through act 2) the play's credibility has all but evaporated.

That being said, Ayckbourn, who also directs, has assembled a marvellous ensemble. Richard Stacey's Murray is believable as the flawed warrior, whilst Elizabeth Boag's Alice cleverly hints at her once glamorous youth and an adulthood quietly spent in a marriage of disappointing compromise.

As Brad, an absolute cardboard cutout of a morally bankrupt bounder, Stephen Billington sports the chiseled good looks demanded of his millionaire lifestyle - and whilst Ayckbourn offers him little more than crass cliché by way of dialog, he makes the most of it. Likewise, Emma Manton's Kara offers a thoughtful study in housebound misery. Though Manton's re-appearance towards the play's end, appallingly wigged and playing her daughter Simone, is stagecraft at its clumsiest. 

The centrepiece of this company however is Evelyn Hoskins' Baba. Hoskins (around whom, one suspects, the part may well have been written) brings an fragile, elfin stature to a woman wise beyond her years and who has witnessed life's horrors. Hers is one of Ayckbourn's most well-conceived back-stories in a long while, with Hoskins defining the resolute determination and courage of a loving woman, desperate to re-build her life in the West. In a masterful turn from Hoskins we sense Baba's vulnerability yet admire her steely resolve.

Aside from the litany of his character's woes, Ayckbourn seeks to comment on other social malaises, raising his scatter gun to take aim at the rise of gastro-pubs, binge drinking whilst all the while inviting us to laugh at other people's misfortunes.

But Scarborough's literary hero is a canny chap and knows what entertains his devoted fan base. After a UK tour Ayckbourn’s company take the play to New York for a summer residency.

Now on tour

Peter Pan - A Musical Adventure

Adelphi Theatre, London

****

Music & lyrics by George Stiles & Anthony Drewe

Directed by Jonathan Butterell

Jenna Russell and Evelyn Hoskins

There have been many interpretations of J M Barrie's Peter Pan story but this musical version by George Stiles & Anthony Drewe, with book by Willis Hall, deserves a place of note. The tale of the boy who doesn't want to grow up and the three young Darling children of Bloomsbury he takes on an adventure to Neverland, has a charm which beguiles children and adults alike.

Stiles & Drewe (Honk!, Just So, Betty Blue Eyes) premiered Peter Pan in 1999. This concert version of the full production, imaginatively staged by Jonathan Butterell, worked well, with the actors and singers in front of a full orchestra on stage. Very often in concert productions, the larger group numbers can suffer from their lack of space and set; not so in this case. Astute choreography and spot-on delivery made a highlight of The Lost Boys Gang, a seriously catchy tune performed with gusto by the talented ensemble of Lost Boys.

George Stiles has written some enchanting melodies within a rich score, Never Land and There's Always Tomorrow having a distinctly timeless quality. In the hands of Jenna Russell, the show opened with accomplished vocals in Just Beyond The Stars, Miss Russell giving every phrase meaning; a skill she brings so effortlessly to her work. She imbues Mrs Darling with a warmth and the relationship between her and her husband Mr Darling (Bradley Walsh who also plays Captain Hook) seemed real, setting the tone for the evening. The casting of the three Darling children was spot on. Toby Nash and John McCrae as Michael & John were both funny, with huge spirit and not a hint of wimp about either of them.

However, Evelyn Hoskins as Wendy was a revelation. Her solo, Who Will Mother Me? was a show stopper, delivered beautifully. Miss Hoskins' voice soared within the Adelphi Theatre, her interpretation of the eldest Darling child a delight to watch. 

The cleverness of Anthony Drewe's lyrics is particularly apparent in the pirate songs. Bradley Walsh relished playing Captain Hook, making Murder For a Pirate with a Heart a hilarious musical soliloquy. His closing of Act 1 was terrific. Walsh was admirably supported by pirate crew of imaginative actors, each creating a unique character that you could "see" without them having costume or props. Particular note to Steve Elias and John Barr for their subtle nuances and physical precision that was both captivating and hilarious.

Sheila Hancock added gravitas as the story teller, holding the audience in the palm of her hand at the end of the show when revealing she is, in fact, Wendy, the wide eyed child now older, having lived her life fully, without fear. Peter's break down at this realisation at the close of the show was a satisfying twist to a familiar story.

The eponymous role was played with great energy by Ray Quinn. Quinn's interpretation of Pan was assured but a touch heavy handed at times, lacking innocence. However, his personal charm worked well for what is a tough role.

David Shrubsole conducted with aplomb and the finale, when orchestra, actors, children and choir joined together, a little bit of magic was cast within the Adelphi Theatre.

Guest reviewer: Andy Bee 

Carrie - Review

Southwark Playhouse, London 

****

A musical based on the novel by Stephen King
Music by Michael Gore
Lyrics by Dean Pitchford
Book by Lawrence D. Cohen

Kim Criswell and Evelyn Hoskins

Carrie makes its London debut at the Southwark Playhouse. Stephen King's classic horror mixes the recognisably human tale of Carrie White, a schoolgirl teased and shunned by her peers but who discovers, with her late onset of puberty, that she is gifted/cursed with tele-kinetic powers that allow her to make things happen just by willing them. We all know that in life there are few environments more cruel and terrifying than the bully and his gang at school and King's genius was in gifting a young girl with the ability to wreak a murderous revenge upon her wicked tormentors.

The story's horror is gothically graphic and as in any scary tale, our disbelief can only be truly suspended if the trinity of a fine script, excellent stagecraft and perfect acting is achieved. But where Brian de Palma's Oscar nominated 1976 movie succeeded in scaring us witless, the musical treatment falls far short. No one would dare add song and dance to Hitchcock's Psycho or Kubrick's The Shining, so quite what prompted the creative trio (and remember that Lawrence D Cohen wrote the movie's screenplay too) to spawn this show is a mystery in itself. Whilst the songs are immaculately delivered, King's horror has been mercilessly diluted, Pitchford’s lyrics are trite and Gore's tunes quite frankly forgettable.

But...This is a Gary Lloyd show - and with Thriller Live, Lloyd has defined himself as without equal in staging visually stunning (and occasionally spooky) numbers to a rock tempo. It is only a pity that the score does not include more ensemble numbers, for when the Southwark Playhouse floor is packed with his performers the show’s pulse soars, fed by Mark Crossland's powerful 7 piece band.

In the title role, Evelyn Hoskins is simply sensational. Her elfin physique melded with a perfect poise and a haunted demeanour convince us of a girl truly horrified by reaching her menarche at 17. Hoskins convinces us, not only of her pain but also of her supernatural endowments and her voice, especially in the numbers Carrie and Why Not Me is just heavenly (or should that be hellish?).

There is excellence elsewhere too – and were it not for Imelda Staunton’s Momma Rose currently wowing them across the river, then Kim Criswell would steal the award for Most Domineering Mother in a show. Her flame-haired bible bashing creation is a masterpiece of on-stage menace, her acting presence honed to perfection. And oh, what magnificent vocals. Criswell's take on And Eve Was Weak will truly make an audience pray for their salvation, whilst her hymn-like When There’s No-One treated the audience to a voice of cathedral-like magnificence, a quality rarely heard on the Newington Causeway.

Jodie Jacobs puts in a lovely and sympathetic turn as Miss Gardner, the teacher who cares for Carrie, whilst elsewhere quality performers make the best they can of thinly sketched 2-D characters. As the baddy of the piece Gabriella William's blonde and bitchy Chris is all hot pants and hatred, whilst Dex Lee (a newcomer who only recently stunned in The Scottsboro Boys) also sparkles as her schoolboy henchman Billy. Likewise, Sarah McNicholas makes a very decent fist of Sue, the musical's narrator and a role savagely slashed from its movie origins.

Tim McQuillen-Wright's design, all ripped up concrete and Jeremy Chernick's special effects are fun with gimmicks galore, but the company deserve better flying from Foy than was evident on press night. The stage blood flows and if you're sat front row prepare for a light spattering.

The show famously, expensively (and arguably, deservedly) flopped on Broadway nearly 30 years ago and whilst this version is slightly refined, it's still a bleeding piece of meat - albeit one that Paul Taylor-Mills has produced superbly. 

Carrie won't come around very often - and for that reason if you love musicals it's a must see along with being quite possibly the best date-night in town. Unquestionably a period piece, it is perfectly performed and bloody good fun.

Runs until 30th May