Working - Review

Southwark Playhouse, London


*****


From the book by Studs Terkel
Adapted by Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso
With additional contributions by Gordon Greenberg
Songs by Craig Carnelia, Micki Grant, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mary Rodgers &
Susan Birkenhead, Stephen Schwartz and James Taylor

Liam Tanme, Siubhan Harrison, Gillian Bevan,
Peter Polycarpou, Krysten Cummings & Dean Chisnall

It is remarkable how the mundane, simple and modest elements of hard graft, so often taken for granted, become the catalyst for the way you think and live your life, despite your best efforts to be defined by your dreams. Working, a musical directed by Luke Sheppard at the Southwark Playhouse, capitalises on that universal revelation with an incredible cast performing heartfelt, heartwarming and heart-wrenching stories of real people.

Without a narrative of sorts, the revolution that is Stud Terkel’s 1974 book (now on my Amazon wishlist) is celebrated as we’re invited into the lives of everyone from a hotel maid to a press agent, from firefighter to teacher. The seasoned cast relish the array of accents and sass, with no character left behind and no performance lacking and with their younger counterparts embracing their first post training roles with enough energy and glee to keep the hope alive even in the darkest moments. Under Isaac McCullough's baton, the tunes switch from cabaret to rock ballad to country, attributing to the multitude of musicians and writers credited which only adds to this celebration of the spice and variety of life.

Kicking off with an overture addressing the possibilities and downsides of worklife (“There are okay bosses or Satan bosses”) we are then thrown into the unknowingly deep thoughts of a fast food server and delivery guy (the mostly gleefully sweet Liam Tamne), the musings of a “Brother Trucker” (the very much not 19, Dean Chisnall), cue a rock ballad, and the pride of a steel worker (the endearing Peter Polycarpou) and that’s just a few from the guys. The range in the cast is incredible and drives the performance as the perky Indian customer service advisor warps into a pacifist with a screw loose. The ladies include Gillian Bevan perfectly presenting the pride of a lifelong waitress with a cabaret-esque number, Krysten Cummings bringing Whitney back as determined hotel maid and Siubhan Harrison bringing a tear to the eye as she harmonises the woes of factory labourer. It’s difficult to pinpoint a highlight, as it’s difficult to determine a more interesting story when they’re all told with the same pizazz.

In a world where it’s becoming more and more easy to forget the incredibly real and entirely fascinating lives of those who serve you coffee and build your homes, this musical is a welcome revival (and London premiere) and an eye-opening night. Oh, and so much fun.

Runs until 8th July
Reviewed by Heather Deacon
Photo credit: Robert Workman

Guys and Dolls - Review

Phoenix Theatre, London

****

Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser
Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows
Directed by Gordon Greenberg

The Guys from Guys and Dolls

The current London cast of Gordon Greenberg's Chichester production of Guys and Dolls, recently moved across town to the Phoenix Theatre, is a delight. This company's polished excellence give a delightful treatment of Frank Loesser's words and tunes, themselves a carefully crafted tribute to Damon Runyon's Broadway fables.

The move to the Phoenix itself was an an improbable 12-7, the London production having been planned to leave the Savoy and continue its tour around the UK. It was only upon seeing the warmth of the capital's reception that canny producers opted for the tour to spawn a continued London residency, before hitting the road.

There is an irresistible loveliness around these four leads. Over from America, Richard Kind is a wonderfully lugubrious Nathan Detroit. Kind nails the old promoter's romantic ineptitude as he struggles to find a home for his floating crap game. Beautifully expressive, in a suit that's deliberately cut just a size too large, there's a generous measure of a recognisable everyman in Kind’s comic creation.

Also new to the show is Samantha Spiro's Miss Adelaide. Spiro is all five of New York's boroughs rolled into one - and the shtick that she evolves with Kind is comedy gold. If her vocals may not be the finest, her acting through song is off the scale, including a revelatory nuance to Marry The Man Today (and this from a critic who's loved the show for 35 years). Elsewhere, Spiro’s Take Back Your Mink, all Marlene Dietrich for the first couple of verses before she Hollanderizes her voice into a magnificent Broadway belt for the closing stanzas, is a very guilty pleasure.

Siubhan Harrison is the only lead to have remained from the Savoy and like London’s springtime her Sarah Brown has blossomed magnificently. Of the story's leads, it is only Brown and Sky Masterson who truly evolve through the show discovering both each other and love. Harrison convinces with a touching poignancy as she struggles to resist Sky's charms, along with a glorious set of pipes. Back in Chichester, Clare Foster set Sergeant Sarah's bar very high and it is a joy to report that Siubhan Harrison's tambourine bashing mission doll more than rises to the occasion.

The final newcomer to the romantic quartet is Oliver Tompsett's mellifluous Masterson. Tompsett not only sounds perfect, he looks the part too (his cocked-trilby poise reminding me wistfully of 1982's Ian Charleson at the National). Cool yet ultimately crumbly, with Tompsett it’s all about the voice and the man is a treat to watch and listen to.

It's the lightly sketched details to Loesser's supporting ensemble, those citizens of his Runyonland that add the magic to a great Guys and Dolls and this company doesn't disappoint. Gavin Spokes' Nicely Nicely Johnson convinces as a sweaty water-buffalo in Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat, alongside Jason Pennycooke who delights as an ingeniously created Benny Southstreet.

The diminutive Cornelius Clarke offers up a pugnacious Harry The Horse, sitting well alongside an outsized (and perfectly cast understudy) Cameron Johnson as Big Jule, the Chicago mobster. And as it’s currently the season to celebrate under-recognised understudies, a nod too to Lavinia Fitzpatrick whose dancing as the Diva gave a fabulous contribution to the Cuba routine.

Andrew Wright's choreography alongside Carlos Acosta remains a highlight with both Cuba and the Crapshooters' Ballet pieces continue to offer flair and spectacle. In the pit, Gareth Valentine's work on the new orchestrations brings added sparkle to some wonderful Songbook stalwarts.

Guys and Dolls works best when it doesn't take itself too seriously - and it is truly the mark of an in-form company that a packed theatre can laugh at even the most modest of Loesser's gags. Chemistry? Hell yeah, chemistry! An un-ashamedly romantic, comic-book sketch of New York’s low-life, Guys and Dolls is a perfect evening's entertainment.


Booking to 30th October

Guys and Dolls - Review

Savoy Theatre, London

****

Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser

Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows

Directed by Gordon Greenberg

Jamie Parker

It is a sound idea that has seen Chichester Festival Theatre send their acclaimed 2014 production of Guys and Dolls on the road. The UK tour that commenced in Manchester in November last year is now making a 3 month stop at London's Savoy and it proves fun to re-visit some of this productions more inspired moments.

Guys and Dolls is long acknowledged as one of the Broadway greats (Kenneth Tynan famously commented that along with Death Of A Salesman, the musical was the finest example of American literature) the Savoy show throws into relief how well the show works as a study of love and the human condition. But a cautionary tale. Its cute 1940's New York patter can easily become dated and too many of the show's gags need a punchy comic delivery that not all of this company are up to.

Staying with the production from Chichester's original cast, Jamie Parker's Sky Masterson is up there with the best. His Sky has the gorgeous insouciance that the gambler demands, yet as he realises that he's never been in love before meeting Sarah, Parker reveals the cutest vulnerability too. And boy can he sing. Parker must surely rank amongst the best of his generation in acting through song.

The other gem amongst the show's four leading roles is Sophie Thompson's Miss Adelaide. Barely clad in more mink than a mink, Thompson milks Loesser's wry Manhattan wit with spot-on timing, earning our chuckling sympathy for this most long-term of fiancées.

David Haig plays Nathan Detroit. Whilst Haig may well be a national treasure in waiting, a good Detroit is a tough call and it could be suggested that Haig is also, possibly, a tad too old for the part. Aside from Sue Me he doesn't have too many singing responsibilities (probably a good thing In Haig's case). Above all Haig lacks the ridiculously implausible New York chutzpah that Bob Hoskins defined in 1982 and which, frankly, we ain't seen since. To be fair, Peter Polycarpou who triumphed in the role at Chichester, came close and he is sorely missed from this touring cast. (see note)

This reviewer is missing Clare Foster too – Siubhan Harrison makes a decent stab at Sarah Brown, but doesn't quite rise to the role's tough challenge.

The dance work however is spectacular. Andrew Wright with Carlos Acosta has created some gorgeous routines - and with imaginative Runyonland and Cuba numbers, along with some sensational sewer-dance in the Crapshooters' Ballet the show's choreography is surely amongst the best musical theatre footwork in town right now. And the Hot Box Girls are gorgeously wonderful!

The scenery (marquee lights and advertising hoardings that again suggest a nod to the National's 1982 ground-breaker) is more lightweight than lavish - though remember that this show is on tour so portable sets rather than a full blown West End set of trucks is to be expected.

If you love the show, or just simply adore imaginative dance work then it's well worth a trip to the Savoy.

NOTE:

If Sonia Friedman is reading this review here's my suggestion for a Guys and Dolls dream cast that is probably best staged within the next five years.

Jamie Parker needs to stay as Sky - he won't be bettered. But Parker, a former History Boy, needs to be re-united with his classmate James Corden as Nathan Detroit. Lob in Sheridan Smith as Miss Adelaide and with either Clare Foster or Laura Pitt-Pulford as Sarah Brown and I believe there'd be platinum fol-de-rol for Friedman.

Runs until 12th March, then tours

Guys and Dolls - Review

Chichester Festival Theatre

*****

Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser
Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows
Directed by Gordon Greenberg

Sophie Thompson and Clare Foster

Chichester's newly re-launched Festival Theatre hosts its first musical with a sparkling revival of Frank Loesser’s musical fable of Broadway, Guys and Dolls. A show built around New York’s everyman and everywoman, Kenneth Tynan described Guys and Dolls on its 1953 London opening as the Beggar’s Opera of Broadway. 29 years later, at London’s National Theatre, Richard Eyre defined the work in a stellar, seminal production that paved the way for Broadway musicals to occupy a deserved place in the subsidised theatre repertoire. Now, some 30 years on from that revelatory South Bank production, American wunderkind Gordon Greenberg revives this tightest of tales of gamblers, lovers and the sheer confounding beauty of the human condition.

Based on Damon Runyon’s short story The Idyll Of Miss Sarah Brown, the book charts 24 hours in four of the unlikeliest of New York’s star crossed lovers. Clare Foster is Sarah Brown, a missionary who is to yield (albeit with the assistance of copious quantities of Cuban Dulche De Leche) to the wickedly chiselled refinement of Jamie Parker’s incorrigible gambler Sky Masterson. Elsewhere on Broadway Miss Adelaide, a 40-something night-club singing broad, played with sardonic hilarity by Sophie Thompson bewails her 14 year engagement to the cutest of low-lifes, Nathan Detroit, famed for running the city’s finest floating crap game. Around these four gems, a cast of missionaries, homburged hoodlums and scantily clad Hot Box debutantes, all serve to paint a cosily familiar picture of the post-war USA.  

Jamie Parker and Peter Polycarpou

Peter Polycarpou is Detroit and it is a delight to see this stalwart of British musical theatre at last take on the mantle of a leading man to open a show. Squat and hen-pecked, Polycarpou captures the impossible ironies of Detroit’s life, with a voice and comic timing that are perfectly poised. His contribution to the three-part harmony The Oldest Established is flawless whilst as a hustler desperately seeking 1,000 bucks so he can rent a venue for his crap game, there are moments that suggest a reprisal of his Ali Hakim, also from the National from some years back.

Foster delights as Sarah, coaxing an intimacy from her post-Cuba duet with Sky, I’ve Never Been In Love Before, that was breathtaking, whilst Parker’s Luck Be A Lady was dreamily suave yet defined the passion behind his love for Sarah.

There is excellence throughout Greenberg’s company. Nick Wilton’s Harry The Horse was built for double-breasted pin stripes, Harry Morrison’s Nicely Nicely Johnson is every inch the water buffalo that his character should be, (even if the showstopping encore for Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat did seem just a tad pre-planned) whilst amongst the Hot Box ensemble, Anabel Kutay leads her dancing generation with a cameo as the Havana Diva that is jaw-dropping.

Peter McKintosh’s simple set design of classic posters of the era, each framed by marquee lights suggested a nod to John Gunter’s 1982 festival of advertising-neon. Alongside, Carlos Acosta and Andrew Wright’s choreography opens up the trademark numbers with panache, whilst still allowing a spot of table dancing to be wafted into Take Back Your Mink. My only complaint: For such a shiny stage floor and so many wonderfully be-spatted Guys, where was the tap routine? When this show transfers to London (as it surely must) no doubt the Acosta/Wright team can rectify!

In our troubled world Guys and Dolls, this most frothy of fantasies, is a wonderfully whimsical tonic. It’s a place where, as Adelaide and Sarah dream of changing their men post-wedding and Sky Masterson’s mantra is that no matter how desirable, “no doll can take the place of aces back to back”, the story remains gloriously grounded amongst recognisable characters.

The show is selling out fast – and rightly so. The Festival Theatre audience rose as one to salute the cast (and luxuriously furnished 15-piece band) on press night. Musicals don't get better than this. 

Runs to 21st September 2014

Photos by Johan Person