★★★★

“A multi-talented cast of Pierrot-style performers … give their all in this satirical rollercoaster of a show.”

As one of the UK’s leading touring companies with a commitment to theatre that ‘entertains, provokes and inspires in equal measure’, Blackeyed Theatre are continuing their anniversary tour of Joan Littlewood’s pioneering ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ with a stop in Windsor.

The piece was developed in an improvisatory style by Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in in 1963. Her vision was to break the fourth wall that separates audience from performer, challenging elitism by taking theatre to where it was most needed as part of her proud boast that she was a ‘vulgar woman of the people’.

A multi-talented cast of Pierrot-style performers, most of whom trained on the Rose Bruford School’s Actor Musicianship programme, give their all in this satirical rollercoaster of a show. Director Nicky Allpress acknowledges the complex challenges of the piece which she describes as ‘a beast’ to rehearse – but her vision shines through.

Projections designed by Clive Elkington detail the heart-rending cost of the so-called ‘war to end all wars’ that pointlessly took the lives of tens of millions of young people whilst their unfeeling commanders remained indifferent to their struggle from a position of relative safety behind the lines.

An atmospheric backdrop is created by a circus tent inspired set (Victoria Spearing) evocatively lit by Alan Valentine. The cast play percussion, trumpet, double bass, accordion and more. They sing the old battlefield songs with a mad intensity which seemed to escape the audience member to my right. He sang along gleefully until the fierce cost of the conflict began to appear. Then he was silent.

Even before the show opens, Pierrots lounge in a box and interact with the audience in surprising ways. There are a number of stand-out scenes, including a poignant re-creation of the moment when soldiers met in no-man’s land on Christmas Day. But there’s no false sentimentality here and the satire is brilliantly sharp in a number of key scenes that depict the officer ‘donkeys’ who ordered the British lions into destruction. Naomi Gibbs has designed some clever costumes that at one point permit the cast to play both officers and wives in a viciously entertaining ballroom scene.

The company demonstrated a brilliant command of different voices, and their take on the indifferent drawl of the officer class was particularly impressive. Tom Benjamin sparkled as the MC and Harry Curley and Euan Wilson gave equally strong performances. The other members of the cast shone equally in this non-stop cavalcade of a show.

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN at the New Wimbledon Theatre

★★

“the full, immensely talented, company give it their all as they wade through the likes of Madonna, Bon Jovi, Cyndi Lauper, Blondie, Hall & Oates, Status Quo… and the list goes on”

Picture the scene; in some non-descript boardroom as the initial production meeting for a new musical unfolds. As is the current trend, a successful movie is on the table undergoing the duke box treatment. The person, or persons (no one is actually credited), responsible for compiling the song list has their mind elsewhere. Or, more likely, they didn’t even show up for the brief. The memo in their inbox was enough. It’s the nineteen-eighties!

It’s difficult to decide whether the music is shoehorned into the book, or the thin wisps of script have been tacked onto a compilation CD from somebody’s forty-year-old record collection. Whichever, the result is a union that makes little sense. “An Officer and a Gentleman – the Musical” might have been a good idea at the time, but nobody has really thought it through.

Based on the successful romantic drama film starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger, the musical adaptation’s book is by Douglas Day Stewart and Sharleen Cooper Cohen (Stewart wrote the original film, based on his own experiences as a Naval Aviation Officer Candidate). It was four decades ago now, and very much of its time. There was a toughness underlying the romance and it delved into the lives of down-trodden characters. Although faithful to the original story, the inclusion of the musical numbers in Nikolai Foster’s revival displaces depth of character leaving us with a sense of bemusement as each anthemic chorus blasts its way into the auditorium.

Behind the wall of sound, the story follows Zack Mayo (Luke Baker) through his training as an aviation officer. Whilst continually in conflict with the hard-hitting, sadistic Sergeant Foley (Jamal Kane Crawford) he finds solace, and love (of sorts), in local factory worker Paula Pokrifki (Georgia Lennon). Meanwhile fellow candidate, Sid Worley (Paul French) starts dating Paula’s best friend Lynette Pomeroy (Sinead Long). Both men have been forewarned that local girls will use pregnancy to entrap an officer, seeking a way out of their humdrum lives. This forms a sizeable chunk of the narrative, steering one of the officers towards tragedy, while the other heads off towards his climactic happy ending.

The presentation, it has to be said, is impressive. Michael Taylor’s set mixes warm neons with imposing industrial frameworks while Ben Cracknell’s lighting creates the moods that the banal dialogue fails to convey. There are some odd choices in the songs’ arrangements, but Musical Director Christopher Duffy and his five-piece band pull it off like they’re playing to Wembley’s Twin Towers (remember – it’s the eighties!). Joanna Goodwin’s choreography is a real spectacle, although again, there’s little to suggest that she’d read the script. And the full, immensely talented, company give it their all as they wade through the likes of Madonna, Bon Jovi, Cyndi Lauper, Blondie, Hall & Oates, Status Quo… and the list goes on. And as the show goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to match what we are hearing with what we are seeing. We wonder how Hall & Oates’ ironic ditty, ‘Family Man’, can underscore tragic (and fatal) heartbreak. An awkward dinner date precedes Heart’s ‘Alone’, delivered with disproportionate bombast. Histrionics has indeed overthrown emotion in this disjointed patchwork of a variety show.

Douglas Day Stewart’s film just happened to be written, released and set in the eighties. But at the time it didn’t define the decade. It seems bizarre that Stewart would allow the level of disrespect to his writing that is being shown here. Never mind the anticipated accusations that the story is inherently dated and misogynous. It’s just homogenous. Which is a shame as it has the potential to court controversy and inspire debate. Instead, we have Helen Reddy’s ‘I Am Woman’, juxtaposed with James Brown’s ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World’, drained of the lyric’s original meaning. On the plus side, though, the songs are all crowd pleasers, and there is passion in the performances; even if nowhere else.

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR at the Theatre Royal Windsor

★★★★

“A multi-talented cast of Pierrot-style performers … give their all in this satirical rollercoaster of a show.”

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR at the Theatre Royal Windsor as part of UK Tour

Reviewed on 2nd April 2024

by David Woodward

Previously reviewed at this venue:

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN at the New Wimbledon Theatre

★★

“the full, immensely talented, company give it their all as they wade through the likes of Madonna, Bon Jovi, Cyndi Lauper, Blondie, Hall & Oates, Status Quo… and the list goes on”

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN at the New Wimbledon Theatre then UK Tour continues

Reviewed on 2nd April 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Marc Brenner

Best shows in March 2024:

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN