Aidan Cutler Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★★★

“The simple sincerity is heartwarming”

When asked to pick out his favourite exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Warren (played by the suitably kooky but charismatic Aidan Cutler) selects a very ordinary still life. ‘It’s a little bit boring’ counters Dora Gee’s spiky Deb. But, as Warren points out, she is missing the point. We don’t need the bigger picture; the colours of ‘an ordinary day’ (as the song lyrics proclaim) are beautiful. A touch platitudinous, but it is the central message of Adam Gwon’s sung-through musical “Ordinary Days”. On the surface, simplicity is the keynote, but the compositions have an underlying complexity that the talented cast of four deliver with a deceptive ease and panache.

Set in New York, the musical follows four characters – Warren, Deb, Jason and Claire – as they weave in and out of each other’s lives through a series of twenty-one finely constructed songs. Each number is a stand-alone vignette telling its own story, but also an essential brush stroke of the bigger picture on display. It is a neat, introspective device, although a little bit hampered by its pithy predictability. But it is nice to be reminded that everybody is interesting in their own way and even the smallest of actions can have a (often unseen) positive effect.

Warren is a wannabe artist, barely scratching a living distributing leaflets for his employer, a graffiti artist currently in prison. On his rounds he picks up discarded minutiae and memorabilia – a photograph here, a valentine card there – and one day he stumbles on a graduation thesis accidentally dropped by Deb. Discovering a contact email in the notes, Warren gets in touch to suggest meeting at the Met to return them. He senses adventure – she is suspicious of this whacky character. But, yes, they do warm to each other and an unlikely alliance develops. Meanwhile, Jason is moving into his girlfriend’s apartment. Claire feels her space is being invaded. The couple tend to bicker a lot – over wine and taxis mainly – the core of a stand-out number, ‘Fine’, which has a Sondheim-like quality and energy to it. Melisa Camba, as Claire, shrouds her bristly nature in humour, stunning us with her smooth vocals, while James Edge renders his awkward devotion instantly relatable. There is a hidden darkness to their story, revealed later but covertly hinted at in the simple symbolism of a favourite, old sweater that Claire refuses to throw out.

The two couples never meet, but their fates are unwittingly sealed by the others’ actions. The overlap is mirrored by director Karl Steele’s stripped back staging with the two pairs in constant close orbit but never quite colliding. The only set is a series of crates, moved around to convey the apartments, the museum, a taxi ride or a skyscraper’s rooftop terrace. The fine voices of the four performers give clarity to the melodic narrative, sometimes a wordy scattergun onslaught, at others a tender ballad. The gifted Nick Allen, on keys, provides a varied piano accompaniment that does occasionally betray the show’s limitations. Minimalism is taken to the extreme, but the cast use it to maximum effect. A beautifully sung fairy-tale, it ultimately grabs our hearts. Yes, it is sweet and gooey yet delivered in manageable doses that don’t clog the arteries. Some people might prefer more bite, but this isn’t what “Ordinary Days” is about. It is four people looking for themselves. For their own story. It is not remarkable, but it is special in its own way. If that is all you take away from it, it has done its job. But most people, I think, will see more than that. The simple sincerity is heartwarming; sometimes funny, other times moving, and always a joy to watch and listen to. “Ordinary Days” is extraordinary in its own quirky way.

Back to the Future

Adelphi Theatre

Reviewed – 6th October 2021

★★★★

“It is sleek, well-oiled and will surely be burning bright for quite some time”

Even with the help of a 1.21 gigawatts flux capacitor and an unhealthy dose of radioactive plutonium, 88 mph seems a pretty modest speed required to propel a rear-engine ‘DeLorean’ through time. But this piece of eighties iconography has no trouble landing on the stage of the Adelphi Theatre in the twenty-first century, swept along by the sheer force of a gravity-defying publicity machine and the collective, kick-starting power of a couple of thousand fans a night, adding to the lightning bolts of energy that burst throughout the auditorium. To say “Back to the Future: The Musical” is spectacular is an understatement. It showers us with special effects, jaw-dropping sets and transitions, blurs of neon, CGI magic and a hi-wattage, fifties/eighties mash up of a soundtrack. It is sleek, well-oiled and will surely be burning bright for quite some time.

But listen closely and you hear some troublesome knocking in the engine. Not enough to stall it and too quiet to worry the crowd, the flaws are invariably swamped by the energy of the performances. It’s a bizarre adaptation of the film; simultaneously faithful to the original but adding quirks and eccentricities that don’t always sit comfortably with the source material. Doc Brown attracts an ensemble of backing singers and dancers like flies. It’s a lot of fun, is wonderfully appealing to the ears and eyes and it breaks the fourth wall. But you wonder why. The music and lyrics of Alan Silvestri and Glan Ballard are crowd pleasing pastiches, with words and rhymes full of witty observation and humour; but sometimes side-stepping into banality. The almost relentless breaking into song takes away from the narrative and the characterisation; we barely have time to take a breath (so how do the cast cope?) and we miss those moments when we can absorb the concepts of space, time and history that the film allowed us to contemplate.

Yet despite being stripped of at least one dimension of their characters, the cast give impeccable performances. Olly Dobson, as Marty McFly, is a dead ringer for Michael J. Fox and is a fireball of energy. When he arrives back in 1955, the moments when his teenage mother (Rosanna Hyland) has ‘the hots’ for him are played for real laughs. (It is bizarre to note that when the film was originally pitched to Disney, the appalled executives rejected it outright, declaring it to be a movie about incest). More emphasis is placed on Marty’s relationship with his dad, George. Hugh Coles gives one of the stand-out performances; lanky and geeky with angular awkwardness, and often hilarious in the way only a highly skilled mover can re-enact ‘bad dancing’. Roger Bart’s Doc Brown is a contagious concoction of quirks, marred only by his over playing to the audience at times.

The special effects, sets and lighting are as much a lead role as the protagonists. Tim Lutkin’s lighting, Finn Ross’ video design, coupled with Chris Fisher’s illusion design, Gareth Owen’s sound and The Twins FX animatronics cannot fail to produce a breath-taking show. Add on the extra layers of Chris Bailey’s sleek, though sometimes excessive, choreography; and musical director Jim Henson’s thirteen-piece band and you have a display that defies the laws of physics. Like the well-worn bumblebee flight myth (it is a scientific and aerodynamic impossibility that bumblebees can fly – yet fly they do) the unconventional components that make up this vehicle should leave it grounded. It shouldn’t do – but it flies. It soars even. Although not timeless, it will stand the test of time and we’ll still be seeing this show in the West End way back to the future.

ORDINARY DAYS

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

★★★★

“The simple sincerity is heartwarming”

ORDINARY DAYS

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Reviewed on 23rd April 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Perro Loco

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ORDINARY DAYS

ORDINARY DAYS

ORDINARY DAYS

Adelphi Theatre

Reviewed – 6th October 2021

★★★★

“It is sleek, well-oiled and will surely be burning bright for quite some time”

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Sean Ebsworth Barnes

Back to the Future

Adelphi Theatre until July 2022

Shows we reviewed in September 2021: