Tag Archives: Keith Allen

REHAB THE MUSICAL

★★★

Neon 194

REHAB THE MUSICAL at Neon 194

★★★

“Keith Allen is clearly having a ball playing the scheming and corrupt Stone”

You’re a Wanker – is the opening number of Rehab the Musical and when the end comes, the audience leaves the venue merrily singing it.

It’s the hedonistic nineties when paparazzi, selling stories to the gutter press and dodgy rehabilitation clinics are all the rage. Out of control popster Kid Pop (Christian Maynard) is papped snorting cocaine; so the judge gives him 60 days in rehab, to mend his ways. But his dastardly manager Malcolm Stone (Keith Allen), sets about to keep Kid on the front pages by putting a mole inside The Grange, to dish the dirt on our Kid.

But how do you heal in 60 days? By meeting all the other inmates staying at The Grange. Meet the joyous selection of addicts with big and honest hearts. With addictions to food, drink, gambling and sex; via tanning and cheese addictions we hear their stories as they reveal their innermost obsessions in their daily therapy circle. And it’s here that the real heart of this musical is found through these extreme but loveable characters, brought to life by a line-up of stalwart and talented West End musical theatre performers including: John Barr as tanning addict Barry Bronze, Rebecca Thornhill as ex Bond girl and alcoholic Jane Killy, and Oscar Conlon-Morrey as the heart-breaking Phil Newman whose song Ordinary Girl is a highlight.

“the big ballads are sung with big belting vocals”

Christian Maynard, as Kid Pop, has all the moves, but is not able to bring such a two dimensional character to life, making his journey to redemption hard to believe. Keith Allen is clearly having a ball playing the scheming and corrupt Stone in toupee and large moustache – and even manages to talk his way through his songs with aplomb. Jodie Steele, as Stone’s sidekick Beth, is underwritten; but we get a glimpse of her steel in the song Die at 27.

Rehab the Musical has music and lyrics by Grant Black and Murray Lachlan Young, with book by Elliot Davis – they all have their own personal history in rehab, addiction and recovery. Addiction is a serious subject but Rehab does have a few laughs too – plus some seriously bad jokes taking the names of Dame Shirley Bassey and Sir Tom Jones in vain – all so nineties. The lyrics aren’t so poetic and the music is in every pop style going, and the big ballads are sung with big belting vocals. With a clever and simple set by Simon Kenny, the show is slickly choregraphed by director Gary Lloyd, whose full company snorting cocaine routine in Everyone’s Taking Cocaine is brilliantly grotesque.

This is the inaugural show at Neon 194 – and a high calibre theatre in the round it has turned into. However, for a new musical with a great live band playing, it is a travesty that the band are nowhere to be seen. It has become part of the course in musical theatre not to see the musicians – and that does effect the whole experience of a musical.

Today, the woke world is more aware of mental health and addiction – so taking us back to the nineties is maybe an unnecessary step too far?


REHAB THE MUSICAL at Neon 194

Reviewed on 16th January 2024

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Mark Senior

 

 

 

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KIM’S CONVENIENCE | ★★★★ | Park Theatre | January 2024

REHAB THE MUSICAL

REHAB THE MUSICAL

Click here to see our Recommended Shows page

 

Peter Forbes as Marley and Keith Allen as Scrooge in Mark Gatiss’ A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story

★★★★

Alexandra Palace Theatre

A CHRISTMAS CAROL: A GHOST STORY at Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★★★

Peter Forbes as Marley and Keith Allen as Scrooge in Mark Gatiss’ A Christmas Carol

“The icing on the (Christmas) cake is Paul Wills’ set”

You might think that an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” by Mark Gatiss, whose credits include ‘The League of Gentlemen’, ‘Little Britain’, ‘Inside No. 9’, ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Doctor Who’, would have an off-the-wall, surreal quality to it. To an extent you would be right, but overall Gatiss remains remarkably faithful to the original. Of course, there are surprises, twists and quirky humour, but also a profound respect for Dickens’ storytelling, and a forceful reminder that Dickens himself subtitled his novella ‘Being a Ghost Story of Christmas’.

Fittingly it opened just in time for Halloween at the Nottingham Playhouse, before sleighing into town for the run up to Christmas. Alexandra Palace, with its flaking façade and decaying Victorian grandeur, is the perfect setting. A touch too cavernous perhaps, which weakens the intimacy, but director Adam Penford’s production is aiming high for the cinematic scope of the supernatural. And in that he certainly delivers. Ella Wahlström’s surround sound could have come straight from the Dolby Laboratories, while Philip Gladwell’s lighting creates a vast spectrum of moods. The icing on the (Christmas) cake is Paul Wills’ set: an alternative, ramshackle, Victorian nightmare crowded with towering filing cabinets and desks, slickly rotating to reveal the cobbled streets, the graveyards, or the coal-fired warmth of family parlous.

The tale opens with a kind of prologue. Whereas Dickens’ famous opening lines describes Marley as being ‘dead as a doornail’, here we meet Marley very much alive. Albeit very briefly, before snuffing it, and then we flash forward seven years into more familiar territory. Keith Allen’s Scrooge is a bit of a bruiser, with a gentleman’s whiskers, unkempt enough to betray his miserly attitudes to all and sundry – including himself. Allen has an eye for detail, and we see in his facial expressions a boyish vulnerability beneath the thuggishness. His redemption is triggered more by fear than a deep-rooted desire to do right. Indeed, Marley’s ghost is a powerful figure in Peter Forbe’s hands; a booming personality that needs the thick mass of chains to restrain him. The three spirits of past present and future are not so spine-chilling, yet all bewitching in their own distinctive way. Particularly Joe Shire as the Ghost of Christmas Present – a throned, genie-like wizard with enough charisma to shake the loose change from the hardiest skinflint’s pockets.

“Whisps of ghosts fly above our heads as spectral carriages soar past the bell tower”

The human factor is a touch lacking, however, and our hearts are not always tugged sufficiently. It is the atmosphere that drives the piece rather than true emotion. Some chinks let sentiment flicker through, such as Tiny Tim’s deathbed scene. When Scrooge asks if these visions are the ‘shadows of things that will be, or the shadows of things that may be’, we do feel a quiver of feeling, but otherwise the true spirit is largely hidden behind the spectacle.

And a spectacle it is. Whisps of ghosts fly above our heads as spectral carriages soar past the bell tower. John Bulleid’s illusions, with Nina Dunn’s video design and Georgina Lamb’s choreography create a magical world that fills the vast, sepulchral space. For much of the time, though, we feel closer to Halloween than to Christmas, until the closing moments when the cast assemble into a Christmas Card tableau. A rousing ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ with gorgeous harmonies precedes a return to the narrator. Throughout, Geoffrey Beevers weaves a narrative thread that allows much of Dickens’ poetic language and humour to shine; into which Gatiss has thrown in a nice twist for good measure.

In the 1843 publication, Charles Dickens wrote in his preface that he has “endeavoured in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an idea”. Nearly two centuries later this ghost of an idea has grown into a seasonal favourite. Gatiss has added a few ghosts of his own that can only reinforce the longevity of such a classic. A haunting tale indeed, but still traditional enough to immerse us in the Christmas spirit.


A CHRISTMAS CAROL: A GHOST STORY at Alexandra Palace Theatre

Reviewed on 29th November 2023

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Treason The Musical | ★★★ | November 2023
Bugsy Malone | ★★★★★ | December 2022

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

Click here to see our Recommended Shows page