Tag Archives: Mary Moore

[TITLE OF SHOW]

★★★

Southwark Playhouse Borough

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[ TITLE OF SHOW ] at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★

“you have to hand it to the four performers – they know how to deliver. All of them have solid pipes and their whip crack dialogue rattles along at pace”

It’s cold and wet in Southwark. If your idea of an autumnal pick-me-up is to watch four perky Americans sing a running commentary about themselves for 90 minutes, you’re in for a treat.

If you’re looking to bury yourself further into your damp irritation, you can attend the same show and find validating levels of pique.

It’s that kind of show. Often at the same time.

The title of [Title of Show] comes from the entry form for the New York Musical Festival. Clueless about what to enter, aspiring writers and performers Hunter and Jeff decide to turn their mundane blather into the product. What we’re watching is the creative process as both the creative process and the result of the creative process. Meta on steroids.

“We could put this exact conversation in the show,” says Hunter after a particularly moribund exchange. But “would other people want to watch something like that?”

We’ll see.

The problem is apparent straight away. The creative process, even fictionalised, is notoriously indulgent. You end up with songs about writing songs about writing songs. Russian dolls with nothing at the centre.

[Title of Show] – directed by Christopher D Clegg, with musical direction by Tom Chippendale – is utterly obsessed by the mechanics of its own creation. The conceit throws up some genuinely witty moments and clever-clever theatrical in-jokes but has the feel of a student end-of-year showcase aimed at a knowing audience.

When the two women, Heidi and Susan, are left alone for the first time after the two main characters go off stage to do some business, they have nothing to offer except a song about two women being left alone for the first time while the two main characters go off stage to do some business.

It’s like that all the way through. Clever but without purpose.

You’re never left alone to enjoy a moment without the nature of the moment being retold as a rhyme. To be fair, the script does frequently question whether this is one huge mistake.

However, you have to hand it to the four performers – they know how to deliver. All of them have solid pipes and their whip crack dialogue rattles along at pace.

Jacob Fowler (Hunter), Abbie Budden (Heidi), Mary Moore (Susan) and Thomas Oxley (Jeff) have sumptuous voices, great range, and an endearing jazz hands energy.

Maybe this is a British thing, but the upbeat can-do fame school exuberance is the worst of it. After the festival and a taste of off-Broadway, they return to ordinary life and something more interesting happens. They struggle. They pout. They bicker.

Suddenly, these varnished mannequins acquire a second dimension. Some of their singing becomes heartfelt, some of their plights seem grounded. The irksome sweetness becomes something more savoury, perhaps even bitter.

But if that also is too affected, you could slot your grouch into the umbrella stand, turn off your head and just enjoy the songs. There’s a bunch of styles, some swish choreography, some deft solos and arrangements. Many of the songs individually are exceptional, the lyrics clever and often catchy. The sentiment is wholesome, the energy lively, and you can admire their (fictional) pluck and (actual) craft.

There’s a number which has the (clunky) line “I’d rather be nine people’s favourite thing than a hundred people’s ninth favourite thing”. That captures the ambivalence, and maybe even courage, of this production.

[Title of Show] is about overthinking something to the point where the enjoyment fades. My bad.


[ TITLE OF SHOW ] at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 18th November 2024

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Danny Kaan

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

THE UNGODLY | ★★★ | October 2024
FOREVERLAND | ★★★★ | October 2024
JULIUS CAESAR | ★★★ | September 2024
DORIAN: THE MUSICAL | ★★½ | July 2024
THE BLEEDING TREE | ★★★★ | June 2024
FUN AT THE BEACH ROMP-BOMP-A-LOMP!! | ★★★ | May 2024
MAY 35th | ★★★½ | May 2024
SAPPHO | ★★ | May 2024
CAPTAIN AMAZING | ★★★★★ | May 2024
WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND | ★★★★★ | April 2024

[TITLE OF SHOW]

[TITLE OF SHOW]

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Grease

Grease

★★★★

Dominion Theatre

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Grease

Dominion Theatre

Reviewed – 17th May 2022

★★★★

 

“if the onstage passion isn’t quite ‘electrifying’, the overall presentation is.”

 

Picture the scene in a cold, forbidding producers’ office. You’re pitching a musical. “What’s the plot?” they ask. Well; it’s boy meets girl, boy and girl indulge in a bit of ‘summer loving’ on holiday, boy spurns girl in the face of peer pressure back at school. Girl sees him for the shallow guy he is, so loses interest anyway. For some inexplicable reason she then decides that she wants him after all (teenagers, eh?). So, she changes her image, trashes what’s left of her endearing and intelligent personality, and dresses provocatively to entice this somewhat dumb and superficial guy. And – Hey Presto! They go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.

If you haven’t already been shown the door, you might just get to throw in that you think a two-thousand-seater West End theatre is the perfect venue. Preposterous. So maybe you should start the pitch with the title. When “Grease” was released for the cinema in 1978 it became the highest grossing musical film ever at the time. “Grease” was, and still is, the word, as the title song informs us. The New York Times called it “terrific fun”. Four and a half decades later that description still applies.

The current revival at London’s Dominion Theatre harks back more to the original musical which preceded the John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John blockbuster, and which ran on Broadway for eight years until 1980. It’s London debut starred Richard Gere. But the familiarity is still there, and everything we simultaneously love and lambast is bursting at the seams in Nikolai Foster’s sumptuous production. There is a glorious mix of silliness and surreality, bubble-gum and bravado. No matter that the storyline is imperceptible to the point that the opening bars heralding each song are a welcome respite from the banality of the dialogue.

It is within the musical numbers that the heart of the show beats fiercely. There are a couple of additions to the set list, and a couple restored from the original, though these feel inconsequential when up against the wealth of crowd pleasers. Foster bravely doesn’t always play to the crowd, however, but instead injects a freshness that puts a new slant on some of Jim Jacobs’ and Warren Casey’s compositions. Highlights include Jocasta Almgill’s biting rendition of “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” or Olivia Moore’s poignant ”Hopelessly Devoted to You” during which she decides she no longer belongs on the side-lines.

Moore’s Sandy does flirt with feistiness, but the character cannot escape the constraints of the script. Even in the seventies one must have wondered why she submits to such gender stereotypical peer pressure; and the question certainly looms larger today. In fact, there are so many wrong messages bouncing off the walls of the auditorium. For the most part they are drowned out by the infectious rhythms of the music and the gusto of the performances, driven by the sheer power of Arlene Phillips’ choreography.

There is little to be gained from looking for nuance or, indeed, emotional punch. We don’t feel the ‘multiplying chills’ about which Dan Partridge, as Danny Zuko, faultlessly sings. But if the onstage passion isn’t quite ‘electrifying’, the overall presentation is. As the closing number suggests: “that’s the way it should be”. Or rather “shoo-bop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom”.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan


Grease

Dominion Theatre until 29th October

 

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