Tag Archives: Matthew Parker

I WISH MY LIFE WERE LIKE A MUSICAL

I Wish My Life Were Like A Musical

★★★★★

Wilton’s Music Hall

I WISH MY LIFE WERE LIKE A MUSICAL at Wilton’s Music Hall

★★★★★

I WISH MY LIFE WERE LIKE A MUSICAL

“plenty of humour is accessible to the most casual West End attendee”

I Wish My Life Were Like a Musical takes you on a whistlestop musical tour behind the scenes of the West End. Written by Alexander S. Bermange, who also performs the piano accompaniments live on stage, it is catharsis for every (wannabe) performer.

Wilton’s Music Hall is one of my favourite venues in London for its dilapidated glamour, and it is the perfect location for I Wish My Life Were Like a Musical. Even traipsing up the Victorian staircases puts a spring in your box step.

The audience enters the performance hall with the curtain up, a black baby grand piano to stage right, three large be-glittered stars across centre stage, and a curtain rail hung with sequinned jackets. Even before the lights went down I was expecting a strong dose of camp. This is delivered in delightful abundance.

The musical opens with a pitch-perfect prologue ‘The Opening Number’ that stays just the right side of copyright law. It introduces the audience to the format of the show which could be summarised as a ‘How-to Guide’ to surviving in musical theatre – but as the show makes clear, probably not thriving.

There are plenty of references in Bermange’s lyrics that are like easter eggs for the most avid musical lover, from the deification of the now mononymous Idina to referencing the poor cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella who were (allegedly) dismissed with a tweet. However, plenty of humour is accessible to the most casual West End attendee, with excellent direction from Matthew Parker. I have never seen anyone get quite as intimate with a steamer, as did Sev Keoshgerian in a particularly hilarious number.

Songs make fun of key milestones within a musical performer’s career, as well as the characters met along the way. Once agent showcases were sent up, I sank into my seat, fully expecting critics to get eviscerated. When that moment inevitably came, I was barely prepared for its deadly accuracy.

(Top) hats off go to designer Sorcha Corcoran, who cleverly uses costumes and props to add to the production. The cast don hats in a song about musical superfans, and this simple addition immediately places them as characters from four well known musicals. This headgear is paired with primary coloured raincoats which fondly emphasises the trainspotter-like zeal of the most enthusiastic obsessives.

The stellar cast of Jennifer Caldwell, Sev Keoshgerian, Rhidian Marc and Julie Yammanee do the excellent songs justice. Highlights include Yammanee delivering I Love to Sing that has shades of Glenn Close for all the right reasons. Each song is enunciated perfectly, and every actor hits their vocal jokes. Choreography is on the simple side, but remains high energy throughout, even through the inevitable encore. Of course there is an encore!

In an era where audiences at the largest musicals are hitting the press with notoriously bad behaviour and performance rates insulate even less against a cost of living crisis, I Wish My Life Were Like a Musical serves as an especially pertinent reminder to humanise the triple threats amongst us. However, it never gets too glum. I leave humming the tunes, and tapping my feet in the toilet queue. To bastardise Oklahoma! Oh, what a beautiful evening.

 

 


I WISH MY LIFE WERE LIKE A MUSICAL at Wilton’s Music Hall

Reviewed on 30th August 2023

by Rosie Thomas

Photography by Rod Penn


Wilton's Music Hall thespyinthestalls

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

Express G&S | ★★★★ | August 2023
The Mikado | ★★★★ | June 2023
Ruddigore | ★★★ | March 2023
Charlie and Stan | ★★★★★ | January 2023
A Dead Body In Taos | ★★★ | October 2022
Patience | ★★★★ | August 2022
Starcrossed | ★★★★ | June 2022
The Ballad of Maria Marten | ★★★½ | February 2022
The Child in the Snow | ★★★ | December 2021
Roots | ★★★★★ | October 2021

I Wish My Life Were Like A Musical

I Wish My Life Were Like A Musical

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VINEGAR TOM

Vinegar Tom

★★★

The Maltings Theatre

 VINEGAR TOM

Vinegar Tom

The Maltings Theatre

Reviewed – 29th October 2021

★★★

 

“As a period piece, both of the time it is set, and the time in which it was created, Vinegar Tom is a haunting piece of theatre”

 

Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom, just opened at the Maltings Theatre in St. Albans, marks the 45th anniversary of the play’s premiere by the feminist theatre collective, Monstrous Regiment. Written at the same time as Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Vinegar Tom explores similar subjects set in an England coming apart at the seams during the Civil War. Both plays present political (and polemical) material which resonates just as powerfully today, but Vinegar Tom is the more overtly feminist piece. It also incorporates music hall touches well suited to the style of a 1970s touring company like Monstrous Regiment, but which, ironically, date a show for twenty first century audiences no longer familiar with the music hall tradition.

Vinegar Tom is not about witches, as Churchill herself says. Instead she aimed to write a play for Monstrous Regiment that highlighted the plight of women living on the fringes of society. Her play is also about how unique, nonconformist women end up on those fringes (both then and now). With no means of visible support, and vulnerable as spinsters or widows, such women initially struggle as objects of suspicion among their neighbours. Ultimately, they become victims of a paranoid age looking for scapegoats. Despite the disclaimer, Churchill creates a compelling and believable narrative for the origins of witch hunts in seventeenth century England.

The Maltings Theatre revival of Vinegar Tom, directed by Matthew Parker, is a bold attempt to place the themes of the play front and centre. On a barely there set, designed by Sorcha Corcoran, Parker has assembled a talented cast (with particularly spirited performances by Emilia Harrild and Melissa Shirley Rose). The set is complemented by Alice McNicholas’ beautiful costumes. The music (composed by Maria Haïk Escudero) introduces a rock element to the show. This update is a departure from the more folk influenced music created for the original production by Monstrous Regiment. This revival features instead, cast members in period influenced costume picking up electric instruments for the songs that punctuate each scene’s end. These musical moments are arresting visuals, and certainly introduce a more “ominous” vibe. But the overall effect overwhelms Churchill’s dialogue, and the shape of the original play. The lighter, more comic (and teachable) moments recede.

In all Churchill’s plays, it’s the words you listen for. And in Vinegar Tom (the play takes its name from the cat of one of the characters) the lyrics are as powerful as the scenes that precede them. Each scene in is a punch in the gut about women’s treatment in the seventeenth century (and by extension, our own). Escudero’s music is potent, drawing on many rock influences, and the performers who play it, are more than up to the task. Ultimately, however, the power of the musical element is just too much for the play—and the space. The Maltings is an intimate black box theatre well suited to the original, touring, production of Vinegar Tom—but in this 2021 update, the intimacy, and hence the impact of each scene as the actors play it, gets lost. It’s not impossible to reimagine Vinegar Tom as a rock musical, but it would be a different beast.

As a period piece, both of the time it is set, and the time in which it was created, Vinegar Tom is a haunting piece of theatre. It stands as testament to the quality of the work produced by 60s and 70s feminist theatre collectives. So do make the trip to St. Albans if you have never seen this play before—it’s vintage Churchill, and a timely revival.

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Pavel Gonevski

 


Vinegar Tom

The Maltings Theatre

 

Other shows recently reviewed by Dominica:
The Ladybird Heard | ★★★★ | July 2021
L’Egisto | ★★★ | June 2021
Luck be a Lady | ★★★ | June 2021
Starting Here, Starting Now | ★★★★★ | July 2021
Rune | ★★★ | August 2021
Roots | ★★★★★ | October 2021
The Witchfinder’s Sister | ★★★ | October 2021
Rice | ★★★★ | October 2021
Love And Other Acts Of Violence | ★★★★ | October 2021
One Man Poe | ★★★ | October 2021

 

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