Tag Archives: Rachel Tucker

WILD ABOUT YOU

★★★

Theatre Royal Drury Lane

WILD ABOUT YOU at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane

★★★

“It’s a long journey, but a highly entertaining one courtesy of the wonderful vocal performances”

There are two things that strike you about the world premiere of Chilina Kennedy’s (music and lyrics) and Eric Holmes’s (book) new musical, “Wild About You”. The first is the inescapable fact that this is a stylish production, blowing onto our shores from across the pond with the confidence and swagger to head straight for Drury Lane. Picking up half a dozen of the finest voices in musical theatre, the performances alone claim the right to make the West End its first stop.

The second is the title. With the exception of a fairly throwaway number early on in the first act, it is very hard to work out why the writers opted for “Wild About You”. Admittedly it has undergone a couple of name changes since its progression from an album recording to the stage, but they still don’t seem to have labelled this show correctly. Perhaps when the concept is more finely honed, and trimmed a little, they’ll find it. The musical is a bit of a chimera, its personality split down the middle with each side of interval exposing its own idiosyncrasies and influences.

At the centre of the story is Olivia, beautifully played by Rachel Tucker, who inexplicably wakes up in hospital with gaping holes in her memory. Aided by the duty nurse, Shae (a gorgeously camp and comedic performance from Todrick Hall), she embarks on the task of piecing together a messy past as her memories slowly gather shape. The more she tries to find herself, the more she discovers that that is pretty much what she’s been doing all her life. The flaws in her character echo the flaws in her story, and we therefore find it difficult to empathise with the self-obsession that afflicts her. As her tangled love life ricochets between husband Michael (Eric McCormack), artist Thomas (Oliver Tompsett) and on-off lover Jessica (Tori Allen-Martin), our sympathies diminish with each rebound.

 

 

The second act becomes a different show entirely following a twist that is as inexplainable as Olivia’s initial amnesia. Her memories are re-traced from the others’ perspectives and her son Billy (Jamie Muscato), now eighteen, turns the story on its head. ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ meets ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ meats ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ meets ‘A Christmas Carol’ meets ‘Before I Go to Sleep’. A touch too quirky for its own good, the matted storylines are eventually smoothed out into its glossy, if a little sentimental, finale.

It’s a long journey, but a highly entertaining one courtesy of the wonderful vocal performances, backed by musical director Nick Barstow’s ten-piece band. Justin Williams’ sleek and stylised set frames the piece with an intimacy that cleverly belies the vast space; mirrored by Nick Winston’s ‘up-close and personal’ staging. Kennedy’s musical score wears it’s influences openly with its fine balance of belters and ballads. The dynamics are occasionally at odds with the narrative, particularly the impressive opening number into which Tucker pours her heart and soul. Maybe it needs to start smaller, allowing itself to grow naturally. Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a grand opening but similarly we wonder where it can go from here.

The show seems to have skipped a few steps in its evolution. Its success now lies in its shrinking and fine tuning before we can really get wild about it.

 


WILD ABOUT YOU at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane

Reviewed on 25th March 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Mark Senior

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HANDEL’S MESSIAH: THE LIVE EXPERIENCE | ★★★ | December 2022

WILD ABOUT YOU

WILD ABOUT YOU

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Songs for a New World

Songs For a New World

★★★

Online

Songs for a New World

Songs For a New World

Online

Reviewed – 23rd July 2020

★★★

 

“boldly aims to define the new normal, but unfortunately you won’t find anything here that you wouldn’t get from just listening to the album”

 

Well, here we are in ‘the new normal’. With so many theatres closed indefinitely while social distancing remains untenable, many venues and companies have been finding new ways to adapt. There have been plays performed via Zoom and actors playing to empty auditoriums in the Old Vic as producers scramble to safely recreate the theatrical experience. Musicals, of course, present an even greater challenge with having to sync the vocal performances with the musicians, which events such as Signal Online have made huge steps forward in. But does this production of Songs For A New World fit into, well, the new world?

It certainly frames itself as such. The show opens with newsreel footage of the likes of Rufus Norris and Nicholas Hytner speaking on the state of the industry post-COVID, panning through sombre shots of closed theatres, while the four performers (Rachel John, Ramin Karimloo, Cedric Neal, and Rachel Tucker) sing about being on the precipice of a moment when everything can change. It’s fitting, if a little heavy-handed. Songs For A New World is a little unconventional in its structure in that it’s more of a song cycle than a musical: the sixteen songs written by Jason Robert Brown are all self-contained narratives working within that same theme of the opening number – that of people hitting the point where vital choices have to be made. As such, there’s no over-arching story to tamper with by recontextualising the show through the lens of current affairs.

However, Brown’s USP is that he’s a very narrative lyricist. A lot of the songs feature characters in specific circumstances making those aforementioned vital choices, and so there are detailed stories that need to be told within the songs. The newsreel gimmick is repeated often throughout the show, which can sometimes flatten and obfuscate the nuance of the material. ‘On The Deck Of A Spanish Sailing Ship’ is intercut with footage of Black Lives Matter protests, for example, which the song was clearly not written for as lyrics about not being strong enough seem to undermine the defiance and urgency on display in the footage. Setting this precedent, ‘The River Won’t Flow’ features video of Trump being confrontational at a press conference at its start, which then has no bearing on the song itself. This poorly thought out recontextualisation ultimately rings hollow and meaningless.

If you can ignore that, however, then what remains is four exceptional performers (with an exquisite guest appearance from new graduate Shem Omari James in ‘Steam Train’) with seismically beautiful vocals and hair-raising harmonies in here. All of Brown’s deliciously complex music is given a pulsing energy by Josh Winstone’s musical direction, although Séimí Campbell’s direction doesn’t seem to trust the actors enough at times, giving them too much ‘business’ to do. The number of times the actors pointlessly fondle props or hold drinks during a song is baffling, taking the focus away from the arcs of the songs themselves, although standout performances such as John’s ‘I’m Not Afraid Of Anything’, Tucker’s ‘Surabaya-Santa’, and John and Karimloo’s duet ‘I’d Give It All For You’ manage to transcend those trappings.

For a show about making choices, Lambert Jackson’s production of Songs For A New World seems strangely on the fence: its use of intercutting with real world footage seems like it’s trying to attain a cinematic quality, yet the performers are self-recording in their kitchens and lounges which creates a dissonance with that. Meanwhile, the direction makes broad general strokes of the zeitgeist on material that demands nuance and specificity. This production boldly aims to define the new normal, but unfortunately you won’t find anything here that you wouldn’t get from just listening to the album.

 

Reviewed by Ethan Doyle

Photography courtesy Lambert Jackson

 


Songs For a New World

Online until 25th July

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