Tag Archives: Sorcha Corcoran

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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Paper Cut

Paper Cut

★★½

Park Theatre

PAPER CUT at the Park Theatre

★★½

Paper Cut

“Excepting the performances, everything feels a bit “debut”, despite the creative team’s impressive programme credits”

 

Kyle has spent his whole life desperate to be in the army. Idolising his father who was a soldier, he’s sacrificed the possibility of love, both romantic and familial, to ensure his military future. When he meets Chuck while serving in Afghanistan, he starts to wonder if he can have both. But after stepping on an IED, his hopes are upended.

Paper Cut by Andrew Rosendorf poses some important questions about masculinity, family loyalty, and love. The idea that gay men should have had to hide their sexual orientation in order to serve is rightly highlighted as bizarre and destructive, and the idea, too, that romantic love requires sex is called in to question.

Kyle’s relationship with his twin brother Jack is a brilliant example of unconditional love, of caring for someone even after they’ve betrayed you for their own ends. Joe Bollard as Jack is warm and awkward, laughs and tears coming as easily as each other, and he’s a brilliant counterpart to his overly intense brother.

Prince Kundai, who plays love interest Chuck, is charismatic and lovable. Entirely comfortable in his own skin, and endearingly sincere, it’s easy to see how he and Kyle might slip from friends to lovers.

Tobie Donovan, playing Harry, another love interest, is sweet and ridiculous. He’s got great comic timing and even gets a few laughs where I’m not sure there was supposed to be one.

While the plot itself is gritty and melancholy, the script feels a little too sentimental, relying on clichés and long…meaningful…pauses. Callum Mardy (Kyle) seems to get the bulk of these staring-off-in-the-distance speeches about the meaning of serving your country and so forth, and it overrides the genuine tragedy of his story, with him coming off a little ridiculous.

The script’s final lines, for example, completely diminish the fervent conversation that preceded them, as Kyle and Chuck look out at the sunset: “If you could go back and change anything, would you?”/ “So much.” The end. It’s just a bit lazy. And it’s a shame because in Mardy’s moments of levity, irony and even anger, he shows his capabilities, but he’s let down by the script’s sap.

Sorcha Corcoran’s design, a simple wooden backwall with a row of inbuilt storage chests, works fine, serving its practical purpose of hiding props and keeping the stage clean. That is, until the penultimate scene when before, in the cover of dark, the stage is scattered with gold confetti. This all comes to make sense when the final scene takes place on the beach, but less so when we’re in Jack’s apartment. Why not just wait a minute, and scatter the confetti directly before the beach scene? Or, given how minimalist the rest of the set is, why do it at all?

Lucia Sanchez Roldan’s lighting design is inoffensive: Strip lights hang from the ceiling, changing colours throughout. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the story though, and seems a bit “designy” for the sake of it.

Excepting the performances, everything feels a bit “debut”, despite the creative team’s impressive programme credits. That said, there’s plenty to work with, and nothing a bit of red ink couldn’t fix.

 

Reviewed on 12th June 2023

by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Stefan Hanegraaf

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

Leaves of Glass | ★★★★ | May 2023
The Beach House | ★★★ | February 2023
Winner’s Curse | ★★★★ | February 2023
The Elephant Song | ★★★★ | January 2023
Rumpelstiltskin | ★★★★★ | December 2022
Wickies | ★★★ | December 2022
Pickle | ★★★ | November 2022
A Single Man | ★★★★ | October 2022
Monster | ★★★★★ | August 2022
The End of the Night | ★★ | May 2022

 

 

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