Quality Street! This chorus-line throwback is another winner
42ND STREET Theatre Royal, Drury Lane ★★★★✩
FROM the opening moments of 42nd Street you know you are in for a good night. The first note from the orchestra is a deep, cheeky parp of brass. Then comes the curtain rise and it stops at knee length long enough for us to see 80 feet tap-dancing, kicking up a noise like so many mad rattlesnakes. Clack clack clack clack clack. Mesmerising. Here is London’s second big American-throwback musical in a month and it is another winner. If I slightly preferred An American In Paris that is because it has balletic artistry and stronger lead performances but both shows will give families a taste of classic, sequinspangled glamour. Harry Warren’s music (Lullaby Of Broadway, Keep Young And Beautiful) dates to the 1930s. The yarn – unknown dancer rescues Depression-era Broadway show and becomes a woman in her own right – was revived as a New York stage musical in 1980, its appeal being chorus-line nostalgia. Showgirl legs, we got ’em. One almost expected Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon to come hoofing in from stage right and left.
Sheena Easton plays grouchy Miss Brock, the A-list star who breaks an ankle and has to be replaced by provincial newcomer Peggy Sawyer (Clare Halse). Brock is an unenviable role, though she gets to sing I Only Have Eyes For You.
Miss Easton, in purple hair, has a ruby voice and a certain matronliness but she could flare her nostrils a little more.
A touch heavier with the dragon, dear.
Backstage miracles abound: quick changes, lush backdrops, silhouettes and sumptuous costumes including a line of boys in white tailcoats and toppers.
In one scene the girls are done up as flowers with petal hats. Almost in the next they are flashing their teeth at us from a gorgeous array of yellows and pinks and oranges and blues.
The chorus line is enormous – the producers must have invested a fortune. Such ambition is too rare on the West End these days. DIRECTOR Mark Bramble tilts a vast mirror over the stage when the dancers are on the floor, kicking and waving. A giant, human water lily could be flapping its tendrils. Great stuff.
A little tap- dancing goes a long way for me but the technique here is of a high order, none more so than from tiny, muscular Miss Halse. Maybe I was too busy watching her feet but I wonder if she has yet made Peggy tender enough.
Tom Lister’s impresario Mr Marsh, well sung, is a stern if rigid presence. Jasna Ivir injects comedy as mother-duck Maggie. And old Bruce Montague hams it up as an ageing ogler who has put $100,000 into the production simply because he fancies Miss Brock. An old man investing in musicals simply to eye the showgirls? Never.