Great business for hen parties! Pretty Woman struts back... after 30 years
Pretty Woman was the romcom about the call-girl and wealthy businessman that launched Julia roberts opposite richard Gere in 1990.
Now it’s a musical in which relative newcomers Aimie Atkinson and Danny Mac not only have to fill those shoes but also handle Bryan Adams’s blazing rock score.
How did they do? Well, pretty decent, thanks partly to a generous audience – 80 per cent comprising women of a certain age – willing them over the line.
Miss Atkinson came to attention in the Henry VIII musical Six (she played Catherine Howard) but here she keeps her head and secures her marriage to the film’s millionaire, who’s been adjusted in line with inflation to become a billionaire.
Working her way through the outfits from tiny skirt with thigh-length fauxleather boots to fine black lace and that famous red frock, I can’t say she melted my heart as ‘sex worker’ Vivian. Nor is she any more credible a street hooker than Miss roberts.
But this is more fairy tale than gritty realism and Atkinson is a sweet, girlnextdoor performer who holds her own against Adams’s squealing guitar solos. Like the show itself, she warms up in the second half with an anguished this Is My Life and then a tina turner-ish outpouring with I Can’t Go Back (after getting a taste of the high life).
even so, let’s not pretend this isn’t a gleeful hymn to wealth and status and there will be those (like me) who find it too schmaltzy. Mac is probably best known for his tV appearances in Hollyoaks and Strictly Come Dancing (he was a finalist in 2016).
His looks place him somewhere between Gere and Pierce Brosnan.
He’s the supposedly stone-hearted capitalist redeemed by love and I wouldn’t normally be interested in the rich emotional life of the disgustingly handsome.
But in Mac’s case I was prepared to make an exception. Where his enviably toned torso wins a raucous cheer, he also sings like a choirboy.
the toughest challenge for Jerry Mitchell’s production though is to lend passion to a story that’s haunted by the shadow of cold commercial transaction. In pursuit of energy, the stage gets a little too congested at times, with wheeling dancers, warbling opera singers and our besotted lovebirds jostling for space during the trip to La traviata in San Francisco.
But Adams keeps the show grounded, his trademark wailing anthems interspersed with gentler acoustic numbers.
For me, what really rescues a potentially icky yarn about love hopping into bed with money is Bob Harms’s show- stealing turn as the slapheaded, goateed narrator who’s a cross between Harry Hill and robert De Niro. He first appears as a winking pimp and goes on to become a playful, ballroom dancing hotel manager.
Fans can rest assured that the show follows the film faithfully. And although it’s sunny without being dazzling, in the end it delivers what we all want most: a sing-along to roy Orbison’s title song.
So, even if queues for the ladies’ loos looked knee- knittingly long to me, I foresee great business with hen parties.