Wake up to Sleepless in Wembley
With a beloved screen romcom transformed into a musical...
DIEHARD romantics like me will recall, fondly, Sleepless In Seattle as the Nineties romcom that broke all the rules. It starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as two lovebirds on either side of America who don’t meet until the final scene of the film.
Now the hit movie has been turned into a major new musical featuring pop stars Kimberley Walsh (from Girls Aloud) and Jay McGuiness (The Wanted).
It’s one of the first big indoor shows to emerge from lockdown and the intrepid producers must be saluted for taking a huge risk on a production made possible by daily testing and rigorous social distancing at the venue.
The show is a rebooting of the original production that was cancelled at dress rehearsal stage earlier this year when lockdown started — so they all really have been through the wars.
But while Hanks and Ryan pulled off the oddball film with panache, I couldn’t help feeling Walsh and McGuiness would have benefited from some of the Hollywood A-listers’ charisma.
McGuiness plays Sam, the dad who moves to Seattle with his son Jonah after the death of his wife.
Walsh is Annie, the Baltimore journalist who picks up Sam’s story after Jonah goes on latenight radio and reveals his Christmas wish is for his Dad to find love again — melting the hearts of the nation.
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is much of Nora Ephron’s whip- crack dialogue from the movie, and neither Walsh nor McGuiness have the adorable kookiness of Ryan and Hanks.
McGuiness is more awkward teenager than bereft single parent, while Walsh contrives a toothpaste personality to match her pearly whites.
Mercifully, they can both sing. And Robert Scott’s cool, upbeat Sixties-style jazz score, played by a 12- piece band, comes as a blessed relief. With funky flute and groovy drumming, it has touches of The Pink Panther and The Jungle Book. I certainly came out humming at least one number: the cracking Now I Know.
Some of Brendan Cull’s lyrics are pretty snappy, too (‘Forget all you know about dating, You don’t need a blazer for mating’ . . . which reminds me the age guidance should really be 12+, and not the published 5+).
Morgan Young’s production is a little antiseptic, while Morgan Large’s set looks like a Travelodge suite with a backdrop of computerg e n e r a t e d architectural diagrams.
Far fr om rooting for our heroes, I also found myself wondering if Walsh’s Annie might have been better off sticking with her sappy, hypochondriac boyfriend Walter (Daniel Casey), rather than mooning over Sam.
Luckily three chorus girls liven things up by singing mildly lewd proposals to Sam. And Harriet Thorpe and Tania Mathurin, as Annie’s mum and her tough cookie editor, enjoy a couple of Shirley Bassey-sized belters.
But my favourite character was
Cory English as Sam’s buddy Rob, who’s an extraordinary cross between Mel Smith and Keith Chegwin — with pipes like Frank Sinatra!
At the performance I saw this week, though, it was Jobe Hart, as ten-year-old Jonah, who stole the show. The kid has a spirited voice and jazz-hands dance moves, too.
Aptly enough, he and English get the house cheering with the one big showstopper Now or Never. It’s an anthem that could serve as a rallying cry for the theatrical profession.