Are you being served ... a schmaltzy rom com
She Loves Me (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield) Verdict: Slow-moving schmaltz ★★★✩✩ A Chorus Line (Curve Theatre, Leicester) Verdict: One, singular sensation ★★★★✩
TWO musicals, one in Sheffield, the other in Leicester, seem to inhabit parallel universes this week. In Sheffield, it’s the schmaltzy She Loves Me, by the writers of Fiddler On The Roof, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. In Leicester it’s the gritty, 1970s eulogy to the unsung heroes — and casualties — of musical theatre, A Chorus Line.
Those of delicate disposition may favour Sheffield. It’s a gentle romcom set in a Hungarian parfumerie, where a male and female shop assistant who loathe each other on first sight discover they have been writing each other love letters, via a lonely hearts club. The stakes are not high. I spent the show’s near threehour duration praying one of the characters might take a risk. Even a small one.
The story was the basis for the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan movie You’ve Got Mail, but here it’s like Are You Being Served, without the characters or gags. Instead, there are chattily inoffensive songs. My favourite is A Romantic Atmosphere sung in Marlene Dietrich mode by Adele Anderson as the German maitre d’ of a lovers’ cafe.
It is countered in the second half by a bumptious hymn to Christmas shopping in Twelve Days To Christmas.
CRuCIBLE regular Alex Young brings fizz to heroine Amalia and is the sort of honest-togoodness leading lady who’s easy to identify with. She has a clutch of saccharine songs including another hymn — this time to vanilla ice cream.
James Stewart played the hero in the film based on Miklos Laszlo’s original story, The Shop Around The Corner. Here, David Thaxton’s glum George could do with some of Stewart’s goofy charm.
You may also like to wear sunglasses for Ben Stones’s set, which is more sweet shop than parfumerie, thanks to Liquorice Allsorts shades of yellow, pink, turquoise and orange . . . with black trim.
I could have done with 10-20 per cent more va-va-voom from Robert Hastie’s meekly sedate production, which I caught at its final preview. But confidence will surely grow; and I predict you should be able to warm your hands on this one by Christmas.
■ MEANWHILE, in the alternate musical universe of Leicester, A CHORUS LINE is a more deliciously savoury experience. Nikolai Foster’s singular production, starring Adam Cooper as the play’s autocratic 1970s director, sweeps us along with the story of a gruelling dance audition for a fictional Broadway show — climaxing in a glorious Busby-ish finale.
A selection of dancers relate their life story, covering the anxiety and inadequacy most of us feel growing up and trying to cut it in a hostile world.
Each testimony has the ring of lived experience and was gathered from dancers by the show’s original choreographer, Michael Bennett.
But what makes it sophisticated is how the damaged characters’ desperation makes them vulnerable to disappointment — without making them any less driven.
The take home, though, is the collective razzle dazzle that somehow rises out of their individual pain. There are stand-out cameos including Emily Barnett-Salter as Sheila the ageing diva; Carly Mercedes Dyer (who recently wowed as showgirl Erma in Anything Goes at the Barbican) as the director’s ex; and Ainsley Hall Ricketts as the young man struggling with his homosexuality. Adam Cooper is a David Soullike martinet as director Zach, and having an A-list dancer on board raises everyone’s game. The score brims with wah-wah guitar, jazz trumpet, ragtime piano and shimmering percussion. Even on an empty stage it dazzles — thanks also to the banks of lights, which descend like spaceships. At least the shop’s marble top display cabinets are an art deco delight. The costumes look like they’ve cleaned out Leicester’s charity shops of leg warmers and leotards — all of which are cast off for the golden glitter of a finale, and the greatest number … One (Singular Sensation). Let’s hope they are willing and able to extend the run well into the new year.