Jolly good, Fellowes
Half a Sixpence Noël Coward Theatre
Hats off to “Lord Downton”. Julian Fellowes has achieved a double-whammy in the West End this week. On Monday, School of Rock – for which he supplied the propulsive script, derived from the Hollywood film – opened to footstomping acclaim (making another peer of the realm, its composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, happy too).
And now, for the first time in 50 years, the West End is alive again to the sound of Half a Sixpence, thanks in part to Fellowes’s clever overhaul of the book that was one unsatisfactory feature of the lovably perky 1963 musical. His approach cuts a simpler path through H G Wells’s 1905 novel
all about an ’umble draper’s assistant who inherits a surprise fortune but must choose, as he jumps social echelons, between the childhood sweetheart he left behind (with half a sixpence as their shared keepsake) and a genteel evening-class teacher.
If you wanted to quibble, you could say that Fellowes and his associate buffers and polishers – composer George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe – are still only three quarters of the way there, even though this major revival looks and sounds even better now it has transferred from Chichester.
One of the forgotten heroes of the Sixties British musical, David Heneker fashioned for Half a Sixpence some of the catchiest numbers an audience could wish for – among them the title song, If the Rain’s Got to Fall and Flash,
Bang , Wallop. Close your eyes, and you can probably hear Tommy Steele (for whom the show was written) belting them out in the 1967 film.
Stiles and Drewe have added some superb new songs. One of these, a second-half showstopper called
Pick Out a Simple Tune, starts with a rudimentary plucking at a banjo and gathers into an almost orgiastic Cockney knees-up, engulfing stiff sophisticates at a Folkestone soirée; it’s as catchy as hell.
And yet, for all the respectful inventiveness – born of admiration for Heneker, who acted as a mentor to Stiles and Drewe, and the great British music-hall sound, too – the evening does shortchange us slightly on depth. Ann and Helen, the two women the simple-hearted Kipps wavers between, have little more dimensionality than a head-through-the-hole pier attraction. And what about the looming horror of the First World War?
But this is still the best version of this musical London has yet seen, oozing with confidence and style in Rachel Kavanaugh’s staging, and brimming over with spick-and-span choreographic delights (take a bow Andrew Wright).
And in Charlie Stemp, who plays Arthur, the production boasts one of those fairy-tale finds that’s the stuff of legend. With just two professional musical credits to his name, the 22-year-old Londoner has a smile as bright as the Oxford Street Christmas lights, and suggests the Edwardian innocence and boyish simplicity of spirit that Wells was after. In his elastic, fantastic company – and that of the terrific, 24-strong ensemble, too – two hours whiz by. Until Feb 11. Tickets: 0844 482 5140; halfasixpence.co.uk