Strictly’s Danny goes to town in the park
LEONARD BERNSTEIN’S 1944 musical On The Town is a more richly artistic affair than the 1949 film treatment it was given by Hollywood, which starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra.
Its latest revival at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park is balletic, funny, liberated and has a superb score, particularly if your taste runs to mid20th century American classical music with plenty of brass exclamations and short phrases.
Three U. S. Navy sailors are given 24 hours’ shore leave in New York city. The lads go in search of love and adventure and one of them, Gabey, decides he will hunt down a beauty queen, Miss Turnstiles, whose image he sees on a subway poster.
In the age before internet dating, boys were bold and girls did not mind being chatted up. Today Gabey might be arrested as a stalker but in the more innocent age of Forties musicals, his courtship of pretty Ivy (a delightful mix of innocence and zest from Siena Kelly) bears fruit.
The plot revolves around the couple missing a date and Gabey’s pursuit of Ivy to Coney Island, where she works. Will he and his chums Chip and Ossie make it back to their ship on time? DANNY
MAC, playing Gabey, was in the recent series of BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing and he can certainly move. There is muscular dancing throughout from everyone involved.
Is Mr Mac’s singing voice a little light? If so, he has a pleasant enough stage manner to compensate for that minor shortcoming.
The boys, as characters, are less interesting than the girls.
In addition to the lovely Ivy there is Hildy, a frisky taxi driver, and Claire, an equally libidinous academic (played by Miriam-Teak Lee, and what a fine voice she has). Claire may be engaged to a lugubrious judge — a brilliant turn by Mark Heenehan — but the judge is such an understanding pudding, she thinks she can ignore him and hang out with the sailor boys.
Drew McOnie’s production may have been a little wary of the Forties chauvinism and injects right-on diversity with mixed-race and gay romancing. A stark set is warmed up with some summery lighting and colourful Forties frocks; the sailors delight in running up and around the auditorium’s aisles, so fast that we must hope they never trip.
The pace is breathless (literally so in the opening scene, when the boys start gasping and sweating to a distracting level). There is an insistent fever for life here, plus plenty of laughs, most joyously from Lizzy Connolly’s Hildy in seductive mode with Come Up To My Place and Mr Heenehan’s judge during I Understand.
The band gives a strong account of Bernstein’s score and a male dance-line at one point wears such tight trousers, you can admire, should you be so inclined, a line up of bottoms as hard as Conference pears.
The one thing I could have done with was a soupcon more sentiment. On The Town never comes close to making you cry. But you will step out into the Regent’s Park night full of beans, and admiration for an ace company.