All aboard for a fun trip down Ol’ Man River
THERE are no established superstars in the Drury Lane run of Show Boat — yet. But I suspect a few performers will make their names in this charming production, which has just come into town from Sheffield.
Petite soprano Gina Beck must have lungs the size of golf bags, she makes such a powerful (and tuneful) noise. She has fine control and can act.
Miss Beck plays Magnolia Hawks, daughter of Capt Andy Hawks of the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi paddle steamer with an onboard stage.
Capt Andy is played by Malcolm Sinclair, who not long ago gave us the Bishop of London at the Donmar Warehouse. His Capt Andy is a delightfully dotty figure, terrorised by his wife Parthy (Lucy Briers).
Mr Sinclair brings such warmth and humour to the part, we can forgive his dicey American accent.
This 1927 Jerome Kern musical is an old-fashioned affair. Kern’s music is ambitious — opening with a superb a cappella number, Cotton Blossom, as slaves haul bales of cotton.
The story has its serious side, being in part about black oppression in America a century or so again. Yet it is not self-pitying and the schmaltz levels are just enough to tweak a sentimental tear with a finale reminiscent of The Railway Children.
The music is often almost operatic. Miss Hawks and Chris Peluso (who plays Magnolia’s love interest Gaylord Ravenal) apply plenty of classical varnish to their early duet Only Make Believe. Ravenal is handsome but, naturally, unsuitable. Come, come, where would musicals be without dashing gamblers? If Show Boat teaches us nothing else, it is that one should never trust a chap called Gaylord.
Monday’s opening night had its wobbles. Some of the dialogue was mumbled or muffled.
Mr Sinclair is not the only person who could do with more work on his dialect. During Only Make Believe, just as the two lovers’ eyes met, there was a strange ‘PARP!’ that sounded as though someone had sat on a trombonist.
Good band, by the way — not least the double bass. The songs in Show Boat include You Are Love, Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man and a storming After The Ball.
Its biggest hit is Ol’ Man River, and here, Houston, we have a small problem. It is sung by Emmanuel Kojo, fine lad in many ways — except in the growler department. His voice is not quite deep enough. Director Daniel Evans may need to encourage him to start smoking cheroots and drinking gin to take it lower.
But what fun this show is, once it has warmed up and provided you ignore some of the plot’s hoary coincidences. Lez Brotherston’s design won a little round of applause when we first saw the boat. The crew all seemed to be holding ping pong bats for the opening song.
Director Evans takes the action into the auditorium enough to accentuate the pleasure from the music (as the actors pass just feet away, you feel the blast of their singing).
KERn so packs his second half with reprises that you have no alternative but to swing your ankle. Then comes that weepy ending, as the ol’ Mississippi again works its sentimental allure. All the roughness of the slave years yields to something lovelier.
This Show Boat could have a long and successful voyage.
After seeing The Comedy About A Bank Robbery I had a terribly poor night’s sleep. I kept waking in a breathless state, panicked by impending misfortune.
Mischief Theatre, the crowd behind this galloping farce, made their name with ‘plays that go wrong’, ripe with slapstick, but light on smut and bad language.
For this show they step away from amateur dramatics calamity and give us an American bank heist that keeps going awry. The storyline may be different, but the mounting frenzy of despair is much the same — as are many of the facial gestures.
Cast members Henry Lewis, Charlie Russell, Dave Hearn and Co are accomplished at this sort of thing; but might they not eventually tire of playing the same role?
Mr Lewis seems to have doubled in size in the past three years, but the pace they maintain is extraordinary. They hurl their bodies into the fray. It is notable that in the credits they list their insurance agents, Messrs Israel, Gordon & Co.
The tale gives us bungling bank robbers intent on stealing a diamond from a dozy bank in Minneapolis. Mr Lewis plays its puffed-up manager, Mr Freeboys. Long-chinned Miss Russell (who does for Mischief Theatre what Millicent Martin did for That Was The Week That Was) is Mr Freeboys’ eyelash-fluttering daughter. Her beau (Henry Shields) is the bank robber.
The first half should probably be ten minutes shorter. I struggled to hear the lines at first.
Only after the interval does the show hit a rolling boil. It includes one of the most prolonged passages of comedy violence I have seen, with a little bank clerk (Jonathan Sayer) being walloped this way and that for about five minutes. People round me were weeping with laughter. I was in no state to help them.
It’s remorselessly crazy, inventively staged and I don’t think I heard a single F-word. Good, uncomplicated, farcical fun.