Chasing a dime and losing the dame
Mack and Mabel
Chichester Festival Theatre
It’s easy to develop spoilt brat syndrome at Chichester. There were times during Jonathan Church’s lavish revival of Jerry Herman’s 1974 musical about the on-off romance between the silentmovie mogul Mack Sennett and the actress Mabel Normand, when I caught myself grumbling: this is all quite fun, but isn’t it too frothy and insubstantial? And, sure, with Michael Ball cutting a dash as Mack, this production might just bring the show to the West End for the first time in almost 20 years, but it doesn’t match the dizzy heights of the theatre’s recent account of
Gypsy, which has made a sensational transfer to the Savoy.
That’s the curse of success; you’re judged against your triumphs. Yet only 10 years ago, before Church took over, this hallowed venue was in the doldrums. Now he is about to depart, it has become the norm to expect the best.
Obviously, you can’t wholly turn a blind eye to the evening’s deficiencies. Herman himself worried about the lovability of his hero and heroine: Sennett is so obsessed with making his next picture, and dime, that he winds up losing the dame, while Normand’s increasing craving for recognition and drugs also tarnishes her. Around them whirl characters so paper-thin they barely stand up without the sustaining frenzy of song-and-dance routines.
Often the ensemble seem to be hoofing and goofing like it was going out of fashion. Yet I think that this rough-and-ready quality is part of the show’s strange appeal. Herman looks back with rose-tinted nostalgia at the innocence of the early film industry while fondly drawing on the showbiz formulae of old Broadway. Sennett had an eye for what the public wanted. Herman follows suit: there’s even a show-stopping tap-dance number in praise of, erm, the joy of tap-dancing; that’s gloriously led by Anna-Jane Casey. Factual value? Almost nil. Entertainment value: huge. One should cherish the warmth of spirit then, reflected in Herman’s lush score and charming lyrics. The opening number, Movies
Were Movies, is an infectious paean to the glory days of the silver screen – Ball’s broke but unbeaten Mack recapturing a state of childish glee as he progresses from tentative wistful patter to leather-lunged defiance high up on a moving dolly.
In a way, this is a timeless cautionary tale about mixing business with pleasure, and letting love in. Mack’s antiromantic ballad I Won’t Send
Roses neatly sums up male inadequacies. His wounded beloved later gets a solo song,
Time Heals Everything, that has a similar surface breeze, the same inner tempest. As Mabel, Rebecca LaChance is a beautiful fit for an accidental starlet who knows how to widen her eyes in exaggerated terror at moustachioed villains but refuses to play the part of obliging wallflower in real life. Brought over from the States, she feels like a find in her own right.