More ho-hum than ho-ho, this soulless musical won’t solve Liverpool’s problems
Miracle on 34th Street Liverpool Playhouse ★★★★★
Say a little prayer for Liverpool Playhouse this Christmas. It has been a tough decade for the erstwhile regional stalwart and its sister, the Everyman.
Back in the 2000s, with a new artistic director – Gemma Bodinetz – at the helm, and enthusiasm spurred by the city’s designation as European Capital of Culture in 2008, things looked good. Away from the city centre, up on Hope Street, the Everyman – a former cinema that became an influential, experimental theatrical hangout in the Sixties and Seventies – was reborn after a £27 million renovation in 2014. This was accompanied two years later by the return of an inhouse repertory ensemble – of the kind that theatrical diehards are always nostalgically banging on about – playing across both theatres. It should have unlocked new possibilities.
Yet the two repertory seasons – with a one-cast-fits-all approach – left the organisation at crisis point. The odd critical hit aside, it was a misfire. The idea was shelved, the executive director departed, and the theatres left the Arts Council’s National Portfolio of funded organisations to have a rethink until 2022. It remains in receipt of subsidy but needs to bank up a new sense of purpose.
At one level, this seasonal offering – a relative rarity, Miracle on 34th Street, the 1963 Meredith Willson musicalisation of the 1947 film – presents something admirable about Bodinetz’s fightback spirit. It centres on the apparent miracle of the “real” Father Christmas appearing in the guise of a kindly old gent who lends atmospheric assistance to Macy’s department store; his tidings of goodwill cause retail rivals to try amity and he brings joy into the overly cynical life of one of its staff (divorced Doris) and her sceptical daughter Susan. Love, compassion, belief: these things can, the show gooily insinuates, triumph.
The intrinsic issue with the piece, though – identified by The New York Times when the show, then titled Here’s Love, first landed on Broadway – is its soulless efficiency. “Right off the assembly line, shrewdly engineered,” opined the critic. The evening offers one melt-every-heart classic, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, but that takes what feels like an ice-age to make itself heard. In the main, the songs are more ho-hum than ho-ho-ho.
The cast strain valiantly to fill the Playhouse stage, the set conceived, not entirely wisely, as a shiny split-level Christmas present, complete with bow on top and multiple distracting revolving walls. Against this and amid much flailing choreography, the principals gleam fitfully without shining fully. Tim Parker is persuasively bluff and hearty as the avuncular Kriss Kringle while Stuart Reid musters the right kind of restrained machismo as romantic lead Fred, tough given that he flirts with Doris (Caitlin Berry) and becomes her child’s shoulder to lean on.
Not really suitable for kids, then, but not quite right for adults. Something more miraculous is needed to put the Playhouse back on the map.
Until Jan 4. Tickets: 01517 094 776; everymanplayhouse.com