Theatre Review: The Hairy Ape

Here's a dirty confession for a theatre fan: until recently I'd never seen a Eugene O'Neill play.

I know right? I'm awful.

Fear not though. Thanks to The Old Vic's The Hairy Ape I have now remedied that situation and remedied it in some style.

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The Hairy Ape tells the story of Yank, a stoker on cruise liners, whose unshakable belief in his own self worth and place in society is destroyed when some rich bitch daughter of a steel millionaire calls him a filthy beast. His attempts to get his revenge on her and her whole social class are repeatedly thwarted until, broken, he seeks solace with a literal ape at the zoo. Hilarity does very much not ensue.

At this point I want to give a bit of a health warning for the rest of this piece: I have absolutely zero chill about this production. It’s amazing, I love it and everyone in the world should see it. So if you’re short on time, stop reading and go book tickets immediately. The other thing I should probably say is that, for the above stated reasons, I saw it twice and this review is my collected thoughts (‘incoherent fangirl ramblings’ might be more accurate) on both performances. 

The major drain on my chill here is Bertie Carvel whose central performance - and this is basically a one man show - as Yank is just phenomenal. The fact that, as discussed in a previous post, I very much have A Thing about Bertie Carvel notwithstanding the combination of brute physicality, violence, bravado and vulnerability he manages to pull off is genuinely astonishing. It’s a pretty boring observation to make at this point of his career, but fuck me is that guy versatile. It’s very hard for my tiny brain to compute that lumbering, angry, seemingly 7 foot tall (how do you act taller? how does that even work?) is deranged, broken Agave is tender, slightly nuts Jonathan Strange etc etc etc. And that’s amazing if you stop and think about it for even the briefest of moments. 

In this performance it’s first of all the physical transformation that’s strikingly impressive. Apart from somehow adding a foot to his height, the power Carvel's Yank has is frightening wherever you're sat. His gait, his stance, his movements are all slightly simian and all convey such pent up anger that you sort of want to leave the theatre because clearly bad shit is going to happen and this guy is going to be at the centre of it. (Also, aesthetically, WOW. Any semblance of my remaining chill was powerfully lost the second his shirt came off.) What’s less obvious but more impressive though is how, behind all of that, there’s an instant and heartbreaking vulnerability. Even though you sort of know where this play is heading, you root for Yank so hard and it’s because Carvel’s performance let’s you into this guy’s head to an extent that I doubt many other actors could manage. The scene where he’s rejected from the trade union he tries to join just broke my heart and the last scene (no spoilers) gave me such a physical reaction that I could feel my heart beating almost out of my chest both times I saw it. I don't remember reacting that way to any other performance before.

With this masterful central performance dominating the stage for basically the whole evening - the one scene that Yank isn’t in felt boring by comparison - there’s not much for the rest of the cast to do but they all do it well. Steffan Rhodri is particularly enjoyable as a nostalgic Irish drunk whose romanticism Yank can’t stand (and also delivers the play’s few funny lines, “I’m never too drunk to sing” being a favourite) and Phil Hill gives an amazingly charismatic performance as the ape, one that gives Andy Serkis and his Hollywood mo-cap magic a run for its money for sure. And the guys who get naked in the shower scene are a very welcome addition. Just saying.

The production looks stunning too, very modern in its black and yellow minimalism. The yellow storage container that serves as almost all the sets in various guises is such a clever, claustrophobic device and, more basically, it just looks quite frightening. One of the few scenes that lets the action out of the box and puts it into Fifth Avenue is also really effective and really fucking creepy, especially when the anonymous, masked posh people start doing an almost musicless, twitchy charleston. And thrusting Yank into the middle of this weirdness only makes it weirder still.

Now, there was a criticism in some of the proper grown up reviews that much of the dialogue, particularly in the first half hour or so, is difficult to make out and I think that is a valid point. Even on second viewing (/hearing) it took me a while to get my ear in and be able to fully understand the thick New York accents everyone uses and indeed are actually written into the play text. But then I have the same problem with people from Newcastle when I’ve had a few drinks and have never found it impairs my ability to enjoy their company. And so it is with this play; much like drinking with a Geordie or watching a Shakespeare you’re unfamiliar with, you may not pick up absolutely every word but neither do you for one moment lose the sense of what’s going on.

So, yeah, in summary see this show, see it now and see it repeatedly. And also go say hey to Bertie Carvel at the stage door because as well as being sickeningly talented he is also sickenkngly lovely, adorable human being. I sort of want to hate him but am physically and psychologically incapable of doing so.

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The Hairy Ape plays at The Old Vic until November 21st. Get your skates on.

Theatre Review: Waste

Christmas is still a few weeks away but the National Theatre has already found itself a nice, fat turkey.

 Shut up, I'm proud of that line.

On paper, Henry Granville Barker’s Waste (an appropriate title on oh so many levels) is very much my sort of play. Famously banned by the censor when it debuted, Waste tells the story of the implosion of the career of talented independent MP Henry Trebell, so obsessed with the Bill he has been tasked with stewarding through Parliament (disestablishment of the Church of England - thrilling stuff) that his affair with a married woman barely troubles him until she dies at the hands of a backstreet abortionist whilst trying to get rid of his child. Politics, scandal, social conscience - so many of my boxes ticked. And yet…

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Waste is unquestionably the worst thing I've ever seen at the National Theatre. To be honest, I'm struggling to think of anything I've seen at any theatre that’s much worse.

Perhaps the worst thing about this mess of a production is that it is deeply, deeply tedious. Things that may have been controversial and sexy when the play was written - lengthy debates about the relationship between Church and State, for example - are very much not anymore and nobody involved seems to have thought about how this would translate. All of the dialogue is so turgid that I think I’d turned off by the end of the second scene. The first members of the audience walked out after about half an hour.

This is not helped by the fact that the plot and the characters are so clichéd and facile that a twelve year old could have been responsible. I'm not sure why the characters are even given names to be honest. They’re so one dimensional that they may as well just be called Idealist Crushed By The Man, Plucky Northern Industrialist, Nasty Establishment Prime Minister, Spinster Sister, Outsider Who Tells It Like It Is and so on. It’d be much easier to remember. The plot plods along to a singularly inevitable conclusion with all the excitement of watching beige paint dry and the lazy attempts at making satirical points (‘he’s an ideas man and we don’t need those in politics hahahahahahahahaha’) might have been edgy a hundred years ago but now have all wit of a particularly dull concrete pillar.

Further pain is heaped on the poor, unsuspecting audience (a good chunk of whom had left in the interval and frankly I wish I’d joined them) by performances that can be charitably described as patchy. Charles Edwards does his best with what he’s given in the lead role, though he’s hardly the most convincing charismatic politician I've ever seen, but beyond that there’s very little to praise. Even the usually excellent Olivia Williams is shrill and annoying as the wronged mistress, though hardly helped by some particularly insipid lines. For reasons best known to someone else, a lot of the cast deliver their lines as if. There is a. Full stop. After every second. Or third. Word. And the actors playing the ‘establishment’ figures employ the sort of ‘politician’ accents and delivery that should just be banned in professional theatre.

A final mention must go to the setting which at best looks half finished and at most actively broken. My particular favourite is the series of mechanical walls that move across the stage to mask the changes of scene, which would be a neat device did they not move so slowly that I genuinely thought they’d broken down completely on a number of occasions. Though to be fair they did provide the one genuine moment of drama of the evening when towards the end of the second act they opened and closed so slowly that you could hear the audience (further depleted by people leaving during the second act) wondering aloud whether the play had finished. And of course the SYMBOLIC WASTE PAPER BASKET (I'm writing it the way I assume it must’ve been written in the stage direction) which should win some kind of special prize for the clunkiest, least subtle metaphor in the history of theatre. When it was revealed that it was still on the stage, just knocked over, during the curtain call I got serious giggles which I suspect was not the intention.

I don’t particularly enjoy slagging off productions to this extent (I'm lying) but there’s really nothing to admire in this production. Don’t waste your time and money on it, unless you’re someone I don’t like in which case I'm sure you’d enjoy it.

If you still want to see Waste for some reason, it plays at the Lyttleton at the NT until March 19th.

Theatre Review: As You Like It

I'm not a big fan of Shakespearean comedy.

With the notable exception of Much Ado About Nothing, I just don’t find it that funny. Maybe it’s unfamiliarity (I only ever read the tragedies at school), maybe I've been unlucky with the productions I've seen or maybe it’s just my sense of humour. I don’t know, they’re just not usually my bag.

But it’s always lovely to have your expectations confounded and the NT’s production of As You Like It does just that.

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The central plot of AYLI is the story of star crossed lovers Rosalind and Orlando who fall in love at first sight but are split when both are forced to flee for their lives into the mysterious Forest of Arden. Complications (and occasional hilarity) ensue but ultimately they are reunited, get married and live happily ever after. Aw.

So far so Disney. But where this production, directed by Polly Findlay, excels is in playing down the syrup - and to an extent the humour - and playing up the naturalism.

This approach isn't unproblematic. For one thing it makes the purely comedic characters, Touchstone in particular, very out of place and consequently largely unfunny, which is a shame as Mark Benton (playing Touchstone) is a great comedy actor who gets robbed of the potential to be a really great Shakespearean clown. It also makes the pre-Forest portion of the play feel oddly disjointed. The action is transported to a technicolour cliché of an office, where random characters wander about for no logical reason, and overlong wrestling matches are staged. It feels like it belongs in another, much less good, production altogether and left me convinced I was going to have a fairly miserable evening.

But the change of setting to the Forest of Arden breathes new life into the production and introduces the real star - the incredible design. The transformation between the two locations is stunning and the undoubted highlight of the show. Rows of office chairs, desks and lamps, connected by previously unseen chains, are dragged upwards so they hang from the ceiling to create the trees of the forest. Cast members dressed all in black climb into the trees where they remain, creating a surprisingly effective soundscape (wind through the trees, animal noises, bird song, raindrops) for the rest of the night. It’s inventive minimalism at its most beautiful - award nominations for designer Lizzie Clachan, please - the only downside of which is that it rather overshadows the action onstage.

Which is a shame as much of said action is really rather good, especially where the delightful Patsy Ferran is involved. Ferran is a near-perfect Celia. Playful and deadpan, she steals every scene she’s in and, importantly, offers a much more convincing articulation of the punchdrunk love that drives this play’s plot than any of the rest of the cast. Rosalie Craig is a decidedly modern Rosalind, particularly good as her male alter ego, and Joe Bannister an effectingly lovelorn Orlando, though both could do with an injection of the sort of joyous, maddening love that Ferran is so good at. Paul Chahidi has a couple of gorgeous moments as Jaques, his ‘all the world’s a stage’ speech is really beautiful (even if some stupid fuck let their phone ring through it the night we were in), though overall he struggles to make much of an impression, or that much sense of his character. And massive kudos are due to the supporting cast who provide, amongst other things, my second favourite moment of the night as they appear en masse as a flock of sheep, on hands and knees wearing white woolly jumpers. It’s as gorgeously silly and irreverent as it sounds.

Despite my misgivings, I really enjoyed this production and found it surprisingly clear for a text that I had never encountered before. It didn't completely convince me of the merits of Shakespeare as a comedy writer, but it’s fun, inventive and just so beautiful. Well worth your time.

As You Like It plays in the Olivier theatre at the NT until 5th March.

Theatre Review: Teddy Ferrara

It’s really difficult to write an engaging review for a play on which your main opinion is ‘that was ok’, as I suspect I'm about to prove.

(Look, bear with me on this one, ok? There’s a nice Sweet Valley High reference coming up that I think you’ll enjoy.)

Anyway, after an enforced hiatus from theatre going cause by that peskiest of things, real life commitments, it was back into the swing of things and off to the Donmar Warehouse - which I love - to see Teddy Ferrera.

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Written by American dramatist Christopher Shinn, Teddy Ferrara tells the story of a group of students at an American university which is shocked by a series of suicides of gay students. But you can largely ignore that. This play places ideas firmly over narrative: belonging, victimhood, the role of technology in social interaction being top of the list. And it desperately wants you to know that. It’s trying so hard to tell you that it practically slaps you in the face with its earnestness, often to the point where you want to slap it back and tell it to sit down because it’s embarrassing itself. Loathe as I am to quote from it, The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish has it right when he says this play feels like its own post-show discussion rather than the show itself. Or to put it another way, as I overheard the gay couple sat behind us describe it, “it felt like a game of gay bingo”.

I so wish I’d thought of that line because it’s true. Every classic LGBTQ stereotype is present, correct and unsubtle. This would be a much more interesting play if it tried to subvert any of these stereotypes instead of just mentioning Grindr, the internet or Abercrombie and Fitch models every ten minutes. There is no real depth here. At all. The play is trying so hard to be relevant (‘microaggression! Trigger warnings! Dance party!’) and inclusive that it occasionally veers dangerously close to self parody, something which is not helped by the fact that the dialogue tends towards Sweet Valley High (showing my age there) levels of complexity and nuance.

It’s also not helped by a truly leaden ending which isn't really an ending at all. It’s more just that the play stops, leaving several plotlines hanging in the air in a way that suggests the author got bored and gave up. It’s incredibly frustrating and leaves a bitter taste in the mouth for the audience who have given up the last two hours of their evening in the hope of some kind of satisfying resolution. And I'm sure that if the ending had been better I would be more charitably disposed and prepared to overlook all of the stuff I've spent the last three paragraphs complaining about.

All of that said there this is by no means a terrible production and the main redeeming features come in the form of a small but strong ensemble cast. My favourite character was Matthew Marsh’s university President, stumbling his way through the social issues the play crosses off its bingo card with a very relatable mixture of genuine concern, pragmatism and bafflement. The play sets him up as a ridiculous figure indicative of The Man and all of his incumbent evils (he’s even a politician!) but I found him quite sympathetic - and I suspect everyone who has ever been involved in student politics would probably agree with me, even if not out loud. He has all of the play’s limited supply of best lines (I particularly enjoyed this exchange with his long suffering Provost: ‘how long before someone says microaggression? Five minutes?’ ‘just try not to commit any’ ‘that’s impossible’) and provides some sorely needed laughs and energy to the production. In a title role that offers sadly little stage time, Ryan McParland gives a masterclass in character acting as an awkward, struggling misfit. And in the play’s biggest part, Luke Newberry manages to cut through some of the earnestness and give us a genuinely believable and sympathetic figure to root for. It’s all the more frustrating that his story is the one the play’s lack of ending fails to resolve.

Overall, then, a mixed bag of a night out but one that I can 100% guarantee you’ll be able to get tickets for. We went to the tiny 250-odd seat Donmar on a Friday night to see Teddy Ferrara and the place was half empty (more than half after the interval). Neither that fact nor this post are a ringing endorsement of the production, but if you want a not awful, last minute night at the theatre then this is a very good bet.

Teddy Ferrara plays at the Donmar Warehouse until 5th December.

Theatre Review: Bakkhai

This may come as a surprise to you but I am not a cool person.

I know how shocking this revelation is so I’ll give you a moment to recover.

…

Ok? Good. 

Not being a cool person makes me very suspicious of places like Islington, where I believe that at least one type of cool person tribe lives. Consequently I’d never been to The Almeida theatre before this week.

The Almeida is definitely a cool person’s theatre. Teeny tiny and with the apparently currently cool aversion to armrests (seriously, I'm getting so sick of the War on Armrests that some London theatres seem to be intent on waging. What did the poor armrest ever do to us except make sitting down more comfortable?), The Almeida is currently home to a season of ancient Greek plays, the latest of which is Bakkhai.

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For reasons, well a reason, that shall become apparent I desperately wanted to love Bakkhai. But I just couldn't. Not all of it, anyway.

You see, there’s a really good piece of theatre trapped within this production that just isn't given the chance to escape. And the thing trapping it is the interminable sung Chorus, done in traditional ancient Greek style as a group who speak and sing all of their lines in unison. 

Whilst technically impressive - and there should be no question that getting a reasonably sized group of diverse voiced women to sing in complete unison without a conductor is impressive - there’s just too much Chorus in what is a very short play by modern standards. Like, way too much Chorus. I would say at least 70% too much Chorus. The songs they sing are instantly forgettable (there was one about nets I think? Possibly I'm making that up but I'm running with it for the rest of this post), excessively long and frustratingly impenetrable - a particular shame given how clear this updated version of the classic text is otherwise. There are also far too many songs. They become boring very quickly, to the extent that I realised reasonably early on that I would happily give up Dionysus’ best invention (wine; lovely, lovely wine) forever if it meant that the Chorus would shut the fuck up. The man sitting next to me fell asleep whilst they were singing. Twice. Seems I wasn't the only one who wasn't a fan.

It’s a real shame that the Chorus kill this show so quickly and entirely because there is something quite special going on at the heart of it, and it’s called Bertie Carvel. 

Now look, I fucking LOVE Bertie Carvel, the latest recipient of my obsessive affections (see also: Kenneth Branagh, Michael Ball, Dominic West), and so I recognise that I’m biased. But, man, he is extraordinary in Bakkhai. I use the word extraordinary in both senses: 1) very, very good and 2) very, very weird. Doing double duty as shrewd politician Pentheus (both in and out of drag, and my personal thanks to the costume person who bought the slightly too tight shirt that Pentheus wears initially because WOW) and his unhinged, Dionysus-following mother Agave, he is quietly electrifying whenever he is on stage. His performance is a masterclass in understatement. His Pentheus is so still and controlled, at least at first, that he is instantly much more frightening than anything more bombastic would be. Even the drag sequence (where once again I come face to face with a man who walks in heels better than me) is played quietly and with some incredibly well attuned interaction with the audience. His Agave is heart rending, and again so subtly - and unexpectedly - played. There must be a serious temptation to play Agave, who *spoiler alert* has just brutally murdered Pentheus in a fit of Dionysian madness, as a raging screaming madwoman but this temptation is neatly side stepped in favour of a quiet but consuming grief and despair which is surprisingly beautiful. Almost as beautiful infact as Bertie Carvel’s shoulders which are displayed to great effect in Agave’s silk slip. But that’s by the by. This is great performance (performances?) that is definitely worth the ticket price and, more importantly, sitting through many lengthy songs about nets. And frankly I think any actor who is prepared to go on stage every night and murder himself deserves our support. Imagine the existential crises this must induce. 

For my money Bertie Carvel’s performance is far more interesting than top billed star Ben Whishaw’s, who plays more parts but with less variation. His Dionysus is great, with a creepy sensuality that’s a great foil for straight laced Pentheus and that dissolves to reveal a frightening fury in the final scenes, but his other parts (he also has old seer Tiresias and Pentheus’ slave who reports his death, Basil Exposition in Austin Powers style) are more forgettable. To put it another way, I was still thinking about Pentheus/Agave two days after seeing the show (and not just because of Bertie Carvel’s shoulders and too tight shirt) whereas I don’t think I've given Dionysus a second thought.

I suppose my overall feeling on this production of Bakkhai is that there’s a great play, fantastically acted, trapped within a mediocre musical. If you want a musical about Dionysus, check out Stephen Sondheim’s The Frogs which is all kinds of awesome. It you want to see some top class acting (and shoulders) and don’t mind sitting through some songs about nets, then this Bakkhai is for you. But you’ll have to move quickly as it's almost sold out and finishes next week. Sorry about that.

Bakkhai is on at The Almeida until 19th September.

Theatre Review: Our Country's Good

Timberlake Wertenbaker must be the best name in the world.

I think I like it mostly because it sounds like it could be the name of a particularly difficult technical challenge on Great British Bake Off. Like, a 28 tier meringue construction topped with caramel and spun sugar or something. Which I would totally eat by the way. But I digress.

Wertenbaker’s (it’s even fun to type!) most famous play is Our Country’s Good. Telling the story of a group of transported convicts and the soldiers who are forced to accompany them, Our Country’s Good is a celebration of the importance and redemptive potential of the arts, and of rehabilitative justice more generally. In the current economic and political climate it feels like an extremely timely and relevant piece to be occupying one of the stages of the National Theatre. Plus as a fully paid up member of the bleeding heart liberal club on both crime and arts funding it’s a piece which very much speaks to my confirmation bias.

Central to the plot is a planned performance of George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer (intertextuality and a play within a play - you can tell this is an A Level set text!) put on by a cast of convicts under the direction of ambitious Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark at the suggestion of the new and (relatively speaking) progressive Governor of New South Wales. The Governor sees his role as helping the convicts’ rehabilitation so that one day they will be able to form a functioning community in his territory and believes that encouraging their education is a key part of that. On the other side of the coin is the cruel and authoritarian Major Ross who cares not a jot for any kind of education or rehabilitation of the convicts in his charge; they are there to be punished and control, and the only way to achieve that is through fear, violence and hangings galore.

Whilst Ross and the Governor could arguably be better described as personifications of particular points of view rather than fully developed characters - although both Peter Forbes and Cyril Nri respectively are great with the material they’re given, Forbes especially as a frighteningly brutal Ross - Ralph Clark is more interesting. Clark takes the job of directing the play purely to advance his own career, having been overlooked by the Governor for a long time having failed to carve out a niche for himself amongst the soldiers. He is emotionally closed, deeply (entertainingly) sexually repressed and a fairly unremarkable, shy, priggish soldier. Seeing the changes that working on the play together as a community bring to his company of largely illiterate criminals, though, he starts to change too. He becomes more humane and outspoken, challenging Ross’ brutality and standing up for his play and his cast to anyone who tries to do it down. He also becomes more open, caring about his cast as human beings and, ultimately (predictably), falling in love with one of them.

Jason Hughes, AKA Sergeant Jones off of Midsomer Murders, the best of Tom Barnaby’s sidekicks and anyone who disagrees has bad opinions, is a decent Ralph too. Although his ‘love story’ scenes feel a bit stilted (not entirely his fault, this part of the main plot was for me by far its weakest), he is an excellent increasingly-less-reluctant director, especially in the rehearsal scenes in act one which are undoubtedly the highlight of the play, and his growing empathy and spine in the latter scenes is deeply compelling. He also gets some fantastic lines which he has a lot of fun with, the passionate proclamation that “anyone who can’t pay attention shouldn’t go to the theatre” being a particular highlight for fairly obvious reasons.

Although this story is fairly simple and predictable it still makes for a compelling and coherent piece of drama. The same cannot be said of the subplot about one of the working class officers, Harry Brewer (Paul Kaye adding to his CV of long haired madmen with this very well realised but ultimately pretty pointless entry), and another convict, Duckling, the point of which I fail to really understand (something about freedom, I guess?) I could've quite happily lived with this largely unrelated and not especially fulfilling, until its bitter end, diversion being cut altogether. Maybe the subplot wouldn't have felt so out of place had this production not dispensed with the play’s usual casting principle of having the majority of the actors play both a convict and a soldier to emphasise how trapped both groups were. Giving the production a greater emphasis on the idea of freedom in this way would probably have helped tie the various strands together more neatly, I think.

Niggles aside the production is technically very clever - making excellent yet subtle use of the Olivier’s drum stage - great to look at (I loved the painted backdrop; so beautiful) and benefits from a great atmospheric rootsy/folksy/bluesy soundtrack by Cerys Matthews of Catatonia fame who I fucking LOVE. It’s hard to believe it’s her first foray into writing for the stage and I really hope it’s not her last. The ensemble cast is really strong and the inclusion of bona fide folk musicians to get the most from Matthews’ songs is an act of minor genius.

Despite my reservations, then, I really enjoyed Our Country’s Good and still think it’s an important piece to be staged and seen right now. And I feel like I have another loyalty stamp on my bleeding heart liberal membership card for having seen it. Definitely worth a look.

Our Country’s Good plays in the Olivier theatre at the NT until 17th October.


   

Theatre Review: Mack and Mabel

As previously noted elsewhere on this blog, my love for Michael Ball is difficult to overstate.

He was the first name on My List of Celebrity Obsessions and has held his place there since I discovered the original London cast recording of Les Miserables about sixteen (SIXTEEN!) years ago. I go and see him in any and every show he does. I even saw the achingly blah The Woman in White twice because of him. I am that dedicated.

This summer sees my main man playing the lead in Chichester Festival Theatre’s production of Mack and Mabel. The show tells the true (to an extent) story of the rise and fall of silent film director Mack Sennett and his muse/lover Mabel Normand. It’s quite a sad story without the happy ending or the big finish and, honestly, is not an obvious topic for a musical. Not that that matters of course - unlikelier shows have been written. As, sadly, have better shows. Many, many, better shows.

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Mack and Mabel is not a good musical. The music isn't especially memorable for one thing - by the morning after our trip to see this production I had almost entirely forgotten all but one of the songs. The bigger problem is the book though, which runs out of steam somewhere in the middle of Act 1 so that what we’re left with for the rest of the show is long bouts of exposition, usually in the form of a Mack monologue (Mackalogue?), that try to move the plot along sandwiched in between production numbers that stop it dead. The second act suffers in particular from this and the attempts to build up to a tragic finale are as a result completely neutered. As Paul Hollywood would say, it’s got some issues.

I found the characterisation problematic too - Mack and Mabel are both obvious caricatures and both very hard to like (he’s a shit, she’s annoying). The portrayal of Mabel is pretty depressing too; a trailblazing early pioneer of female film-making in real life, in the show she becomes a lovestruck, talentless airhead with no agency of her own (one man makes her a star, another makes her a drug addict), only a couple of solos and probably a third of the lines that Mack has. There’s an essay about how kick ass the real Mabel was in the programme that is far more interesting than anything she does on stage. It’s a thankless role for an actress, one that wasn't helped in this production on the night I saw it by the fact that its Mabel (Rebecca LaChance), whilst pleasingly spunky, had some pretty obvious tuning issues. Hashtag pitchy.

Luckily, there are a lot of redeeming features that ensure that this production is still a lot of fun. A lot of the credit here has to go to choreographer Stephen Mear (of the current Chichester/West End Gypsy fame) whose routines are as spectacular as they are innovative, particularly in the really big production numbers. Big Time and Bathing Beauties in the first act and Tap Your Troubles Away in the second are particular highlights and the slapstick sequences, the Keystone Cops one especially, whilst not really my cup of tea are really well executed. The excitement that these routines produce makes the two hour run time fly by and dazzle enough to make sure that by the time you realise that the plot is dying on its arse you no longer care because ‘look, more dancing’.

There are some great performances too. Let’s not deny that this show could accurately title itself as ‘Mack and Mabel: The Michael Ball Show’ and, even without any particular depth of character to work with, he is an ace Mack. Slimy, vulnerable, wryly funny and, ultimately, sadly knowing he does his best with the material he has and certainly imbues Mack with more personality than he should have on paper. Vocally it goes without saying he owns the room and there’s always something illicitly thrilling about seeing someone who in my mind is amongst the nicest men in the world playing someone fundamentally dislikable (see also: 2012’s Sweeney Todd with which I am fucking obsessed). Pretty decent American accent too - who knew?

He’s backed up by an impressively versatile ensemble and some great supporting performances, particularly Anna-Jane Casey who’s fantastic fun as Lottie, and utterly owns her Tap Your Troubles Away routine to the extent that I sort of wanted to rush the stage and give her a high five, and Gunnar Cauthery who provides a much needed dose of heart and sincerity as sensitive writer Frank. I also enjoyed Mark Inscoe’s William Desmond Taylor who I think we’re supposed to regard as the villain but is actually one of the more charismatically likeable characters for my money, even if he is a major sleaze.

Overall, then, a really strong production of a really weak show. Worth a look, especially if you’re a Michael Ball fan - and if you’re not a Michael Ball fan then you have bad opinions. The Chichester Festival Theatre is lovely too - modern, roomy, efficient - and is a great bet for catching West End quality shows at non-West End prices (we paid £26 each for an off-centre third row of the stalls, difficult to argue with that).

Mack and Mabel is at the Chichester Festival Theatre until September 5th, after which it tours (and transfers to the West End?).