Sweet Charity – Review
There was a time, not too many years ago, when the prospect of a home-grown British company reviving a great Broadway musical with enough style, talent and panache to bear comparison with – if not surpass – the original, was unthinkable.
Tamzin Outhwaite in Sweet Charity
Musicals were just not our thing, and choreographers such as Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse and Agnes de Mille despaired of finding dancers capable of performing their routines in anything other than modified and compromised versions.
Happily all that’s in the past. In the last few years we have, to quote that oft-used but rarely meant cliché, regularly beaten Broadway at its own game. A spate of Sondheim revivals, plus shows such as Hello Dolly!, Carousel and, most recently La Cage aux Folles, definitively prove that anything they can do we can do just as well.
The latest addition to the list is the Menier Chocolate Factory’s revival of Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’s Sweet Charity.
Obviously, for any production of this perennial 1966 musical to work, whoever plays Charity has, quite simply, to sing as well as she dances and act as well as she sings. Oh, and she’s also got to break your heart.
Gwen Verdon who created the role of the dance hostess with a depressing track record for falling for the wrong men, had all those qualities – and then some!
Forty four years later, Tamzin Outhwaite comes pretty close. She’s not the mega-talent Verdon was, but then who is? And if, in the final accounting, she lacks that extra ounce of vulnerability Charity should ideally possess, she invests so much energy and heart in what must be one of the most demanding female musical comedy roles every written, she pulls it off.
Apart from Charity herself, the show’s other must-have component is its choreography.
Most revivals, understandably, rely on recreating Bob Fosse’s brilliantly original concept – every nuance and gesture of which is built into Coleman’s wonderful score – and vice versa.
Stephen Mears, by far this country’s best musical choreographer, has other ideas. He’s reworked Fosse’s indelible staging of such numbers as Hey, Big Spender, The Rich Man’s Frug, Something Better Than This and the Rhythm of Life (the show’s one expendable number) without violating the spirit of the original so that there’s both a freshness to the routines, as well as a whiff of familiarity. And he’s put together a humdinger of a company, every one of whom is a positive asset.
Indeed, with a cast this good, Mears and director Matthew White have rightly decided to maximise their resources by allowing them to double and treble up, which they do most effectively, none more so than Mark Umbers.
Umbers plays opportunist Charlie, movie idol Vittorio Vidal and the nerdish Oscar Lindquist, the trio of men to whom Charity opens her heart.
In every production I’ve seen these roles are played by three different actors. Umbers takes on the challenge of doing them all himself and especially shines as Vittorio and Oscar. For me he’s the star of a show already bursting with talent.
Neil Simon’s gag-infested book (based on Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria) stands up well, gets the job done and benefits from a tweaked, less whimsical ending than the Broadway original. Cy Coleman’s jaunty score and Dorothy Fields’s terrific lyrics remain in a class of their own.
A helluva revival of a Broadway classic.
CLIVE HIRSCHHORN. Courtesy of This Is London.
Book tickets to Sweet Charity at the Haymarket Theatre Royal in London
Sweet Charity – Reviews Round-up
It’s hard to imagine a theatre in recent memory that has punched so high above its weight than the Menier Chocolate Factory in South London. With news last week that two of its 2009 productions have scored multiple Tony award nominations on Broadway, another Menier musical revival – this time Sweet Charity – has transferred into the West End. And guess what? The critics love it. Across the board the show enjoyed a critical consensus of four stars and much praise for the production and cast – including ex-EastEnders star Tamzin Outhwaite. See our critical picks below.
STAR RATINGS
The Times 
DailyMail
The Independent
The Telegraph
The Guardian
Evening Standard
THE TELEGRAPH
Charles Spencer
“When the show opened at the Menier last year I loved everything about Matthew White’s nifty production apart from one crucial thing. I didn’t think Tamzin Outhwaite cut it in the title role of Charity Hope Valentine, the dance hall hostess with a heart of gold… well what a difference a few months can make. The breezy vitality is still intact when it needs to be but, crucially, Outhwaite has deepened her performance by adding tenderness, pathos, even moments of despair.”
“The show itself is a joy. From the moments you hear the bleary, brassy opening notes of the show’s most famous number, Hey Big Spender, one knows — as the song promises — that one is in for a good time. The band handles Cy Coleman’s outstanding jazzy score with superb panache throughout. The cast do splendid justice to Dorothy Fields’s witty and often touching lyrics and Neil Simon’s gag-filled script, in which he largely avoids the mushy sentimentality that is so often his downfall.”
THE GUARDIAN
Lyn Gardener
“Let’s get right to the point: it’s not the greatest musical ever written. Neil Simon’s book is just one thing after another, as Charity is duped by her lover, encounters an Italian movie star and then hooks up with Oscar, all of whom are played by Mark Umbers with a quick-change comic charm. But what the book lacks in structure, it makes up for with snarling humour. The women working at the dance hall, for instance, don’t see their job as dancing but as “defending ourselves to music”.”
“The show’s daffy joy and exhilarating choreography make it easy to overlook the fact that Tamzin Outhwaite’s Charity is too much of a little miss sunshine, never uncovering the vulnerable side that lends the character her wistful charm.”
THE INDEPENDENT
Michael Coveney
“Matthew White’s blistering revival – transferring to the West End from the Menier Chocolate Factory – not only retains Neil Simon’s bitter sweet conclusion (another man, another cigarette, another chance) but tightens up the dialogue scenes, so that, for instance, the comedy of claustrophobia and vertigo in the lift and the fairground, is as pointed as in any Mike Nichols and Elaine May sketch.”
“It’s unusual to have such a level of performance in a musical – Umbers was the definitive Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the Martine McCutcheon My Fair Lady – and it raises everyone else’s game, not least Outhwaite’s. She really is a revelation, and Umbers as Superman on the fairground parachute jump, soon reverting to Clark Kent mode, pays her the ultimate compliment of loving her too much to live with her.”
THE STAGE
Mark Shenton
“This is the heterosexual version of La Cage, staffed by equally resilient but even more downtrodden, world-weary sex workers. Matthew White’s production is rooted in a tough sense of reality, and although Tamzin Outhwaite’s punchy Charity may lack an essential vulnerability, she’s also quite clearly one of life’s survivors.”
EVENING STANDARD
Henry Hitchings
“Transferring now to this much bigger space, there’s a risk that some of its breezy charm and vibrancy may be lost. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen. Instead there’s a mixture of energy, tuneful sweetness and jagged allure in the story of Charity Hope Valentine, a hostess in a sleazy dance hall in Sixties New York.”
“There’s excellent work around Outhwaite. Annalisa Rossi and Ebony Molina stand out among Charity’s workmates… Mark Umbers is animated as both Vittorio, who gives Charity a taste of the high life, and claustrophobic accountant Oscar, whose nerdy authenticity seems to offer the perfect antidote to her perennial heartache. His voice is shiningly sympathetic.”
The TIMES
Benedict Nightingale
“…the music is consistently as atmospheric and tuneful as Stephen Mear’s choreography, though much indebted to the great Bob Fosse, is crisp and lively. Both need to be, because the plot is pretty simple.”
“Outhwaite manages to seem innocent while being knowing, sweet without becoming sentimental, toothy yet not toothsome, artless and gamine but not gormless or goofy, sappy without leaving you feeling there’s no sap in her emotional make-up.”
DAILY MAIL
Patrick Marmion
“Supported by blazing brass from the band, Michael White’ s production does what Breakfast At Tiffany’s couldn’t in the same venue: sets the joint jumping. But there are also shades of Cabaret, Chicago, Hair and The Rocky Horror Show in a performance that feels like five musicals for the price of one.”
Book tickets to Sweet Charity at the Haymarket Theatre Royal in London
Legally Blonde – Savoy Theatre – Reviews round-up
Round-up of reviews of LEGALLY BLONDE at the Savoy Theatre in London
The reviews of Legally Blonde, which opened on Wednesday at the Savoy Theatre in London, were largely positive. Cleverly the producers allowed critics to review preview performances as well as the official First Night – which meant they were exposed to some of the hard-core fans that have alreday started to gather around this show. This was a smart move as the infectious enthusiasm of the audience won over many of the critics – all of whom seemed to come to the show with misgivings.
Whilst nearly all the reviews had reservations about the plot, they couldn’t resist being taken by the tongue-in-cheek humour of the show, and particuarly the strong central performce of Sheridan Smith as Elle Woods (see a summary of the plot here). All apart from Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail…
STAR RATINGS
The Guardian
The Telegraph
The Times
The Independent
Daily Mail
Evening Standard
OPENING THOUGHTS
DM: Legally Blonde is so pink it is as though the IRA planted a bomb in the late Dame Barbara Cartland’s laundry basket. It is pink not just in the colour of many of the clothes and stage effects. It is pink to the core of its little, tiny soul.
ES: It’s not often that a West End musical references Simon Cowell, case law and the science of getting a perm. But this is Legally Blonde, in which gags about spring break rub up against throw-aways about Gloria Steinem and Thomas Hobbes, and with its mix of daftness and knowingness this sugary yet far from stupid romp will surely be a palpable hit.
VA: Size, as they say, matters. That idea is not lost on Sonia Friedman and her raft of U.K. producers on “Legally Blonde,” who have put the show in a smallish house more accustomed to plays than lavish tuners. Their financial gamble pays off big time thanks to a heap of reasons, chief among them being casting. This guilty pleasure of a show remains precision-engineered candy-floss, but as Elle, pint-sized knockout Sheridan Smith gives it heart and helium levels of happiness.
TI: Omygod, as a jazzily dressed set of sorority sisters keep squealing at the start of the delightful, annoying, supremely wishful musical that’s just come frolicking into Blighty from Broadway. Omygod, a girl can make it in a male-dominated world without sacrificing a dab of pink lipstick.
IN: I had thought snootily that the stage show of Legally Blonde might put the “ugh” in “euuuugh!” But omigod was I like totally blown away.
GU: It is, of course, preposterous: an LA fashion student conquers Harvard law school and becomes a courtroom star. But, for all its absurdity, I found this Broadway musical infinitely more enjoyable than the 2001 Hollywood movie on which it is based.
TE: OMIGOD! I tried, I really tried to hate this show, but resistance is futile. It’s going to be a huge hit and if you’re a chap, your wife or girlfriend is almost certain to drag you along. You might as well give in gracefully now.
ON SHERIDAN SMITH
ES: Sheridan Smith is emphatically the star of the show… It’s a performance of great warmth and enthusiasm.
IN: With her brilliantly warm, winning, witty and all-round adorable performance as Elle, Sheridan Smith achieves stage stardom like some jaw-dropping hole-in-one in golf… This girl can twirl on a dime and take you from elating silliness to genuine sadness in less time than it takes to say “Delta Nu”.
VA: Elle dreams of a bright and shiny life, a hope-filled demeanor Smith delivers in spades. It’s infectious and immensely winning because she deploys razor-sharp comic timing without ever sacrificing properly developed emotion. She’s deliciously knowing but never arch. Even when surrounded by silliness, she has an uncanny knack of making you lose sight of the performer, to empathize directly with the character’s hopes and dreams.
TE: The chief glory of the show is Sheridan Smith as Elle, blessed with vitality, warmth, great comic timing and sudden moments of touching vulnerability. She is infinitely more likeable than Reese Witherspoon in the film.
GU: Sheridan Smith as Elle is also far more vivacious than Reese Witherspoon. Smith is perky, trim, and sings and dances excellently. But her true star quality lies in her sense of mischief, which I first noticed when she was a teenager appearing with the National Youth Music Theatre. Blessed with the long upper lip of a natural comic, Smith sails buoyantly through the show with a radiant smile as if warning us not to take it too seriously.
DM: Miss Smith’s singing voice is not strong but she brings a likeable cheekiness to the part. A crueller critic might wonder if she is glamorous enough for the role.
IN A NUTSHELL
ES: Legally Blonde is a winner. It’s energetic and amusing, with a sprightly sense of pace, and all but the most flinty-hearted theatregoers will leave it flushed with delight.
IN: It may not be quite as good as Hairspray (it lacks that show’s lovely, double-bluffing libertarian dimension), but it’s ridiculously enjoyable from start to finish and camp peroxide-perfection in terms of its showbiz roots.
VA: this transfer looks set to thrive as long as Smith wants to stick around and steal hearts.
TI: Let’s overlook some forgettable tunes and welcome dance that embraces everything from skipping with ropes to spoof Riverdance. Let’s relish the support both of a fake-Greek chorus dressed as cheerleaders and of two cute, unnaturally obedient dogs. Let’s agree that Legally Blonde is, well, fun.
TE: This is rom-com with a welcome touch of irony.
GU: I can only report that the predominantly female audience with whom I saw the show seemed to be having a whale of a time and did not give a damn about the fact that the musical is little more than a nonsensical fairytale.
DM: The plot is pap, the musical unmemorable, the dancing often hefty except for one routine with skipping ropes.
KEY TO REVIEWS:
GU = Guardian: Michael Billington. Read review
TE = Telegraph: Charles Spencer. Read review
TI = The Times: Benedict Nightingale. Read review
VA = Variety: David Benedict. Read review
IN = The Independent: Paul Taylor. Read review
ES = Evening Standard: Henry Hitchings. Read review
DM = Dail Mail: Quentin Letts. Read review
Book tickets to see LEGALLY BLONDE at the Savoy Theatre in London
Sister Act – Round-up of Reviews
A summary of Sister Act reviews
- Charles Spencer – The Telegraph:4/5
- Fiona Mountford – Evening Standard:4/5
- Michael Coveney – The Independent:3/5
- Maxie Szalwinska – The Sunday Times:3/5
- Benedict Nightingale – The Times: 3/5
- Michael Billington – The Guardian: 2/5
- Quentin Letts – Daily Mail: 2/5
Reviews were mixed for major new musical Sister Act at the London Palladium when it opened last week. Some of the big hitters such as Charles Spencer of the Telegraph and Fiona Mountford of the Evening Standard loved the show, whilst others were more reserved.
Based on the hit 1992 film starring Whoopi Goldberg, who is an exec producer on the new stage show, the musical premiered at the Palladium with a performer dressed as a nun abseiling down the side of the theatre and a celebrity filled audience, including Goldberg.
The musical stars West End newcomer Patina Miller as cabaret singer Delores and Sheila Hancock as Mother Superior.
Review of the reviews – Opening Thoughts
OB: “This summer’s feelgood night out in London”
GU: “What we have here is a show that feels less like a personally driven work of art than a commercial exploitation of an existing franchise”
TE: “Sister Act proves more enjoyable on stage than it did on film… Frankly, what’s not to like, especially when you’ve got a chorus line of jiving nuns singing their hearts out ecstatically?”
VA: “Shamelessly and irresistibly entertaining”
DM: “Call me a miserable old monk, but I hated Sister Act”
ES: “Whether or not divine intervention is involved, it’s a wimple-wibbling, habit-forming triumph”
IN: “There’s no such thing as restraint anywhere in Peter Schneider’s production”
ST: “It’s safe to say the stage show trumps the film – at least for aficionados of serious kitsch”
TI: “A rather sweet, sentimental film has been hyped up, coarsened, given… the big, brash Broadway treatment”
The Story / Book
OB: “It’s not the most original story in the world”
GU: “In order to pad out a slight story, every key member of the cast also has to be given a number. As a result, the plot grinds to a halt…”
TE: “The book, by Cheers writers Cheri and Bill Steinkellner, is strong, funny and touching”
DM: “I know I may be taking it too seriously, but I found myself recoiling sharply from this story’s saccharine values and its bullying gaiety”
Patina Miller
OB: “[Her] sheer sexy singing vim leaves the film’s star, Whoopi Goldberg, looking retrospectively miscast”
GU: “Patina Miller invests Deloris with a wealth of raucous energy and just about convinces in her conversion from fame-seeking individualist to member of the singing sorority”
TE: “The show’s real find… she has all the comic vitality of Whoopi Goldberg in the film, but she’s sexier and sings up a storm”
VA: “Sassier, snappier and younger… Miller’s powerhouse vocals, pitched somewhere between Gloria Gaynor and Whitney Houston, and her thrillingly fast vibrato act as the show’s engine”
DM: “After an off-key start, shows herself to have a cheesy presence and a Merlin engine of a voice”
ES: “There can be no disputing the evening’s main draw: 24-year-old Miller… her magnificent voice is rich, soaring and, crucially, unflagging. She might have been unknown last night, but today all that will have changed”
IN: “This unknown 24-year-old from South Carolina is the real deal, a genuine new star, oozing confidence and sex appeal like it was going out of fashion”
ST: “Less brash than Goldberg, but pretty fabulous nonetheless”
TI: ”Patina Miller, is the show’s great plus”
Sheila Hancock
OB: “Sheila Hancock and Claire Greenway, as the Mother Superior and the tubby ingenue nun, offer sidespreads of delight and razor-sharp timing”
GU: “Lends the show some needed gravitas”
TE: “A warmer but no less winning performance”
VA: ”One of the U.K.’s best-loved actors, does droll like no one else”
DM: “On fine form”
ES: “Delightfully droll”
The Music
OB: “Don’t expect the Motown hits of the film; we have a set of new disco inventions, which mostly work”
GU: “Alan Menken’s music admittedly has a pounding effectiveness”
TE: “The disco-inspired score… is a cracker”
VA: “Alan Menken’s new score (aside from the ballads) says goodbye Motown, hello disco… But the problem with pastiche is that it irons out a composer’s individual voice”
ES: “Attractive, gospel-inflected score”
IN: “There’s nothing really refreshingly new here even if you might feel like brushing down your John Travolta poses when you get home”
ST: “Is at its best when tipping its hat to 1970s tunes”
TI: “There’s less deft comedy, but much more music, most of it indebted to the 1970s, where the action is now set. That lets Alan Menken, the composer, have a lot of catchy fun with period rock and disco”
Staging & Direction
OB: “What transforms this… are the sets (Klara Zieglerova), which ravish the eye and dance with glee”
GU: “Everything is coarsely overstated”
TE: “Pacy direction by former Disney executive Peter Schneider”
VA: “Peter Schneider’s extremely well-cast production is enshrined in sets that create little atmosphere”
TI: “The film’s point was that Deloris liberates the nuns’ voices while they liberate her spirit… But there’s no gentle piety here. If Deloris liberates the sisters, it’s for roles in A Chorus Line”
The Last Word
OB: “If you can smother quibbles about the daft story… and if, crucially, you like to save up for big-budget musical spectaculars, this is your night this summer”
GU: “All too typically the nuns, in Anthony van Laast’s choreography, kick up their heels like the Rockettes and prance around in gilt vestments that might be described as surplice to requirements”
TE: “I suspect this musical comedy about a nun on the run could prove habit-forming”
VA: “Is “Sister Act” great theatrical art? No. Is it hit entertainment? Oh, yes”
DM: “Hold on to your wimples”
ES: “Take it away, sisters”
IN: “It’s show time, not musical theatre magic”
ST: “With its lashings of glitter, such is its assault on reticence (and our retinas), the show occasionally has you longing for a spell of calm contemplation, perhaps a vow of silence”
TI: “Patina Miller display the first of her star qualities, a terrific voice. Add warmth, humour, vivacity – and you’ve a star who lacks Whoopi’s wry vulnerability but adds dazzle to the razzle around her”
Book tickets to see Sister Act at the London Palladium
Special Offer: Book top price tickets and enjoy a FREE DINNER at a West End restauarant
KEY TO REVIEWS:
OB: The Observer Sister Act review by Euan Ferguson
TI: The Times Sister Act review by Benedict Nightingale
ST:The Sunday Times Sister Act review by Maxie Szalwinska
IN: The Independent Sister Act review by Michael Coveney
ES: Evening Standard Sister Act review by Fiona Mountford
DM: Daily Mail Sister Act review by Quentin Letts
VA: Variety Sister Act review by David Benedict
