MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

at the Menier Chocolate Factory

01.02.12

A sell-out run for this welcome Sondheim revival, given a solid-gold staging in Maria Friedman's assured production.

There's talk of a West End transfer, too, but some of the charm of the Menier show is the up-close intimacy of the shared experience. Even the nine-strong band is shoe-horned onto the stage, standing in their perspex box like so many tube travellers. [MD is Catherine Jayes.]

Though it was not a hit first time out, the show has many strengths, not least its ingenious structure. Like Pinter's Betrayal, it works backwards through the years, so that the happy ending is almost unbearably sad. At the heart of the story, three best friends, who meet as students – writer, composer, critic/novelist – but drift apart and end acrimoniously. Mary – a superb performance from Jenna Russell – turns to the bottle, Frank [impeccably sung and acted by Mark Umbers] sells out to Hollywood, and poor old Charley [Damian Humbley] is sidelined but refuses to compromise.

The staging is slick and ingenious, and I was amazed at the subtlety of the sound balance achieved in this reclaimed industrial space. The music is complex, and many of the choruses are almost operatic in their structure. Though there are no memorable tunes, even by Sondheim standards, there are plenty of super numbers, like Charley's bouncy, bitter Franklin Shepard Inc. And the title song refrain which heralds the next step back in time – how did we get where we are ?

And that question is at the heart of this show – a poignant, elegantly crafted dissection of showbusiness, friendship, idealism and disillusion.

Transferred to the plusher Harold Pinter, with comfier seats and proper pit for the band, the show is just as intimate, just as compelling. This second look reveals the brilliant work in supporting roles by such as Martin Callaghan as camp Terry, and the redneck father of Frank's first wife Beth [Clare Foster]. The self-centred, vicious Gussie, star of the musicals and Frank's second wife, is memorably played by Serafina Gabrielle.

SOUTH DOWNS/THE BROWNING VERSION

SOUTH DOWNS/THE BROWNING VERSION

understudy run at the Harold Pinter Theatre

04.07.12

production photograph: Johan Persson

Near the end of its time at what used to be the Comedy, this superb Chichester transfer gave its understudies a chance to show what they could do with Hare's brave new play and Rattigan's famous old favourite.

And good for us to see how much of the rapturous reception given to South Downs was due to the performance and how much to the writing.

The design for this proscenium version has a wooden tab curtain, done up like an Honours Board. And heavy wooden structure for the school, a massive crucifix suspended above the action.

Some of the regular cast were still in post – Bradley Hall's strange Jenkins, even more peculiar than I remember down in Sussex, and Andrew Woodall as the sarcastic bruiser of an English master. The bright scholarship boy, unable to dissemble, adept at asking awkward questions, was beautifully done by Tom Spink, who normally gets to play Gunter. His martyred look was absolutely believable, the key scene at the tea table was beautifully done, though I found it hard to believe Emma Thornett as an old-style West End actress. His House Prefect was Rob Heaps, normally the new teacher come to replace the defeated Crock in the Rattigan. Excellent here, if slightly old, with more than a hint of Rupert Everett in Another Country.

The chaplain – a much deeper, rounder character than Spear – was movingly done by Mark Elstob. Nervously moving his lips, coming close to confessing his "thing of darkness" he gave a memorable performance here, and after the interval in The Browning Version, with Bradley Hall an interesting Taplow, Heaps as the dashing young science teacher, lover of Emma Thornett's toxic Mrs Crocker-Harris. And in a neat symmetry, Jonathan Bailey, normally the House Prefect, played the new classics teacher.

I reviewed the Hare, together with Nijinsky, last year in Chichester, and I shall catch this memorable double bill once more, in its final week. It will be good to see the original cast again, but no-one could feel short-changed or dissatisfied with this impressive one-off reworking.