Drood Awakening

The Mystery of Edwin Drood – Landor Theatre, London

Writer: Rupert Holmes

Director: Matthew Gould

Reviewer : Johnny Fox

The Public Reviews Rating: 

Charles Dickens’ final and unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood got a rather nice BBC airing last Christmas with Matthew Rhys as the opium-addicted brooding stalker John Jasper and pretty boy Freddie Fox as his quarry Edwin. Gwyneth Hughes’ telly adaptation kept firmly to the Victorian gothic theme, and stitched the threads of the mystery as neatly as could be fathomed from the few notes left by the author.

The 1985 stage musical takes a different, camper route by making the gothic tale the subject of a performance by a music hall company midway between the Crummles’ troupe from Nicholas Nickleby and Priestley’s ‘Good Companions’ – one of the girls taking the ‘trouser role’ of Edwin – and the brilliant theatrical stroke is to have the audience vote for which character is the murderer, and which couple falls in love at the end.

Rupert Holmes wrote endings for every eventuality, including the most unlikely – the mistake he made was also to write the songs, which are almost universally forgettable. At least by the time he wrote the book for the outstanding Broadway musical ‘Curtains’ in 2003 he had the sense to collaborate with Kander and Ebb for the music.

Regrettably, that’s what this show needs – well not them since Fred Ebb died while working on Curtains, but if Stiles and Drewe for example could do for Edwin Drood what they did for A Private Function, you could have a West End-worthy musical.

Which is not to say this is not a good night out. It is – the cast have great fun with the typical Dickensian stock characters of squire, vicar, villainous foreigner, waif, wanton, and pert servant (winning contribution from diminutive Ben Goffe and an out-and-out audition for the Beadle in Sweeney Todd from the wholly excellent Paul Hutton as Durdles) and they jolly the audience along with their sheer attack and conviction. There’s some nifty choreography from director Matthew Gould, resourceful set by Natasha Piper with some great atmospherics, a fine small band led by James Cleeve and some lusty music hall singalong to kick the evening off to a good start.

The cast is led by Wendi Peters, most famous as Cilla Battersby-Browne from Coronation Street, and a drama school chum of the director. She is both a surprise and a delight. As Princess Puffer, the shadowy opium-dealer and all-purpose harlot she fleshes out the tart-with-a-heart with a proper characterization and a remarkably good singing voice. Potentially a capable Mrs Lovett if Imelda Staunton decided to hang up her butchering apron.

In such an exceptionally strong cast, it’s a pity the role of Edwin Drood is such a damp offering: although Natalie Day is funny and engaging as her female character Alice Nutting, as Edwin she’s rather too feeble for such a pivotal role. Challenged with the task of singing without a radio mike the concluding number “The Writing on the Wall” which ties up all the loose ends for the audience and should send them smiling into the night – she’s simply inaudible, even in an auditorium only three rows deep.

This is a five-star production but unfortunately of a three-star musical. But worth the admission for Ms. Peters alone.

written for www.thepublicreviews.com and published 15 April 2012

Worst Play of 2012 ?

Funny Peculiar – Richmond Theatre, London

Writer: Mike Stott

Director: Bob Tomson

Reviewer: Johnny Fox

The Public Reviews Rating: 

It’s been an extraordinarily busy week for ex-Coronation Street stars in London theatres: Becky Macdonald (Katherine Kelly) just came to the end of her highly-acclaimed run in the National’s magnificent She Stoops to Conquer which proved she’s rinsed out her Rover’s apron for the very last time, and is secured as a star of the legitimate stage. Cilla Battersby-Browne (Wendi Peters) headed the first-rate cast of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and is set to become a genuine West End Wendi with its imminent transfer to the Arts.

Now it’s time to catch up with Les Battersby’s first wife, the redoubtable Janice (Vicky Entwistle) paired with Corrie’s own idiot-savant Graham (Craig Gazey) whose awkwardly off-beat philosophising was such a delight in the Street. It’s that gauche but lovable naivete that he tries to deploy in recreating the role of Trevor Tinsley, small town grocer and frustrated romantic originally played by Richard Beckinsale in Mike Stott’s 1976 comedy.

The trouble is that time has moved on, and things we found Funny in the 70s are now merely Peculiar.

The play is set in an unnamed Pennine town, on an incomplete composite set of corner shop and the flat above – most ‘action’ takes place by the characters coming in and reciting it.

The first ten minutes feature an unfortunate gay vicar who hangs himself from his own bell-tower rather than face down the prurient bigotry of his neighbours, and the dialogue is mostly of the “the poofter did WHAT?” variety. Then follows an extended episode in which much ribaldry occurs at the expense of a young man with learning difficulties, with lewd references to his lack of sexual experience.

No wonder the audience didn’t laugh at all for the first half hour.

For the same reasons the sitcom Love Thy Neighbour written in the same era can no longer be broadcast because the white and black characters called each other ‘nignog’ and ‘paleface’, Mike Stott’s script is simply inappropriate for modern production. It doesn’t even have the period quality and social observation of an Abigail’s Party and belongs in the same sitcom dustbin as On The Buses.

In a wholly implausible plot which I’ll recite in order to save you the bother of seeing this, Trevor shags a customer (Gemma Bissix) whose husband (Sam Nicholl) doesn’t really mind but his wife (Suzanne Shaw from pop group Hear’Say and simply dreadful in the role created by Julie Walters) does and – after he has played out his frustrations by smashing two dozen cream puffs over the stage in a ludicrous slapstick with the bread man and some wholly superfluous slack-buttocked nudity – she goes and sleeps with the customer couple. Trevor follows her, and they all agree to move to the country in a free love commune.

When a play is a bad as this, there can scarcely be a saving grace but if there is, it’s Vicky Entwistle playing busybody neighbour (and mother of the retarded boy) Mrs Baldry in Ena Sharples’ old coat, a bad wig and a cheap nightie.

Although when she strips off to the nightie and asks Trevor to “love” her, I had to watch through my fingers.

Written for www.thepublicreviews.com and published on 25 April 2012