IT'S A FINE LIFE! To 16 September.
Hornchurch
IT’S A FINE LIFE!
by Chris Bond Music and lyrics by Lionel Bart
Queen’s Theatre To 16 September 2006
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 7, 16 Sept 2.30pm
Audio-described 16 Sept 2.30pm
BSL Signed 13 Sept
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 01708 443333
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 September
And a fine show too.
Even a fine life has its down-side as East End boy made very good Lionel Begleiter showed. He renamed himself after passing Bart’s hospital on a bus. In Chris Bond’s fantasy around Lionel’s life, the music and lyrics written under his new name illuminate a story running from the London Blitz! through a post-war world where Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be, till the high-life sank low when the golden bow broke with a Twang!! (Lionel loved his exclamation marks).
Hornchurch regulars have fun, notably James Earl Adair as a diabolic lawyer getting Lionel to sign away rights in his golden-egg Oliver!, or Philip Reed (recently Room at the Top’s girl-getting Joe Lampton) playing childhood chum Charlie who finds his/her self as Charlene.
Or Matt Devitt as Lionel, the Jewish lad surviving through humour and growing to the ecstasy and agony of a successful composer, flying into fits of fury at good advice while succumbing to smiling temptation. But always the happy disposition lies underneath; Lionel keeps a bowl of money for visitors to dip into when needy, believing they’ll replenish it when flush, and cheerily accommodates himself to a small flat over a shop after years of unlimited luxury
All this from an ability to turn a lyric and a tune, breathed into a tape-recorder by someone who could never read music, only make it. Alongside the glamour, there’s the stormy relationship with Theatre Workshop director Joan Littlewood, who pushes the work-experience girl to perform, or comes onstage with Lionel, drum and a spark in her eye in Fings to astonish cast as well as audience with a song created since the curtain went up. Bob Carlton’s zingalong production shows West End ambition and Littlewood’s rough-edged style clashing disastrously on Lionel's Robin Hood musical.
Fine Life’s framing device of an afterlife answerphone message (Bart from the dead) is clumsy and Nancy’s death muddles life and stage. But Karen Fisher-Pollard’s Barbara Windsor emerges as the soul of sanity, while Richard Brightiff finds the cruel edge, Maria Lawson the sweetness, of a real-life Sikes and Nancy in a joyful night at Hornchurch.
Fagin: James Earl Adair
Bill: Richard Brightiff
Joan Littlewood: Diana Croft
Lionel Bart: Matt Devitt
Barbara Windsor: Karen Fisher-Pollard
Mrs Begleiter: Allison Harding
Fred: Simon Jessop
Nancy: Maria Lawson
Charlie: Philip Reed
Frankie: Steve Simmonds
Director: Bob Carlton
Designer: Mark Walters
Lighting: Matthew Eagland
Sound: Rick Clarke
Musical Director: David Barber
Choreographer: Elizabeth Marsh
Costume: Dinah England
2006-09-11 16:17:40