MACK & MABEL.
London
MACK & MABEL
Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman book by Michael Stewart revisions by Francine Pascal
Criterion Theatre
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Tue & Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 060 2313
www.mackandmabel.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 April
The clowns are sent in, making for a fine time.
This production places the Overture after the interval, so allowing the act-one wow-factor moment when the old silent-film studio revisited by David Soul’s Mack Sennett erupts with the life that made the keystone cops (their inspired invention comes later, neatly tucked into the plot) and other madcap Sennett silents. The cast advances, playing violin, trombone, sax, flute, guitar, french horn etc, causing an outbreak of applause from the first night West End audience.
Which is ironic, for this style of musical production’s been around 30 years at least, cropping up where West End resources haven’t been available*. London Bubble toured it in tents around the capital’s fringes; Glen Walford at Liverpool Everyman in the early 80s, Peter Rowe in Liverpool and Mold and others helped establish it.
And director John Doyle’s used it repeatedly at Newbury’s Watermill, where this production packed the building last May - yet another inspired example of the Watermill’s work under Jill Fraser, who died too soon to see this reach the West End, and who was rightly remembered in a dedicated performance before press night.
The Watermill’s intimacy may have added to this production (Doyle’s Cabaret and Piaf there had a greater emotional intensity than M & M at the Criterion). But there’s more than enough to enjoy. Sennett’s characterised as a director-by-numbers who knows what works in comedy. His manipulation of Mabel Normand’s acting pretensions, his every move contrived to get her back for the films he wants her to make, goes with blindness to the pill-popping that keeps her perky on-camera. Yet it’s when she leaves Sennett she descends into career-wrecking hard drugs and scandal.
Mabel is the main role recast since Newbury. Janie Dee never seems the churchgoing delivery-girl Mabel is at first. But she’s splendidly vivacious once she joins Sennett’s set-up, while Soul acts well and sings well-enough. It’s anomalous in an actor-musician ensemble that the leads play either nothing or untuned percussion. But with songs that curl enticingly towards melodic line-ends, a snappy story and this vivacious ensemble production, there’s enough sentiment and high-voltage production to keep any audience happy.
*Though, apparently, resources weren't the point. I'm assured by a director unconnected with this production who pioneered the practice that he replaced 8 actors and 5 musicians with 13 musician-actors as this gave performers on tour in a tent added status. The theory goes,act Hamlet and everyone thinks they could do it, but strum 3 chords on a guitar and you're a musician. Big respect. Whether the balance-sheets have ever tipped other directors since remains open.
William Desmond Taylor: Richard Brightiff
Frank: Tomm Coles
Eddy: Robert Cousins
Mabel: Janie Dee
Gertie: Michelle Long
Mr Kessel: Robin Pirongs
Mack: David Soul
Mr Bauman: Jon Trenchard
Andy: Simon Tuck
Lottie: Sarah Whittuck
Fatty: Matthew Woodyatt
Director: John Doyle
Designer: Mark Bailey
Lighting: Richard G Jones
Sound: Gary Dixon
Arrangements/Musical supervisor: Sarah Travis
2006-04-18 00:14:47