OUR MISS GIBBS. To 14 May.
London
OUR MISS GIBBS
book by J T Tanner Lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank Music by Lionel Monckton and Ivan Caryll
Finborough Theatre Finborough Pub 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED 7, 14 May 2006
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 4000 838 (24hrs)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 April
More fringe frolics from the days when tunes meant melodies.
Shopgirls, as well as showgirls, had their place in old musicals; the humbly subservient who made good. Sales assistant Mary Gibbs, in this 1909 piece of cultural fluff, has to make out in a smart London department store (cunningly called Garrods) despite her Yorkshire accent.
She easily steals hearts, unaided by aitches or proper vowels. There’s more stealing in a subplot involving a Raffles-like gentleman-burglar who always returns his loot. In fact, the whole thing’s entirely daft, making references to buying titles a satirical surprise.
This is the second of The Finborough Gaieties, a Sunday-night series of score-in-hand performances rehabilitating British musicals of 1870-1914. If this piece doesn’t have any show-stoppers like the first, Floradora, it’s a continually pleasant example of a theatre that confidently addressed its middle-class Edwardian audience (the original production ran 636 performances).
The tiny Finborough somehow manages a mix of concert and production with 11 singer-actors, plus an instrumental quintet with conductor. These share a stage where anything much over three’s a crowd, on the set of the current main Finborough show. For Miss Gibbs that means a traverse setting. Addressing an audience on two opposite sides isn’t the natural way for musicals; choruses have to face both ways and smaller group songs tend to be sung side-on to spectators.
While the music flows beautifully there are a number of hiatuses in the spoken dialogue when actors understandably lose their place in the huge scores they waft around. Given the quality of this cast, that will doubtless be sorted out for later performances. They already convincingly create the innocent fantasy of love across class-barriers and sheer comic lunacy that so delighted Edwardian theatregoers.
A big space accommodating big performances would ladle this cake in cream. But it would be hard to beat the freshness of Celia Graham’s Mary, star among shop-girls, Helen George as her eternally happy, utterly shallow colleague, Katrine Falkenberg’s dizzy-minded society girl or Christopher Colley’s lordly young ass.
The finale included a musical phrase resembling the title song of Oh, What A Lovely War. A final, unintended irony to this happy, frolicking world.
Mr Toplady/ Earl of St Ives: Simon Clark
George/Taxi Cabby/Mr Beavis/Policeman/Bulge/Race Attendant: Adam Linstead
Miss Beauclerc/Connie: Savannah Stevenson
Lord Eynsford: Christopher Colley
Mrs Farrrquhar: Vivien Care
Duchess of Minster: Paddy Glynn
Lady Elizabeth Thanet: Katrine Falkenberg
Madame Jeanne: Helen George
Mary Gibbs: Celia Graham
Hon Hughie Pierrepoint: Stephen John Davis
Timothy Gibbs: Stuart Hickey
Slithers: Gary Tushaw
Director: Pia Furtado
Designer: Dora Wade
Musical Director/Arranger: Timothy Henty
2006-05-02 12:50:07