PAL JOEY. To 27 April.

Nottingham

PAL JOEY
by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

Nottingham Playhouse To 27 April 2002
Runs 2hr 30min One interval

TICKETS 0115 941 9419
Review Timothy Ramsden 8 April

Worth it for the songs and their performance, though not quite the best thing overall. Damon Runyan sits behind Guys & Dolls and John O'Hara behind Pal Joey, another streetwise musical, just moved in from Ipswich, where this new production's been co-produced by the New Wolsey Theatre

Runyan's better remembered, though O'Hara in his early 20th century day was a hugely popular writer. His Joey is a chancer, living on looks, boasts and handouts. Everybody's pal, he's nobody's friend. It's a happy-go-more-or-less-lucky style which Des Coleman's smooth, smiling operator catches well.

As resourceful at instant autobiography as he is unfazed when it's exposed as baloney, Coleman shows someone who enjoys life by the moment, indulging its intermittently luxuries, greeting its toughest tricks with confidence.

There's an extra frisson in having a Black performer play the role given Joey's success in 1940s Chicago with innocent young WASP Linda and grand socialite Vera, for whom he becomes a touch of the exotic, easily dropped when the holiday's over.

As the older woman with the self-confidence of an endless cheque-book, Kathryn Evans is in magnificent voice, especially in the legato line and mood variations she gives Rodgers' hit-tune Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered - wonderment, determination, self-mocking all queuing for expression.

She's entirely competent, if less forceful in spoken scenes. The same goes for Rae Baker's poor but respectable Linda – they may meet over an (immaculately performed) terrier in a pet-shop window, but there's more grit in Joey's treatment of Linda than gets found here.

Director Phil Wilmott is king of small-scale musical production, and Nigel Hook's set helps keep the scale down on Nottingham's stage. Wing pieces and a central revolve allow the various scenes to be played close to the audience. It works best for individual scenes – a neat clumsiness gives the due comic edge to the absurd words and schmaltzy tune in The Flower Garden of My Heart. But, though he catches Joey's downmarket world, the budget-glam. approach lies at odds with the smart Playhouse environs.

And the story's propulsion goes sluggish. Relationships work OK for the routines to have their impact. Yet, Coleman's Joey apart, the characters aren't developed enough to explain the logic of their relationships.

Joey: Des Coleman
Mike/Lowell: Michael Mawey
The Kid: Holly Boothby
Gladys: Lindsey Danvers
Diane: Emma Thornett
Terry: Chevaun Marsh
Janet/Violin: Sophie Duval
Linda: Rae Baker
Vera: Kathryn Evans
Ernest the Tailor/Reeds: Harry Myers
Melba/Reeds: Georgina Field
Waldo the Waiter/Drums: Nick Long
Deputy Commissioner O'Brien/Piano: Greg Palmer
Shoe Shine: Richard Castillo
Skippy: Molly

Director: Phil Wilmott
Designer/Costume: Nigel Hook
Lighting: Hansjorg Schmidt
Sound: Al Ashford
Musical Director: Greg Palmer
Choreographer: Sam Spencer-Lane
Dialect Coach: Alison MacKinnon

2002-04-09 14:04:17