SWEET CHARITY. To 30 September.

Oldham

SWEET CHARITY
by Neil Simon Music by Cy Coleman Lyrics by Dorothy Fields

Coliseum Theatre To 30 September 2006
Tue-Thu; Sat 7.30pm Fri 8pm Mat 20, 30 Sept 2.30pm
Audio-described 20 Sept 7.30pm
BSL Signed 21 Sept
Runs 2hr 35min One interval

TICKETS: 0161 624 2829
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 September

A sttrong sense of big-scale musical builds at Oldham.
It took almost a decade for Fellini's Nights of Cabiria to turn into this 1966 American stage musical. And, overall, it was worth the wait. It's most famous numbers are almost all choric rather than expressions of the main characters, and if the exception, Charity's 'If They Could See Me Now', comes from an incidental sidestep in her life, that fits a story which keeps true enough to its Italian original to deny a happy ending. Charity, like the other dancing-partners in Fandango's, drifts through life; one of the memorable strands is the dancers' disillusion with the work, their boss and themselves.

Gemma Wardle gives Charity the happy innocence her life can't touch which Giulietta Masini gave Cabiria, and which helps her survive. Kevin Shaw's production spells out the eternally-springing hope in Charity's sweet breast to frame the action, writing it on objects of impersonal city life: umbrella, newspaper and suitcase. If one fiancee dunks her in a Central Park pond and runs off with her money, love-of-her-life Oscar's last-minute reversal here might be something for which to give thanks as Geoffrey Abbott's tall, nervous figure shows a brief rage that suggests a Norman Bates in the making.

Shaw's courageous in mounting the show at all. It was made for bigger, better-equipped stages than the Coliseum and at first both Park and Fandango's seems underpopulated. Charity's 4 dancing friends, played by performers far more skilled than the people who'd likely be sludging round such floors (newcomer Rosie arrives all fresh to be told she needn't worry about an inabiity to dance), have to work hard to suggest the place might fill enough to make a profit. Backstage, disillusion and fatigue come more easily.

Oscar apart, the men are mainly cyphers, including Charity's brief celeb-lover nor the skinflint doance-manager. Maybe that's intentional. This is Charity's show and she's best seen in relief against the other dancers. And as the show goes on, it's easy to adjust to its scale. Beverley Ebmunds' choreography, always efficient but which at first would break no hearts on Broadway, acquires a sparkle in the 'Rhythm of Life' sequence and thereafter employs Nicky Bolton, Emily Grace, Jane Horn and Michelle Long in exuberant, precise numbers, broken only when one of them goes to add another instrument to the onstage band (budgets as well as stage-space are limited at the Coliseum). Grace, especially, is a young performer who effervesces in dance numbers.

Like nearby Bolton's Octagon, the Coliseum is under-represented in national theatre coverage. Under directors like Shaw and Bolton's Mark Babych, north Manchester these days can give anywhere a theatrical run for their money.

Oscar: Geoffrey Abbott
Nickie: Nicky Bolton
Rosie/Betsy: Emily Grace
Marvin/Manford: Chris Grahamson
Helene: Jane Horn
Herman: Adam Keast
Carmen/Ursula: Michelle Long
Charity: Gema Wardle
Brubeck/Vidal: William Wolfe Hogan

Director: Kevin Shaw
Designers: Giuseppe Belli, Emma Barrington-Binns
Lighting: Tom Weir
Sound: Charlie Brown
Musical director: Howard Gray
Choreographer: Beverley Edmunds
Assistant choreographer: Lucy Clavis

2006-09-17 14:39:06