THE BOYFRIEND. To 9 September.
London
THE BOY FRIEND
by Sandy Wilson
Open Air Theatre. Regent’s Park in rep to 9 September
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Thu, Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 30min Two intervals
TICKETS: 08700 601811
www.openairtheatre.org (£1 fee per ticket online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 July
Trifles light as air with delicious style.
While fifties theatre was looking back in anger, this pastiche twenties musical from 1953 continued to cram in audiences. So wide are theatre’s gates. Sandy Wilson absorbed the music of his childhood and, in writing the melodies strung along his tenuous storyline, showed he could have held his own with musical comedy composers of the day, penning at least 3 remember-the-next-day melodies in a joyous, tuneful score with light, elegant lyrics.
The perfectly-formed story shouldn’t be thought about too much. The idea of those decent English gals at Mme Dubonnet’s Finishing-School in Nice, where the few locals merely provide French dressing, becoming engaged within an evening at 17 (‘Finishing School’ indeed) especially when one of them has only to hear a rumour her boyfriend’s a thief to believe it, suggests serial marital disharmony as the sequel.
But there’s no sequel in this light, happy neverland, perfectly located in the sculpted Arcadia of Regent’s Park’s Open Air Theatre. Innocence reigns in Wilson’s world, though it’s never entirely safe, as the audience picks up at one point, while care’s needed not quite rhyming ‘fallacies’ with ‘palaces’.
The salad days of the hopeful, handsome young contrast the comic edge to the flings of those falling into the sere and yellow. Polly Browne, with her sad secret (no beau as daddy’s afraid any young man will be a gold-digger), and runaway young noble scion Tony are highlighted in the plot, both Rachel Jerram and Joshua Dallas being fine, but there’s a uniformly excellent cast. Early on Summer Strallen’s Maisie and Michael Rouse as American Bobby Van Husen do a show-stealing, high-kicking, swirling routine that’s the gold standard of Bill Deamer’s ever-deft choreography for individuals and ensemble.
Among their elders, Steven Pacey’s emotionally laced-up English millionaire is revived into love by Anna Nicholas’s lively old French flame while Ian Talbot’s merry lord strains at his wife’s short leash (Jennifer Piercey, behind a commanding lorgnette). Talbot frequently smiles at the jeunes filles. He’s a right to be happy with himself, as this show’s director and Park supremo, whose fine season is enlivening many a thousand’s summer.
Hortense: Claire Carrie
Maisie: Summer Strallen
Dulcie: Selina Chilton
Fay: Haley Flaherty
Nancy: Helen Owen
Polly Browne: Rachel Jerram
Marcel: James Bisp
Pierre: Martin McCarthy
Alphonse: Matt Dempsey
Madame Dubonnet: Anna Nicholas
Bobby Van Husen: Michael Rouse
Percival Browne: Steven Pacey
Tony: Joshua Dallas
Lord Brockhurst: Ian Talbot
Lady Brockhurst: Jennifer Piercey
Gendarme/Waiter: Stuart Nurse
Pepe: Matthew Clark
Lolita: Kylie Anne Cruikshanks
Guest: Vivien Care
Director: Ian Talbot
Designer: Paul Farnsworth
Lighting: Jason Taylor
Sound: Gregory Clarke
Musical arranger: Steven Edis
Musical Director: Catherine Jayes
Choreographer: Bill Deamer
Assistant director: Robert Cameron
2006-07-25 09:03:05