WAKE UP LITTLE SUZIE! To 19 March.

Basingstoke

WAKE UP LITTLE SUZIE!
by Philip Goulding

Haymarket Theatre To 19 March 2005.
MonSat 7.45pm Mat: 5, 10. 19 March 2.00pm
Runs 2hr 40min One Interval

TICKETS: 0870 770 1088
www.haymarket.org.uk
Review Mark Courtice: 4 March 2005

Old fashioned seventies stuff.It's not just the flares and mullets that make this 70's set rock and roll musical (transferring to Hampshire from Oldham's Coliseum Theatre) so old fashioned. Compilation musicals, surely, have moved on from stringing the songs of an era along a feeble story line. Now they attempt complicated stories and strong emotional drives.

Philip Goulding, setting everything in a holiday camp so closely modelled on television's Hi Di Hi as to be almost more than sincere flattery, appears to have taken the line of least resistance, relying on an interminable inter-chalet competition for both narrative drive and many of the songs - unless the undemanding love story of holiday camp owner's son Ben and cleaner Suzie cues them instead. When a row of pens in an accountant's top pocket is character, the show stands or falls on the energy and attractiveness of the cast and the power of the music.

They almost get away with it. The cast fling themselves into Beverley Edmunds's energetic choreography, and although as actor/musicians they seem one competent person short of a tight sound, they give a good account of Howard Gay's arrangements, which mostly stay this side of cheesy.

Sue Devaney works hard as a sort of singing, northern Barbara Windsor, sweet and perky. You do fear for her ambition to join a family quite as unlike-able as Jeff Merchant and Matthew Hewitt manage to make the camp owning Tiltons. Otherwise performances are broad brush caricature from better singers than actors.

Celia Perkins's set has a stage surrounded by chaser lights and glittery pillars but overall is more serviceable than exciting. The excitement in the lighting often comes from a mirror ball and star cloth. The costumes (orange coats) seem second hand and don't fit, and the wigs are quite simply appalling. This may be ironic (they are part of a blizzard of quick change characterisations) but it turns out merely embarrassing.

At the encore the audience is dancing in the aisles and the company are doing the songs, and everything starts to work well. You have to ask, why bother with all the tiresome story stuff of the previous 2½ hours?

Francesca/Julie-Ann Anna Blake
Mick Martin/Chris Peacock/Bradley Bostock/Lucille La Mer/Rocky Sorrento Phil Corbitt
Suzie Bellamy Sue Devaney
Andy Cash/Kenny Howard Gay
Beryl/Valerie/Maudie Sarah Groarke
Ben Tilton Matthew Hewitt
Tony Bell/Derek/Carlos Fandango Adam Keast
Ted Tilton Jeff Merchant
Billy Butler/Pat Gently Francis Tucker

Director: Kevin Shaw
Designer: Celia Perkins
Lighting: Phil Davies
Sound: Charlie Brown
Musical Director: Howard Gay
Choreographer: Beverley Edmunds

2005-03-08 13:43:53