July 19, 2024 · 12:23 pm
UP WHERE SHE BELONGS
Imelda Staunton is a marvel, from Mama Rose in Gypsy to HMQ in The Crown. There isn’t any woman of the stage extra worthy of being greeted on the prime of a Grand Staircase by an intermInable refrain of dancing waiters in velveteen tailcoats , buttons hellishly a-gleam, whereas a first-night viewers of 2,280 go noisily bananas. She’s earned it, albeit typically extra strikingly than on this grand previous smoker of a 1960’s Jerry Herman spectacular. Mind you, even the arrival onstage of a fullsize locomotive in steam had beforehand had its personal rapturous applause, and that was within the a lot slower first half.
The setting- up of half-millionaire Vandergelder’s feed retailer and the widowed Dolly Levi’s clever matchmaking in her personal curiosity is enjoyable (she and Andy Nyman strike good Beatrice “n Benedick sparks once they’re collectively, and one needs it was extra frequent). Harry Hepple as Cornelius the clerk looking for journey within the large metropolis is beautiful, although his present for bodily comedy (Toby Parks of Spymonkey is credited) is underused: as so typically on this very conventional present it shades too quick into one more enormous and datedly overfaithful ensemble. Imelda certainly solely briefly comes into her personal as a spellbinder in a few poignant solos, particularly the one about not desirous to let the parade go by with out her as she ages. Otherwise – till the large title refrain – her items too really feel underused: curbed by Dominic Cookes’s untypically vanilla traditionalism.
The music, after all, is splendid, big-scale. Some numbers – notably Jenna Russell’s wistful track about ribbons down her again and hope for love – are genuinely touching. But it feels of-its-period, the ’60s, and never at all times in one of the simplest ways. It does energetic spectacle with out ever being remotely shocking (although within the small a part of Ernestina, Jodie Jacobs goes for broke along with her restaurant capers and Emily Lane’s Minnie is pleasingly over-the-top screwball). But face it, no one goes to the Palladium on a giant large starry musical evening to be shocked. It will not be that form of auditorium, and this isn’t that form of play, although a lot is made within the programme and remark of Dolly’s ‘agency’ and rejection of passive womanhood.
I assumed director Dominic Cooke would supply us one thing much less dogged, one thing a bit surprising, befitting a interval when now we have seen ingenious, immersive freshening of previous musicals like Hytner’s Guys and Dolls on the Bridge, or Daniel Fish’s alarmingly darkish Oklahoma on the Young Vic. The staging is luxurious however conventional – final time I noticed that rolling stage used a lot was when Dorothy was dragging a very reluctant Toto alongside it ten years in the past. The ensemble are top-of-the-range and throw themselves into the large numbers, however solely the waiter sequence approaches that harmful pleasure a very good choreographer can produce. It’ll be a summer time spotlight for guests, and most will find it irresistible to bits. I actually wished to.
field workplace lwtheatres.co.uk to 14 sept
score 4 (i.e. 3 plus a musicals-mouse for traditionalism)
