THE TWIG WHO BRANCHED OUT
We stand up to hurry on the interval, with irresistible tracks from the golden age of pop: Beatles, Stones, Animals. Onstage is a photographer’s white-sheet backdrop and the shadows of lights. This is the story of the Twiggy, Lesley Hornby from Neasden, who was barely seventeen when she turned “The Face of 1966”.
I bear in mind the second as a fellow teenager: it was an age when abruptly we children may reject our postwar moms’ views on “nice little suits” and purchase vibrant quick shifts, miniskirts barely wider than their faux-patent belts, and a alternative of actually appalling patterned tights (Elena Skye’s Twiggy first seems in some tartan ones nonetheless burning on my retina). The working-class woman was a mannequin in each sense, her leggy skinny body and angular, nearly Bob-Fosse poses setting her other than the curvier and posher supermodels. Every cowl confirmed her pretty face, emphasised and complex by a revolutionary minimalist hairdo by Leonard. But she was no doomed shooting-star diva: she moved on from journal covers to performing and singing, profitable two Golden Globes for Ken Russell’s bizarre model ofThe Boy Friend , labored in theatre with Peter Hall, conquered Broadway. Ms Hornby was and stays a trouper, a tough employee, a learner, a nice and first rate girl now with a well-earned Damehood.
And that, in a means, is Ben Elton’s downside as writer-director of this hagiographical jukebox musical (jukebox , on this 60s-70s interval, is a praise: the music is nice and effectively chosen, with the doable exception of the Jim Reeves “I Believe’ in a saccharine second). But within the telling right here Twiggy’s story has no thriller, no quirkiness, no questions requested or answered. It is painfully linear, with little pressure. But Elena Skye herself is fabulous, a powerful candy voice capable of belt out huge anthems or soften in sentiment: she narrates from the star’s autobiography with intelligence and dignity, and strikes with grace and conviction from naive schoolgirl – stitching garments for mates – to harmless submission below the self-invented Justin de Villeneuve (Matt Corner, very Mr Toad). Thence to America, and her marriage to the erratic alcoholic Michael Witney (Darren Day, deploying one other magnificent voice, pretty in duets along with her). In the background her working-class mother and father – Steven Serlin as Norman Hornby and Hannah-Jane Fox as Neil – are a strong presence, with Nell’s lengthy struggles with psychological sickness touchingly acknowledged.
There are numerous dance routines with the ensemble, although I’ve to interrupt it to that glorious choreographer Jacob Fearey that as a brand new technology he has not captured the complete and horrifying dreadfulness of 1960’s dancing: no Twist or Hippy-hippy Shake or Hitchhiker routines. Trust me, it was an age of utmost Dad-Dance, so I suppose finest forgotten.
So all in all, it’s fairly enjoyable, typically musically pleasant, and sharpened with cameos of David Frost, Claire Rayner and Melvyn Bragg and some nice archive footage, not least the actual Twiggy’s encounter with Woody Allen who tried to patronize her as a dumb child and misplaced the encounter. Interventions from her outdated schoolfriends are entertaining too.
Sadly, what drags it down a star is the plonking smugness of its messages, one thing the story of sensible, smart Twigs didn’t want. Justin-de-Villeneuve as a Svengali ten years older is confused and disapproved of, with understanding references to trendy consciousness of coercive-control. The proven fact that she received blamed for the style for thin-ness when it wasn’t her fault for being skinny will get a finger wagged for nasty outdated misogyny and what we now name body-shaming. There’s a continuing harping on class, inflicting the mother and father at instances to be slightly bit patronized, aw bless them. A gag about “levelling up” sits oddly, as does a MeToo reference, because it’s solely there to level out that she by no means suffered any. There’s a obligatory worship of the new-fledged NHS into which she was born, there’s point out of the Windrush, and scornful trendy contempt for Nell getting electro-convulsive remedy for her postnatal despair as a result of the ignorant outdated individuals of the unenlightened previous didn’t learn about hormones and menopause. Oh, and in the course of the wrestle of her marriage – movingly finished in any other case – Twiggy is seen hovering behind a contemporary AA meetingto underline that pervasive smugness about how far more enlightened all of us at the moment are.
So that grates a bit. Never thoughts. We outdated fossils simply benefit from the music, sing alongside silently, and assume our personal ideas. And Elena Skye is a pleasure.
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