til_24-3-17

26
THE WILD PARTY
The Other Palace
There’s a decidedly febrile, overheated
quality to Drew McOnie’s
unashamedly in-your-face choreography
and direction of The Wild Party, a
musical Broadway audiences gave the
thumbs down in 2000.
Inspired by a prohibition era narrative
poem by Joseph Moncure March, with a
possible nod in the direction of the wild
party given in a San Francisco hotel
room by silent-screen comedian Fatty
Arbuckle that ended in tragedy, there are
also echoes of the far superior Kander
and Ebb musical Chicago.
Genesis Lynea and Gloria Obianyo as The
Daarmano Bros with Frances Ruffelle as Queenie
in The Wild Party. Photo: Scott Rylander.
The setting, this time, is New York and
the party’s hosts are an abusive burlesque
comedian (first seen in a circus clown’s
makeup) called Burrs (John Owen Jones)
and Queenie (Frances Ruffelle), a
vaudeville dancer with whom he shares an
edgy relationship.
To add some glamour and spice to
the fast encroaching boredom of their
existences, they invite an assortment of
debauchees with varying sexual
proclivities and appetites. There’s
Dolores (Donna McKechnie) an overthe-hill
diva whose glory years are a
mere memory, Kate (Victoria Hamilton-
Barritt)Queenie’s bitchy rival-cum-best
friend, Kate’s current sexual playmate
Black (Simon Thoms), a lesbian called
Madelaine True (Tiffany Graves), a pair
of incestuous brothers who could be
twins (Genesis Lynea and Gloria
Obianyo), Jackie (Dex Lee) a wealthy
ingenue who’ll sleep with anyone who’ll
have her, and two Jewish entrepreneurs,
Gold (Sebastian Torkia) and Goldberg
(Steven Serlin) who don’t know what
they’ve let themselves in for.
What audiences have let themselves
in for is an evening in which fifteen
characters (or should I say caricatures
for they all resemble cartoon figures that
could have come from the pen of the
famous jazz-age artist John Held Jr) are
in desperate search of a plot.
Even the Lovell Telescope would have
difficulty finding a story line in the book
provided by Michael John La Chiusa
(who also wrote the music and lyrics)
and George C. Wolfe, with whom the
project originated.
In fact, given that the show is little
more than a collection of song-anddance
routines – with each of the
characters enjoying a moment or two in
the spotlight – the whole thing might
have worked much more effectively as a
jazz ballet, the spoken word dispensed
with entirely.
That said, Drew McOnie’s staging is
certainly livelier than the Broadway
original I saw seventeen years ago, the
dancing more energetic and the
performances more committed. Ruffelle
(who memorably created the role of
Eponine in Les Miserable) is in terrific
vocal form as Queenie, and Owen-Jones
equally persuasive as her jealous lover.
It’s also great to see Donna McKechnie,
Cassie in the original Broadway
production of A Chorus Line, strutting
her stuff once again.
Indeed, all the performances as well
as the orchestra under its pianist/
conductor Theo Jamieson are first class.
So is Soutra Gilmour’s set and Richard
Howell’s lighting.
Physically the show’s a knockout. But
with no plot to bind it together, not a
single character to root for or even to
care about, nor a score whose tunes
earworm their way into the memory,
what you’re left with is plenty of energy
but zero involvement.
CLIVE HIRSCHHORN
LIMEHOUSE
Donmar until 15 April
The Labour party is in turmoil, the
Conservatives are in power with a
woman at the helm, and Britain’s
relationship with Europe is in flux – no
we’re not talking 2017, but a Sunday
morning back in 1981 when three
disgruntled Labour politicians met in
secret at the East London Limehouse
home of a fourth – former Foreign
Secretary and qualified doctor David
Owen.
In playwright Steve Waters’
fictionalised account of what might have
happened on the day that the somewhat
short-lived Social Democratic Party
came into being, Owens’ wife –
American literary agent Deborah (a
soothing Nathalie Armin) plays a crucial
role – suggesting the meeting in the
comfort of their family kitchen and
pouring oil over troubled waters when
the heated debate over the possible
united political future of Roy Jenkins,
Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers comes
too close to collapse.
As the clock ticks and a macaroni
cheese brunch is prepared, the so-called
‘Gang of Four’ put forward the
arguments for and against creating a
new party, with the hot-headed,
egotistical Owen (Tom Goodman-Hill)
being kept in check by his spouse, the
down to earth Rodgers (Paul Chahidi)
and the astute Williams (excellent Debra
Gillett) pledging to each other to stay
united, and Roger Allam’s pompous
Jenkins pontificating at length despite
the urgency of the situation and a (here
humorously portrayed) problem with
articulating his ‘r’s .
Even if you know little about British
politics, the personal dynamics behind
the formation of a breakaway party prove
fascinating – and, if you were around at
the time, Polly Findlay’s finely cast
production will serve as a reminder of
an era long before the influence of
Twitter and the internet came into being.
Louise Kingsley
t h i s i s l o n d o n m a g a z i n e • t h i s i s l o n d o n o n l i n e