At least, that was always my take on the best known version of the story, the Billy Wilder movie The Apartment starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine as Chuck Baxter and Fran Kubelik. He is the accounts clerk who climbs the corporate ladder by lending his flat to executives to use for extramarital trysts, and she is the company caterer he falls for.
In this small, ambitious revival of the big Broadway hit which ran for 1,281 performances, they have certainly found their Lemmon and MacLaine.
As Chuck, Gabriel Vick has something of Lemmon’s inconspicuous charm and as Fran, Daisy Maywood has a lot of MacLaine’s lovelorn innocence. They look like their predecessors, too. Trying to match such huge stars could have backfired terribly in a he’s-no-Lemmon and she’s-no-MacLaine kind of way. But it doesn’t. Vick and Maywood generate the sweetest synergy. And it may only be January, but Bronagh Lagan’s production boasts two of the musical theatre performances of the year.
Turning films into musicals is often seen as a relatively modern trend and can trigger a fair amount of cynicism — some of it from me. The musical version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels always felt to me as if the creative impulse was commercial rather than artistic — which is not to resent a penny of the box office. But to be loved, a show has to have heart — something that for all its redundant sexual politics Promises, Promises has in spades.
