The Menier has become the UK’s most trusted reviver of the great Broadway musical. From highbrow Sondheim to the pastiche of Alan Menken’s Little Shop of Horrors, the Southwark venue has done America’s cultural gift to the world proud.
If I were to find one negative in this latest exhilarating revival, it might be that Tamzin Outhwaite in the role of the lovelorn Charity Hope Valentine lacks the uncorrupted sweetness of, say, Shirley MacLaine’s film version.
But then, maybe a certain hardness is appropriate, even if it is more suited to one of Outhwaite’s previous roles, Mel in EastEnders. For Charity is a dance-hall hostess who for eight years has fended off punters and their wandering hands. It is a job not far removed from prostitution — as one of Charity’s fellow hostesses says: “Dancing? We defend ourselves to music”.
This show is stuffed with many such great one-liners, and not just in Neil Simon’s dialogue. They are found, too, in Dorothy Fields’s sassy lyrics welded to a joyous score by one of Broadway’s lesser-celebrated greats, Cy Coleman. This is the musical with the serial showstoppers Hey, Big Spender (delivered here with bovine boredom by the wonderful Josefina Gabrielle and Tiffany Graves), If They Could See Me Now and Something Better Than This. But aside from the revelation that Outhwaite can sing and dance so well (she gets great support from a charismatic Mark Umbers in the roles of Charity’s lovers), it is not with a song but a dance number that Matthew White’s production announces itself as a triumph. Led by the intimidatingly athletic Ebony Molina, the chorus pumps out an exhilarating ’60s dance routine that contorts the body into arches, angles and attitudes. It is pure Bob Fosse, but it is thanks to Stephen Mear that on the Menier’s tiny stage, the routine never feels cramped and always stays true to the decadent spirit of Fosse’s original. The West End beckons — and maybe Broadway too.
(Tel: 020 7907 7060)