Sometimes one’s response to a show can
go far beyond mere dislike, to the point of fury that it ever got to
see the light of a stage. I managed to cram the major indictments of
All Bob’s Women into the 160
characters of a text message: “1) It’s at the Arts. 2) and 3) It’s an
Italian musical 4) about a five-timing man, and 5) it thinks it can do
it all in 70 minutes; 6) it can’t.” Given more space, I would have
added that the cast include 7) an alumna of TV prison drama
Bad Girls and 8) one of the Nancys
from small-screen talent-search
I’d
Do Anything (on the basis of this show, yes, she certainly
would), and that 9) it’s the kind of production where the offstage team
get their biographies in the programme ahead of any of the performing
“talent”, and the producers even give themselves a picture.
Now, none of these things is damning in itself, but when so many of
them come together they amount to a strong circumstantial case,
especially when found looming over a mangled corpse of a show like
Michael W. Kelly’s adaptation of Romy Padovano’s musical. Looked at
from another angle, its brevity is a positive mercy; but really, trying
to fit in Bob/Rob/Ronnie/Roger/etc’s seduction and bedding of five
women of radically different character, to sketch him and them out and
find space for musing as well as his come-uppance in less than an hour
and a quarter is ludicrous. Matters seldom even attain the depth of a
comedy sketch. And that’s without even considering the musical numbers,
because they simply aren’t worth considering (except to note the
similarity of one to Diana Ross’s hit “I’m Still Waiting”) even when
they can be made out; on press night, the actors were over-miked when
speaking and
way over-miked
when singing. (The Arts only seats around 350 people.)
I simply can’t see what it’s
for.
It works neither as clever fun nor as mindless fun; its observations on
the sexes are pitched at the level of the stereotypical Italian man,
and consequently far below almost any real person, Italian or
otherwise. In the opening minutes, Bob delivers an incomprehensible
fable beginning, “Madness wanted to play a game...” Well, Critical
Tolerance pelted out the door and didn’t stop running.
Written for the Financial
Times.