The Spice Girls jukebox musical opened
to a virtually all-star audience and a keen irony. Its plot centres on
a young protagonist, Viva, who is all but consumed by the fiction
factory of an uncaring media franchise. However, engineering a
hyperbolical sense of “event” for the press night by cordoning off the
street in front of the theatre and so forth demonstrates exactly the
same omnivorous mentality. That I found
Viva Forever at all tolerable is a
tribute to the craft and assiduity of scriptwriter Jennifer Saunders
and producer Judy Craymer.
This is a producer’s rather than a director’s show: Craymer hatched the
concept to follow up her earlier success
Mamma Mia!. The template of that
Abba-based compilation has perhaps been followed rather too closely.
Plot devices such as the protagonist’s troubled parentage (Viva has
been brought up by a single adoptive mother who shuns conventional
society) and the use of an exotic location (in Act Two, the action
moves gratuitously to Spain) will strike
Mamma-maniacs as more than a little
familiar. In addition, Saunders revisits old favourite figures from her
TV sitcom
Absolutely Fabulous
such as the eccentric personal assistant and the bibulous
mum’s-best-friend of a certain age.
Paul Garrington’s staging is quite as lively as required, and musical
stalwarts such as Sally Ann Triplett as Viva’s mum and Sally Dexter as
her reality-talent-show mentor are matched by newcomer Hannah
John-Kamen as Viva herself, sundered from her girl-group mates for solo
grooming. The plotting is often audaciously unpleasant for a supposedly
feel-good experience, repeatedly showing that in televisual terms
“reality” is the biggest one-word lie in the language.
What lets it all down are the songs. Lyrically, these numbers make
Benny and Björn of Abba (and their co-lyricist Stig Andersson) look
like e e cummings; musically, Martin Koch struggles to find any natural
dynamic within each number and to maintain a mix of multiple vocals and
instrumentation that doesn’t just dissolve into a blur of blare. The
implausible, perfunctory ending (which I had predicted but discounted
as far too obvious) makes it apparent that even the supposedly central
concept of “girl power” is merely a shibboleth to be recited rather
than understood and made to live. There is simply too much manipulation
in the air of an evening that is what I rarely, rarely want.
Written for the Financial
Times.