I left the Savoy Theatre with hope in my
heart as the song exhorts, uplifted and unashamed at my immersion in
the sentimentality of Lindsay Posner’s production. Only later did I
remember that, to achieve this result, he has had to sell the pass on
virtually every shadow in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical. Yes, songs
such as “If I Loved You” and the roustabout Billy Bigelow’s “Soliloquy”
are heartbreaking in their yearning, and “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over”
an irresistible paean to going forth and multiplying. But, as Alastair
Macaulay noted on this page on the show’s last major British revival in
2006 at Chichester, the narrative elements include “unemployment and
conventional ideas of feminine decency... male violence to women,
excessive gambling and finally a one-parent family”. All of which, in
the moment (well, the three hours), manage to glide by insubstantially.
When Billy (Jeremiah James) returns to Earth after his death to try to
set his 15-year-old daughter on the right path but ends up once more
resorting to violence, the slap is barely noticeable; earlier, when
this was set up by showing him similarly strike her mother, I saw
nothing at all of the blow, only the responses to it. The ballet of
daughter Louise’s awakening sexuality is, in Adam Cooper’s
choreography, vaguely indicative rather than outright erotic.
As Billy’s wife Julie, Alexandra Silber is blessed with one of those
faces that seem to show right through to the heart. Whether Julie is
feeling joy or desolation, Silber’s face radiates the emotion in
question. It is beautiful, but can serve here to make the story seem
too storybook, like inferior
manga drawings. Lesley Garrett as
cousin Nettie combines, as ever, a natural effervescence and powerhouse
voice with an accent that keeps springing from Maine back to south
Yorkshire. To aid what had been a touring production before its entry
to the West End, designer William Dudley uses few props and instead
makes use of the CGI techniques first seen from him on
The Woman In White: location is
suggested by projected computer-animation sequences (including the
wrong late-19th-century version of the Stars & Stripes and, on
Billy’s ascension, a frankly tawdry set of Pearly Gates). It’s a
thoroughly entertaining evening; unfortunately, that’s the goal of the
production but just the starting point of the piece itself.
Written for the Financial
Times.