Review Superhero

Superhero
Book by Michael Conley
Music by Joseph Finlay
Lyrics by Richy Hughes

Mad About The Girl
http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show/superhero/

Colin Bradley (Michael Rouse) has arrived for a hearing at the Royal Courts Of Justice. He's in one of the modern pine courtrooms (a simple but very effective set design by Georgia De Grey), nervously reading from the index cards he has already prepared.

Colin's also trying to obey the instructions of his solicitor, Rupert, even though he's the one supposedly instructing the solicitor. It's a tug-of-love case as Colin is trying to win custody of his young teenage daughter Emily whose career-minded Mum Christine wants to emigrate with her to the USA.

The show, directed by Adam Lenson, traces Colin's own journey starting with him being part of a happy family, leaving a job in his parents' construction industry business to becoming a stay-at-home Dad.  Then he has his head turned by apparently unexpectedly landing a leading role in an amateur theatre production and his life as a divorced Dad follows.

There is a committed performance from Michael Rouse as Colin and an excellent three-piece band led by musical director Joe Bunker on piano. Molly Lopresti on percussion contributes much to the play's atmosphere and Stephen Street is on bass.

Thinking about it, TLT has probably only seen one other one-man musical when Benjamin Scheuer came to London with The Lion, a very personal musical memoir of his own relationship with his father.

Superhero is a fictional story told in flashback but it draws mightily on stereotyping the Fathers For Justice campaign and Colin, although the double-edged nature of support from a more militant Dad might have been intriguing if more explored.

Otherwise Superhero follows a fairly predictable path with some clever elements allying Colin's own story with the am dram musical which triggers his adultery and the break up of his marriage. It also puts together a number of recognizable musical theatre styles - Boubil and Schönberg among them - with a few stand out songs, including Other People's Parents and All American Dad. We just wished we could have liked it better as a whole.

It seemed to miss putting some interesting junctures into song in favour of more obvious moments, so for us there was a feel of plodding cliché. We thought also perhaps some of the songs may have come  first and the plot followed after.

The atmosphere of the am dram company is amusingly enough conjured up with the traditional fey director but the Victorian atmosphere of the Royal Courts of Justice and the lone man in the echoing Gothic building foyer is nowhere to be found. The court room could be anywhere in the world and we weren't convinced by the evocation of some London landmarks.

Colin is full of hope for the hearing but then the court's decision seems to fall into a pre-decided template and creates a worse situation for him. We're sure these peaks and troughs are indeed the genuine experience of many such fathers.
 
So it's a pity the see-saw of hope, the beginning of suspicion, the attempt to will away the suspicion, the realisation that nobody is listening and the reality dawning isn't embodied more viscerally in a song. 

This appears to be very much a narrative musical blending a fairly traditional estranged parents and beloved daughter scenario, a transatlantic and European subtext and a breakdown with a wish-fulfilment ending.

However the way the content of the show is arranged made us feel we were always on the outside looking in and much of the narration contained within the songs felt strangely flat.

Still the performance, direction, design, lighting by Sam Waddington and sound by Andy Hinton are all fine. But it felt like a pitch for a show rather than the show itself. It's an amber light.

Review Caste

Caste
by TW Robertson

The Book Of Esther 
 http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/

Caste is like a solid piece of 1867 Victorian furniture brought out, dusted down and polished in this winning production from youthful theatre company Project One.   It's a play that's surprisingly shrewd with a deceptive simplicity which masks a sophisticated take on its own literary craft.

Indeed a certain critic named GB Shaw calling it "epoch-making" said at a 1897 revival, "'Caste' delighted everyone by its freshness, its nature, its humanity ... In the windows, in the doors ... in the kettle, in the fireplace, in the ham, in the tea, in the bread and butter ..."

The Honourable George D'Alroy (Duncan Moore), a moustachioed army officer, has transformed himself from backstage Johnny to adoring husband when he marries below his station chorus line ballet dancer Esther Eccles (Isabella Marshall).

George's mother the haughty "Brahmin princess" Marquise De St Maur (Susan Penhaligon) is horrified when she learns of the marriage, rejecting her daughter-in-law who is left almost destitute with a child when her husband goes missing presumed dead on active service in India. Suffice to say, there is a twist and turn before a Happy Ending.

Caste deals in stock characters and styles, melodrama, burlesque and the sentimental, but with knowing self-referential glances and with a claim to pioneering stage management in its use on stage of more realistic scenery and props, "a cup and saucer" drama. 

What is also surprising is like Douglas Jerrold's earlier Black-Eyed Susan, Caste turns from melodrama to genuine second act social critique in an unlikely mouth of the workshy drunkard, Esther's father Eccles (Paul Bradley in mutton chop whiskers).

One can even detect a direct line to Shaw's own Pygmalion and other later movements such as the Manchester School  and the Angry Young Men generation of playwrights.

Equally this is all pitched with genial humour and a discussion of its central theme of caste or class made more complex by the inclusion of military, colonial, political, financial and inheritance circumstances.

As Captain Hawtrey (Ben Starr), "a swell" and D'Alroy's brother in arms, puts it, "The inexorable law of caste ... commands like to mate with like ... forbids a giraffe to mate with a squirrel ... all those marriages of people with common people are all very well in novels and plays on the stage ..."

Meanwhile would-be shopkeeper Sam Gerridge (Neil Chinneck) takes the boundaries of different stations in life more literally, "Life is a railway journey, and mankind is a passenger - first class, second class, third class".

Robertson uses feisty, flirty quick-tempered  Polly (Rebecca Collingwood), Esther's sister and Sam's intended, to conjure up pictures of life outside the Eccles's London home. This not only provides burlesque amusement but gives the audience a sense of panorama, almost like cinema trailers of other types of entertainment.

Charlotte Perkins directs a nicely paced production which takes seriously the social issues without stinting on the laughs deliberately threaded in by the playwright.

We weren't convinced by the introduction of a photo studio element but this is a minor quibble in a very enjoyable hour and forty five minutes which never descends, as it so easily could in less skilful hands, into parody.   

Over 50 years ago a young actor, a certain Ian McKellen, grew to appreciate the craft in the drama when he played gasfitter Sam Gerridge. We're now in the 21st century and theatrical metaphors can be unravelled for the audience.

It's part of actor-manager's Tom Robertson's art that he knowingly carves for the audience a tasty large slice of ham, along with barnstorming melodrama but also bread and butter realism. It's a green light for a production which keeps the kettle on the boil to produce a satisfyingly strong and entertaining brew.