The Messiah review: An unholy mess

The Messiah

The Other Palace, London                                                              Until Jan 5, 2hs 

Rating:

What a Christmas dud! This is an unfunny revival of a once great show, from 1983, which was written by and starred Patrick Barlow, alongside Jim Broadbent. 

The satire of am-dram actors flouncing about the Holy Land feels oddly stale in Barlow’s rewrite, which he also directs.

The Maurice Rose Players are putting on a production of The Messiah

The Maurice Rose Players are putting on a production of The Messiah. They are the bullying, superior Mr Rose (Hugh Dennis, left) and the hapless Ronald Bream (John Marquez, right)

The Maurice Rose Players are putting on a production of The Messiah. They are the bullying, superior Mr Rose (Hugh Dennis, left) and the hapless Ronald Bream (John Marquez, right)

They are the bullying, superior Mr Rose (a Hoover appliance demonstrator by day), played by comic Hugh Dennis, and the hapless Ronald Bream (John Marquez from Doc Martin), who plays Mary to Rose’s Joseph. 

There’s also an ear-bashing, snooty guest singer, Mrs Leonora Fflyte, in the form of opera star Lesley Garrett.

As epics go, we’re in Ernie Wise country. Rose struggles with his music cues, malicious props and gathering insubordination from Ronald as pregnant Mary.

There’s also an ear-bashing, snooty guest singer, Mrs Leonora Fflyte, in the form of opera star Lesley Garrett. She sings lustily but plot-wise she’s a spare tyre

There’s also an ear-bashing, snooty guest singer, Mrs Leonora Fflyte, in the form of opera star Lesley Garrett. She sings lustily but plot-wise she’s a spare tyre

Hugh Dennis is without an iota of the required comic pomposity. Nor does he cook up much relationship with Marquez, as his colleague and stooge. 

The multi-tasking Marquez overdoes it, particularly as Ronald’s witheringly unfunny Herod with a huge phallic nose. Garrett sings lustily but plot-wise she’s a spare tyre.

The Roman census scene involves some lively audience participation. Boy, is it needed. This show was once a laugh a minute. Now, sadly, it’s one every 30 minutes.

 

Fiddler On The Roof

Menier Chocolate Factory, London                     Until Mar 9, 2hrs 50mins 

Rating:

For a musical that induces groans of over-familiarity, here comes a revival that’s fresh and different. Fiddler may be about a dairyman, but this is refreshingly un-cheesy and an antidote to the last funny Fiddler, Omid Djalili, who was almost more over-the-Topol than Topol.

The success of Trevor Nunn’s small-scale version is due in good measure to Andy Nyman’s compassionate but unsoppy turn as Tevye, the Jewish milkman driven nuts by his three older daughters who marry without his permission.

This Tevye is short, bearded and every inch a man who’s sick of his job. When he sings If I Were A Rich Man, he does the ‘deedle, daiddle, dum’ chorus while wincing from the arthritis he got pulling the lousy cart. 

The success of Trevor Nunn’s small-scale version is due in good measure to Andy Nyman’s compassionate but unsoppy turn as Tevye, the Jewish milkman driven nuts by his daughters

The success of Trevor Nunn’s small-scale version is due in good measure to Andy Nyman’s compassionate but unsoppy turn as Tevye, the Jewish milkman driven nuts by his daughters

He complains to God a lot, citing the scriptures, then acknowledges the pointlessness of quoting the good book back to its author. But his rendition of the part is wonderfully tender.

Judy Kuhn plays his long-suffering missus Golde, who can’t understand Tevye’s repeated, Jeremy Paxman-like question in the song Do You Love Me? ‘Do I what?’ she replies, astonished. These are real people.

Preserved in this version is the fantastic Jerome Robbins choreography, and the Jewish wedding that closes Act One really blows the roof off.

Judy Kuhn as Golde and Louise Gold as Yente. With a teeming stage of ponging peasants in prayer shawls, under the heel of vicious Tsarist police, the drab colours have a documentary feel

Judy Kuhn as Golde and Louise Gold as Yente. With a teeming stage of ponging peasants in prayer shawls, under the heel of vicious Tsarist police, the drab colours have a documentary feel

And what a great score this show has. You can see why it has outlasted Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly!, the other big smashes of 1964.

With a teeming stage of ponging peasants in prayer shawls, under the heel of vicious Tsarist police, the drab colours have a documentary feel.

There’s a superb, snowing finale of evicted Jews trudging into a not-so-distant future that will prove infinitely more terrible.

Traditionally, Fiddler is a cheesecake of a show – more gateau than ghetto. But this makes you think again. It’s a safe bet it’ll be transferring to the West End.

 

Snowflake

Old Fire Station, Oxford                                                      Until Sat, 1hr 30mins 

Rating:

Andy, a middle-aged widower in Oxford, is hoping on Christmas Eve for a visit from his daughter Maya – he hasn’t seen or heard from her in two years.

Andy is sad and a bit grumpy. When he voted Leave, his ‘generation snowflake’ daughter left him – his crusty politics, his admiration of Terry Scott sitcoms, his ‘mansplaining’. 

That’s the derogatory term for a man explaining things. I do it all the time. How else would children learn?

A young go-between (Racheal Ofori, above, very striking) ushers in the big reveal. The Corbynista daughter is played with a spooky, cold stare by Ellen Robertson

A young go-between (Racheal Ofori, above, very striking) ushers in the big reveal. The Corbynista daughter is played with a spooky, cold stare by Ellen Robertson

Written by Mike Bartlett (King Charles III, Doctor Foster), this is a grieving widower’s monologue for the first half. 

Then a young go-between (Racheal Ofori, very striking) ushers in the big reveal. The Corbynista daughter is played with a spooky, cold stare by Ellen Robertson.

As a story of a family riven with vaguely national reverberations, this sparks only fitfully. 

I rooted for the father (Elliot Levey), a tragic relic from the vinyl age who wears the naffest Christmas jumper since Colin Firth’s in Bridget Jones’s Diary.

 

Nine Night

Trafalgar Studios, London                                          Until Feb 23, 1hr 45mins 

Rating:

Cecilia Noble as Aunt Maggie

Cecilia Noble as Aunt Maggie

Mourning for Jamaicans can require a wake lasting nine nights, with the spirit of the dead being respectfully ushered out of the house on the final night. 

In Natasha Gordon’s funny, rum-fuelled, recriminatory play (transferred from the National Theatre) you see a Jamaican-British family gathering in a kitchen beneath Gloria, who is slowly dying upstairs. 

The hostess daughter – played by the author – copes with her siblings and the formidable, big-girthed Aunt Maggie (Cecilia Noble, hilarious), who brings the house down with every line and who occasionally requires subtitles for those of us not up on our patois. 

Meeting with hoots of laughter and sobs from the audience, it’s a really striking debut play about the wrenches of emigration and leave-taking, as a family finally gets it all off its chest. 

 

Doctor Faustus

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London                  Until Feb 2, 2hrs 30mins 

Rating:

In Paulette Randall’s production of Christopher Marlowe’s classic, Doctor Faustus is played by Jocelyn Jee Esien. 

Although she hurtles through early speeches, Esien later finds her footing, in a performance that brings out the sniggering humour of a play where a great scholar sells their soul for wealth, knowledge, power – and wastes it, really, on playing petty practical jokes.

No reason why Faustus shouldn’t be played by a black woman, but here the choice doesn’t especially illuminate anything new in the play. 

While this Doctor Faustus is high on the low comedy, it’s low on fear. When finally facing her fate –‘Faustus has gone to hell’ – Esien sounds more like she’s popped to Ikea for an afternoon

While this Doctor Faustus is high on the low comedy, it’s low on fear. When finally facing her fate –‘Faustus has gone to hell’ – Esien sounds more like she’s popped to Ikea for an afternoon

They might have explored same-sex desire – Faustus still delivers ‘was this the face that launched a thousand ships?’ to conjured-up lust object Helen of Troy – yet the relationship with an also female Mephistopheles lacks charge. 

Pauline McLynn in that role, however, is excellent: with sly, twisting smiles and serious side-eye, she drips sarcasm and contempt.

The production elsewhere is pretty traditional, with lavish period costumes, good and bad angels in literal wings, and the dubious use of comedy regional accents for the common folk.

But while this Doctor Faustus is high on the low comedy, it’s low on fear. When finally facing her fate –‘Faustus has gone to hell’ – Esien sounds more like she’s popped to Ikea for an afternoon.

Holly Williams

 

Billionaire Boy

NST City, Southampton                                                Until Jan 6, 2hrs 10mins 

Rating:

David Walliams’s children’s books are the latest favourites in the theatre. And no surprise. Joe Spud is the richest boy in Britain, after his dad invented BumFresh toilet paper. Joe (Ryan Heenan, endearingly ordinary) has everything except real friends, and he soon learns that money can’t buy mates.

Miranda Cooper and Nick Coler provide shiny pop tunes. Jon Brittain has crafted a great script with topical gags, bum jokes, but also a smart self-awareness. Sophia Nomvete, and Dean Nolan as Joe’s dad, should be singled out among a warm cast. Silly enough for children and witty enough for grown-ups.

Holly Williams   

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