Day: July 27, 2013

The Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast will always be best know to those on the outside as the factory that built the Titanic, but Happenstance Theatre Company’s latest piece gives you the skinny from the inside.

Writer Dan Gordon plays Davy Gordon, a worker in the ‘Boat Factory’, perhaps a relative as most of Dan’s family worked in the place at one time or another, and Dan grew up in its shadow. “It just sits there,” says Davy, “wheezing and groaning and smoking. A city within a city.”

The piece is a love letter to this special place he both misses and once feared, when family, friends, acquaintances would hobble home with missing fingers, broken toes, wounds of all kinds (“At the Boat Factory, health and safety was never an issue”).

Mobile-faced Michael Condron plays every other character in the piece (32 in all) from Davy’s gran and grandpa, through to the distinctly odd Clifford who’s refrain –“Do you wanna go fishing for pigeons?” – sounds like an old music hall number, and who’s not allowed matches since he burnt his grannie’s budgie.

Condron finally settles on Wee Geordie Kilpatrick, a man crippled with polio, who has a strange sense of humour and a Moby Dick obsession. He soon becomes Davy’s best friend.

Often laugh out loud funny, the piece showcases both actor’s talents superbly. They don’t miss a beat as they climb all over the scaffolding which makes up the sparse stage, joshing each other and playing practical jokes. The tales told are interesting and engaging although I did begin to look at my watch about an hour in to this 80 minute piece and wonder where we were going.

But we weren’t really going anywhere and it was the journey that was the thing, and a moving and humorous one it was too.

WHAT: The Boat Factory

WHERE: The King’s Head Theatre, Upper Street, Islington

WHEN: Until August 17

TICKETS: £15 – £25

RUNNING TIME: 80 minutes, no interval

FOR MORE INFO:  https://kingsheadtheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873490532/events

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: No: been there, done that

What is it about musicals and not really letting rip? And I mean REALLY letting rip!

First there was The Book of Mormon which everyone thought was going to be the end word in naughtiness and subversion but which turned out to be practically an Osmonds lovefest. And now we have WAG! The Musical, about a group of women who are ‘needlessly famous’ (as the show’s signature tune has it), a topic just perfect to be made into a big ol’ catfight of a show, where jokes could be lobbed high and left to smash on top of the audiences head like fake Faberge eggs stuffed with candyfloss, chewing gum and razor blades.

Instead, we get a show that doesn’t know which side it’s on: the WAG’s or anyone who’s ever looked at a WAG and thought, at the very least, ‘oh dear’. Consequently, it’s just not the bitchy, sharp, nasty, talons-out free-for-all that it could so easily and so gloriously have been. It is, however, a much more enjoyable night out than I expected.

Set in a London department store, the musical follows the lives of Jen (Daisy Wood-Davis) and Sharron (Amy Scott), two ordinary girls trying to rub along and hopefully better themselves. For Jen this means getting her footballer boyfriend Charlie (Gavin Alex) to leave his wife for her: for Sharron it means a break from the abusive Trevor.

Meanwhile, the store is about to launch a big new clothing range that night and preparations continue apace, with camp store manager Mr Frank (a disappointingly under par Tim Flavin) overseeing proceedings.

Lizzie Cundy, real life ex-WAG and a very odd looking woman indeed, arrives as a red carpet reporter and procedes to totter around on heels and, god help us all, sing. Sing!! What bright spark in the production team thought of that little gem? Shoot them right now please.

But footie is a game of two halves so I’m told, and WAG! does pick up in the second, mainly thanks to Alyssa Kyria who plays the comedy character she’d already developed in comedy clubs, the scene-munching Greek goddess, Ariadne. Some of her lines aren’t exactly inspired – “He’s a greasy git, he smells a little bit, but it’s a small price to pay, if he makes ten grand a day” – but as some old Irish guy used to say ‘it’s the way she tells ’em’.

The problem with WAG! is that it’s all over the place, message-wise. Written by three men, it doesn’t know whether its celebrating the footballers’ wives lifestyle or condemning it. Some consistency is needed in a musical that’s as straightforward as this but we don’t even get it from the main characters, Jen and Sharron, who are one minute slagging off WAGs and the next aspiring to be a (not) paid up member of the club.

Wood-Davis and Scott do make Jen and Sharron both likeable and rootable-for and their singing is heartfelt, while there’s a lovely comic turn from Katie Kerr as Blow-Jo (and yes, you’ve guessed the origin right), a ‘multi-coloured trout’ who’s fat, loud, and shops in Primark.

It’s pleasing to see different sized women in what could have been the most skinny latte of shows, and that they’re not mentioning their weight every five minutes, but it’s not so pleasing to see such stereotypical gay characters once again. So fucking gay is Mr Frank that at one point he ends a song (“Don’t Hide Your Quirk” – is being gay a quirk, Mr Frank?) dressed in Rio carnival gear. The other gayer is Monsieur Bobo, the fashion designer behind the launch, another big camp flamboyant dahhhling. But perhaps I’m being harsh. It’s the nature of a musical to use stereotypes and the straight girls and boys don’t get a much better deal.

As the launch nears, the tension steps up a small kerb. Mr Frank’s booking, Scooch, are stuck in traffic. What to do? Step forward mild-mannered janitor Pete (Chris Grierson) who’s been strumming away in the basement and trying to woo Sharron for the first half of the show. His time to shine has come! It’s just a pity that he not only looks like Olly Murs, but sounds and dances like him too. The poor, poor boy.

Musically WAG! doesn’t shine: it glimmers a bit. The numbers are all passable but generic with only a couple of toe-tappers hidden away. The lyrics are cheeky, knowing, but mostly a bit chewed up by the sounds system, while the singing is patchy, with Wood-Davis’ Jen being the stand-out and Cundy being the stand-in-the-path-of-this-lorry-please.

Overall, this is a nice little musical which passes an evening nicely. And that’s the problem: it’s too darned nice. If the writers were to pack it away in a little Louis Vuitton bag and take it on a fortnight’s holiday to Barbados it might come back as a bigger and better beast, this time with large, pointy fuck-off teeth. Then a ticket would definitely be worth fighting for.

WHAT: WAG! The Musical

WHERE: Charing Cross Theatre, The Arches, Villiers Street, London

WHEN: Until 24 August, various times

TICKETS: £27 – £39.50

RUNNING TIME: just over two hours (I think, but don’t quote me – I got lost in it’s spell)

FOR MORE INFO: http://www.charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: I’m surprising myself here, but yes!

STARS: Three