There is perhaps a thing of getting too cosy in the BT. When your coat is brushing the arm of the acoustic guitarist, as he manfully tries to ignore you scribbling away and openly judging his show, things have possibly got beyond the “intimate” setting of theatre-in-the-round, and into the realms of awkward. And sitting so close to a miked-up three-man band – surely I won’t here the singers? I thought, as I tried not to thwack the music stand by flinging open my notebook too enthusiastically.
I need not have worried. The haunting a capella voice of Ellen Timothy, who plays the narrator in this surprisingly thought-provoking musical, soon rose above the transfixed audience. The music was always going to be great – In Her Eyes was written by the very same Toby Huelin of Theory of Justice success, but what I hadn’t counted on was an added depth and sensitivity of this second work of art. Without giving too much away, what describes itself as a “dark musical without the jazz hands”, is more like an opera that soars and plunges between euphoric ballads, catchy tunes, and aggressively clashing melodies.
The all-female seven-strong cast were a highly talented bunch, whose powerful voices brought a depth to their multi-part harmonies. The mysterious figure of “Jamie”, the inexplicably destructive boyfriend of the protagonist Freddie (Rachel Coll), never appears on stage. Apparently he’s on the other end of the phone, or just behind the audience, but never is the threatening phantom figure allowed to trespass into the arena of our vision.
It was also easy to forget the fact that these Oxford students were all about my age; the five “teenage” actresses transformed into delightfully bitchy, flouncy and awkward beings of school-age, without ever dipping a toe into the waters of stereotype. By stroke of luck or genius, the four “popular” girls are played by four fairly petite actresses, so that the already isolated Freddie towers elegant but out of place above them. Particular mention should go to Sasha, (Sarah Mansfield), who storms around small and shiny and smiling with the rest of her friends, but whose character also wrestles with believable guilt about the group’s behaviour towards Freddie.
Following the rise and fall of a tragedy, this musical builds to a mingling interweaving climax of harmonies between chorus, mother, narrator and protagonist, and then ends in the only prolonged speech of the play, and a blackout. The moments of stunned silence before the applause were concrete proof of the success of the evening. I even managed not to knock the guitarist’s music stand over.
