The premise seemed interesting enough: a look at the way in which musical theatre developed over the twentieth century to become the hot currency it is today.
Unfortunately, this kind of show is always more likely to draw musical aficionados out of the woodwork – certainly the audience didn’t seem to comprise walk-ins. And thankfully so; calling your show It’s a Hit! and then featuring lesser-known songs from popular musicals – and just plain lesser-known musicals – seemed unusual. One song from each decade? Really?
It was something of a whistle-stop, haphazard tour, then (with two of the ten songs actually post-20th century). No worries, I thought. There’ll be a great narrative thread to lead us joyously, hand in hand across this musical minefield. Instead, there were basic, reductive ‘piece-to-camera’ style interjections by each cast member between songs, delivered in a non-naturalistic children’s presenter tone (with the exception of Holly Graham, who addressed the audience in the non-formal manner appropriate to the intimacy of the BT). It was as though, when not singing, they were in a bad play, or they were declaiming a Racinian tragedy or something. Zakiy Manji, wide-eyed and stumbling over his lines, looked as though he might wet himself at one moment.
You might be forgiven for presuming that the girls outperformed the boys: forgiven, and pleasantly surprised, for Oxford has a wealth of male musical talent. Sadly, the two male performers (Zakiy Manji and Jack Graham) were indeed markedly weaker than their lady castmates, both painfully lacking in charisma. Manji in particular was difficult to watch, suffering as he did from a severe case of rabbit-in-headlights, while Graham flitted between blank and dour looks.
If you closed your eyes and didn’t allow yourself to be put off by the truly concerning expressions of fear worn by Manji, however, the experience wasn’t an altogether unpleasant one. His voice was tuneful and his rendition of Sunrise, Sunset (Fiddler on the Roof) was a high point. It was a different story for Graham, whose was obviously straining on tenor notes and frequently fell foul of flat pitch.
Of the girls and, obviously, the cast, Hannah Bristow was far and away the strongest performer. Her acting – through song, a complex feat – was on the money, her versatility unmatched by any other. Yes, Heather Young was pleasing in her moving If I Loved You (Carousel), but her puppy-dog eyes were out of place in the opening and closing ensemble numbers. Holly Graham’s perma-smile was great for the lighter-hearted numbers, but didn’t work for the sultry When You’re Good to Mama (Chicago) or the gritty, confrontational Take Me or Leave Me (RENT).
With so many songs available from such a vast period (pretty much the entire history of the genre), it’d be fair to expect each song to be absolutely nailed: I don’t know how the songs were chosen, but I suspect that the cast’s strengths and preferences played a large part. Why, then, was the potential show-stealer, Take Me or Leave Me – arguably the biggest song of the show (and from 1996, *not* 1994) – sung an octave below? Why was When You’re Good to Mama, a song that needs a big band behind it, ever chosen? In the former case, all the character of Maureen’s force (through the impressive high belting that should be heard) was lost, leaving us to believe that Joanne well and truly won that argument, while in the latter, poor Holly was left relying far too much on her feather boa to make a seductive song out of a brassy, bolshy one.
Movement was a major issue. It’s not just that the little choreography there was was overtly basic and under-rehearsed, but that no one (Bristow aside) really made any use of the space or even interacted very much with the others on stage. The performances often lacked a dimension that would come with commitment to each role.
The supporting band was worthy of praise, if only to commend their ability to cope with Jack Graham’s ever-changing tempo. Alice Angliss on percussion coped well with some challenging time signatures, although Jonathan Soman’s accompaniment to Holly Graham’s When You’re Good to Mama felt a little too slow and stylised.
Given the nature of the BT and the time restriction of one hour for the later slot, I couldn’t help but think that this concert would be much better suited to a College chapel – somewhere like Mansfield, where they’ve done the same thing before. That way, the audience might have felt more at ease and not had the same expectations that you do of black-box theatre. They’d also have benefited from a longer setlist, or ‘showreel’.
If this was indeed a ‘showcase’, as it coyly partly advertised itself, then it was unimpressive. With criticism to be found in cast, setlist, choreography and direction, the show found itself somewhere between average and good, brought up only by the strong accompanists, female flashes of greatness and rich harmonies in ensemble numbers.
Not a bad show, but rather a frustrating than a great one – you’ll see better this term.
2.5 stars
