The Life of the Party – Menier Chocolate Factory

Caroline O’Connor in The Life of the Party – A Celebration of the Songs of Andrew Lippa at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London. Picture: Alastair Muir

The Life of the Party – A Celebration of the Songs of Andrew Lippa continues at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London until 14 June.

As a composer, Andrew Lippa seems to specialise in adaptations that don’t immediately stand out as obvious musical theatre material. Alongside his most well-known and successful work, the Tony-nominated The Addams Family, sit adaptations of cartoon flapper Betty Boop, children’s book The Man in the Ceiling, 1920s narrative poem The Wild Party and recent Broadway flop Big Fish. Regardless of the source materials, Lippa’s music and lyrics are always fully engaging, with deft turn of phrases in both words and music that, while not well known to theatre audience, have made him a firm favourite amongst cabaret performers.

And so a full length cabaret of nothing but Lippa songs is always going to be a tantalising prospect, not least with Lippa himself at the piano. With vocal support from musical theatre stalwarts Damian Humbley, Caroline O’Connor and Summer Strallen, a straightforward cabaret would make for a great evening out in the company of some highly enjoyable numbers. Thankfully, though, director David Babani and his team at the Menier have not been satisfied with a conventional format. Lippa himself becomes more of a performer than one may expect, frequently leaving the musical performance duties to MD Andy Massey and an impressive three-piece string band. When performing front and centre as often as he does, Lippa may not always be as slick or as commanding a presence as his three professional companions, but he is never less than charming and funny.

Morgan Large’s design, with a set whose automation at times defies belief in the Menier’s confined space and a series of costume changes that help place each musical sequence in marvellous context, combines with Lynne Page’s choreography to glorious effect. Lippa’s songs work better than some composers’ when taken out of the context of their original scores – but a little context never hurts, and the staging works so well in providing that.

Chronologically, the evening’s summary of Lippa’s musical career jumps all over the place, with revue songs and numbers from works in progress separating longer sequences collecting numbers from his musicals. Of these sequences, it is undoubtedly the five numbers from The Wild Party that form the highlight of the evening, from Strallen’s drunken writhing on a piano top – and a rather unceremonious dismount – combined with some great duet work with Humbley. In the same sequence, O’Connor’s rendition of ‘An Old-Fashioned Love Story’, sung in the show as a predatory older lesbian drunkenly scours the party of the title in search of a conquest, brings the house down as the number of the evening.

While humour both fine and coarse is never far away – from Strallen’s saucily adult take on Cinderella, the sinful Cindy, to the blasphemously uproarious ‘Christ Almighty’ – there is space for great tenderness, too. The plaintive ’Love Somebody Now’ and ‘Are You Here?’ from Lippa’s Harvey Milk oratorio, and the encore number ‘Happy/Sad’ demonstrate that love and laughter are never far away from one another. And while Lippa’s name may not be as well-known across London as it is in the US, this accomplished show works its socks off to put that right.

Scott Matthewman

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