Natasha Brown, Glyn Kerslake and Matthew Harvey in Come Fly With Me at the Salisbury Playhouse. Picture Richard Davenport
Come Fly With Me continues at the Salberg Studio, Salisbury Playhouse until 17 January 2015.
At first glance, it looks as though rain is pouring on Stonehenge – a sight familiar to anyone resident in Salisbury just a stone’s throw from the iconic landmark.
So it would not be a surprising setting for a show at Salisbury Playhouse, but closer examination reveals that the backdrop that greets our entrance into the theatre’s studio space is of a heavy downpour on a cityscape of skyscrapers.
Gloomy and miserable, it is the sort of place and weather conditions that we all long to escape at this time of year – and this show is the next best thing to a plane ticket out of wintry Wiltshire.
But before long we are gazing on blue skies, listening to songs that evoke Paris, Nice, Copenhagen, Bangkok, Buenos Aires and New York, New York.
Come Fly With Me is the latest in a long line of themed cabaret-style musical collages offered as an adult alternative to the family friendly fare of panto next door.
Charged with the remit of taking the audience on a wonderful holiday and bringing them home with sunshine in their step, Adam Lenson (who also directs), musical supervisor Glyn Kerslake and Playhouse artistic director Gareth Machin have whittled down 300 travel-related tracks to a little over 40, drawing from a wide range of composers and performers including Sondheim, Queen, Randy Crawford, Gilbert and Sullivan, Simon and Garfunkel and I See Hawks in LA.
In front of postcard-style projections that fill the back wall of the studio, designer Bec Chippendale has piled suitcases which are transformed by the four actor-musicians into bicycles, plane seats, sun-loungers and more.
Adept on piano, guitar, ukelele, clarinet, box cajon, harmonica and capable of switching instruments and musical styles at the drop of a hat, the talented quartet is brilliant in harmony and splendid in solo.
As a performer, Glyn Kerslake has a CV that encompasses West End musicals – including last year’s award-winning Merrily We Roll Along and a stint as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera – so his musical pedigree is not in question and the quality shines through.
His phrasing is immaculate, his tone very easy on the ear, and he is no slouch on the comedy front, providing one half of a very funny double act with Elaine Glover in ‘Our Holiday Has Just Begun’.
Matthew Hardy and Natasha Brown (making her professional debut) have their own sub-plots of parting, longing and homecoming going on which lend emotional depth to the evening.
Act I is all about the longing to leave, the tribulations of packing, the sadness of separation and the joy (or dread in ‘The Plane is Going Down’, delivered with great comic timing by Elaine Glover) of climbing aboard bus, bike, boat, train or plane and taking off into the blue.
The second is an upbeat celebration of new sights and sounds before the pull of home has them all heading ‘Homeward Bound’ and the audience clicking its collective red heels together Dorothy-style.
We are no longer in Kansas or Oz, but we are all humming as we leave the building.
Lesley Bates
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