The cast of The Bakewell Bake Off at the Landor Theatre, London
The Bakewell Bake-Off continues at the Landor Theatre, London, until 26 October.
A fun night, good songs, fine team playing by stars of the future… what’s not to like in a frothy musical millefeuille of a pastry concocted by Guildford School of Acting graduates that started as an in-house project, moved up a gear to a four-day sell-out run at Waterloo East, and has now been taken up for a three-week run by the Landor.
This London fringe theatre has a deservedly high reputation for having a keen eye for a hit show and it will be a crying shame if this one is not seen and relished by as large an audience as possible.
Anyone coming away from The Bakewell Bake Off not feeling a whole lot better than when he/she arrived has to be a serious case for treatment. Satirising the BBC’s The Great British Bake Off, it is, as director Julian Woolford said this week, “A Chorus Line with cakes”.
Take seven eager contestants, three feuding judges and a loquacious mistress of ceremonies trying in vain to exert some control over the chaotic proceedings, and you have the basic ingredients of this tasty theme.
With past old boys and girls of GSA including Michael Ball, Brenda Blethyn, Bill Nighy, Tom Chambers and Celia Imrie as well as Kris Olsen and Turlough Convery, the last two winners of the nationwide Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year competition, the current crop have some pretty big boots to fill.
Input from the Baking Committee writing team started at 11 for the first, local version four months ago and has risen to 14 for the third edition. It focuses on the weird and wonderful folk of the Derbyshire town of Bakewell, famed for its Pudding and Tart, two entirely different confections that often get confused, and the wild contest to find the tart of tarts (or pudding of puddings).
Many of the writing team have also grabbed the best parts and a high-heeled Tom Beynon as the gender-bending German Henrietta Apfelstrudel has got himself the funniest song, ‘Henrietta’s Lieder’. The line “It’s hard to build rapport when you mention the war” is a neat rhyme that makes the audience think, as is “one of you” with vindaloo” from another good number with a similar plea to any racially hidebound Brits around called ‘Let Me Fit In’, a song which says “I may look Asian but I’m just as British as any of you”.
This is brilliantly performed by Kayleigh Thadani, the best of a number of good voices. As Thadani moves as confidently as she sings, it comes as no surprise to find her doubling as the show’s choreographer, along with the multi-talented Nicole Tiffany Rushing, who is down as choreographer, assistant director and writing-team member.
‘We Might Fall In Love’ is a very sweet song given a fine treatment by Emily Jeffreys, Tim Stuart and Katherine Glover. The last-named, who plays lovelorn lesbian Flora Drizzle, is an actress to watch. She gets all the humour out of her part without laying it on with a trowel.
No one could accuse Cerys Alley as the bossy-boots leader of the parish council Griselda Pratt-Dewhurst of under-acting. She gives it 110 per cent and then some, although some of the exaggerated facial expressions would be better suited to a larger space than the intimate Landor where all the audience is within a few yards of the actors.
Alexandra Spalding, as the emcee, has the biggest role and works the room superbly, often bringing the audience into proceedings, even to have the final say on who wins. She also conducts the half-time raffle and enjoyment of this cracking evening is in no way impeded by my party copping two of the three prizes!
There is plenty of nudge-nudge wink-wink innuendo in a clever and thoroughly entertaining script. Accents are splendid and well held throughout with director Woolford, a man with many creative credits to his name and currently GSA head of Post-graduate Musical Theatre, controlling his passionate, enthusiastic cast with a firm hand. Kevin Michael Cripps is MD.
One of the great excitements of theatre when you approach the ‘twilight years’, as I am, is to leave it knowing the future is in good hands and here is a heartwarming show that fully reinforces that thought.
Jeremy Chapman
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