Mrs Doubtfire – Shaftesbury Theatre

Picture: Manuel Harlan

Mrs Doubtfire continues at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

After multiple closures on Broadway, which badly harmed the possibility of a profitable run, Mrs Doubtfire is saying ‘hello!’ to London for quite a while – we can safely guess – 10 months year after testing the UK waters with a month long run at the Manchester Opera House. The Broadway production unfortunately came too early after Tootsie, another musical about cross dressing, a topic now considered contentious in our times of increasing trans awareness. 

After a tryout in Seattle, Broadway’s Mrs Doubtfire could barely get in a few performances before the first wave of Covid lockdowns in 2020, reopening and closing again, eventually for good in 2022. Even if it’s more of a comedy with music than a musical in essence, the show didn’t deserve such a fate because, whether you’re a fan of the movie or not, it really stands on its own as a super fun show, incredibly well staged and choreographed.

The score by Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick (the latter also penned the book with John O’Farrell) is more functional than memorable, but it has the merits of covering a large spectrum of musical styles. The same can be said for the inventive choreography by Lorin Latarro, which goes from traditional Broadway production numbers (‘Easy Peasy’, with tap dancing chefs), to disco (‘Make Me a Woman’), rock ‘n’ roll (‘Rockin’ Now’) and even flamenco (‘He Lied to Me’).

The same composers previously wrote for Something Rotten, which sadly hasn’t made its way to the West End yet, but Mrs Doubtfire shows stronger versatility if not great memorability – its best moments are in the ‘I want’ song ‘I Want to Be There’ and ‘The Shape of Things to Come’, a moving duet between Mrs Doubtfire and his wife Miranda, who gets her own reflective moment in the score. Another highpoint is a dream sequence with multiple Doubtfires in a chorus line, perhaps the only musical number to move the story along, thus justifying the piece’s claim to musical theatre rather than just being another movie on stage.

Outside the creative choreography, the uber professional scenic design by David Korins, lighting by Philip S Rosenberg and costumes by Catherine Zuber, with their ever faster recurrent changes as Daniel Hillard goes in and out of the Mrs Doubtfire character, all make the show worthy of success.

In the title role, Gabriel Vick is a revelation, delivering a bravura, show-stopping, tour de force of a double performance, alone worth the price of the ticket. Barely leaving the stage during the two and a half hour runtime, he exudes warmth to an audience he holds in the palm of his hand throughout.   

He’s surrounded by good company, especially Laura Tebbutt as Miranda Hillard. Her performance is equally multi-layered, as is that of the vocally impressive Carla Dixon-Hernandez who plays the eldest daughter Lydia. Cameron Blakely is equally excellent as Frank, Daniel’s brother, and so is Marcus Collins as Frank’s husband Andre. As Stuart, Samuel Edwards’ performance is also quite enjoyable, Lydia’s new love interest, despite the fact that the script doesn’t make clear whether he’s the bad guy or another good guy – one thing is for sure is that his number with Doubtfire at the gym, ‘Big Fat No’, slows down Act II a bit.

Under the expert direction of Broadway veteran Jerry Zaks – who has recently staged splendid Broadway revivals of Hello, Dolly! and The Music Man– this production is pure fun and fluffy entertainment. Above all it’s a celebration of family values – of blood ties or chosen ones. The story shows how far a Dad will go to be with his kids and isn’t just another clownish tale of cross-dressing. I suspect that, for these reasons as well as the sheer talent of its leading man, Mrs Doubtfire is destined to stay in the West End for the long haul, even if it’s more of a successful screen-to-stage adaptation and a great comedy with music than a great original musical in itself. 

 Patrick Honoré