Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical – Menier Chocolate Factory

Elena Skye and Darren Day in Close Up: The Twiggy Musical at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London. Picture: Manuel Harlan

Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical continues at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London until 18 November 2023.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

Writer, actor and comedian Ben Elton is no stranger to musical theatre, with credits including Tonight’s the Night, Love Never Dies and of course, the hugely successful We Will Rock You. Commercial success, however, hasn’t always come hand-in-hand with critical acclaim. For this new venture, Elton has turned to the life and career of 1960s supermodel Twiggy for inspiration. Elton views Twiggy and the era she grew up in through the prism of modern social mores. It’s a highly disjointed affair that doesn’t quite come off. Rather than dramatise her life, it’s given a queasy, meta-theatrical comedy take. It makes light of the most troubling episodes of Twiggy’s rise to fame with a life-was-just-like-that-in-the-old-days attitude.

Elton touches on important and controversial topics such as feminism, mental health, misogyny and toxic masculinity but never troubles to explore them dramatically. Instead they are punchlines in a curiously anodyne biography. Twiggy herself comes across as a likeable, pragmatic yet desperately naive figure, who embraces everything that life throws at her but struggles when it comes to change. Work – her career encompasses modelling, plus acting and singing on film and Broadway – is a refuge from the problematic men in her life. Unfortunately, Elton gives up on the story by the time it reaches the 1980s, leaving us to look up the rest on Wikipedia. Twiggy’s story is definitely worth telling, but this effort seems wholly underwhelming.

Musically, Elton has chosen a jukebox score to reflect the era from Twiggy’s birth in the 1940s to the late 1970s. It throws up a fun mix of songs from ‘We’ll Meet Again’ to ‘Downtown’. While the musical numbers are familiar, and chosen to complement the narrative, the elephant in the room is that there are no Beatles or Rolling Stones songs. Bearing in mind the era in which the young Twiggy came to fame was the 1960s, this omission seems odd. Of course it’s probably a rights issue, a problem that Elton flags up later in one of many meta references, where the Sandy Wilson estate seems to have refused the rights to any songs from The Boy Friend.

Otherwise the soundtrack is a fun mix of period classics, arranged with gusto and performed with energy and enthusiasm by a talented ensemble. Standouts include Darren Day as Michael Witney, Twiggy’s husband who struggles with both alcoholism and it seems an excruciating wig. Thankfully neither stop him from delivering a heartfelt ‘The Air That I Breathe’ that becomes a theme to their doomed marriage. Lauren Azania AJ King-Yombo as Kay and Aoife Dunne as Cindy touch in often as underwritten long-term friends throughout Twiggy’s life, wagging a friendly finger at her choices in men. Dunne also appears randomly as Phil Spector at one point, in a episode so bizarre it could only be true.

Matt Corner presents Twiggy’s self appointed swengali Justin de Villeneuve as a comedy villain, and Steven Serlin plays everyone from Woody Allen and Melvyn Bragg to Twiggy’s mild-mannered, doting father Norman. A skittish Hannah-Jane Fox as Twiggy’s mother Nell, who underwent hideous electrotherapy for many years, ramps up the drama but this mostly dissolves thanks to Elton’s thirst for a good gag. In Elena Skye, Elton has found the perfect leading lady, capturing Twiggy’s androgyny and evident good nature. Skye’s confident, characterful vocals deliver some of the evenings best tunes – ‘You Don’t Own Me’, which closes the Act I is a highlight.

Stylistically Elton’s production is all over the place, held together by some great songs under the baton of musical director Stuart Morley. Does it give offer a balanced dramatisation of Twiggy’s life? Not really, but some people will adore it for the nostalgia it throws up.

Paul Vale