A Couple of Swells – Duchess Theatre and Touring

A Couple of Swells was reviewed at the Duchess Theatre, London. The tour continues until 1 June 2023.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

With the title borrowed from the Irving Berlin score for film Easter Parade, Liza Pulman and Joe Stilgoe breezed into the Duchess Theatre, fresh from their seaside date in Aldeburgh, as part of their extensive UK tour, with a few further venues to follow.

In the company of so likeable and talented a pair, a reviewer might award his stars and quit, job done. However, the purpose of sitting tight in the stalls at the Duchess, currently the home to The Play That Goes Wrong, the title and venue both up for an anecdote and a joke or two, would be a negligence of duty, on what turned out to be an evening of pure delight.

Stilgoe opened the evening alone on stage, noodling on keyboards, offering tantalising glimpses of the American songbook. In conclusion we heard Pulman and him in a Vegas finale, the Frank Sinatra/Sammy Davis Jr duet ‘Me and My Shadow’.

Let’s start with Pulman. When I caught her show at the Riverside Studios, just over a year ago, post Covid blues were in the air, her show, long postponed, finally seeing the light of day. Her artistry was self-evident, her stage manner occasionally awkward. Performing solo with a touch of first night nerves, she didn’t quite settle down, and there was a straining for vocal effect from time to time, a la Streisand. Now in partnership with all-round good egg Stilgoe, she visibly relaxed, played the fool, and radiated confidence, assured in her vocal technique, honed from childhood.

Stilgoe’s versatility never ceases to amaze me. In a production of High Society at the Old Vic Theatre in 2015 he entertained the audience with a ten minute sequence of song, before taking up his role in the show itself. Here he was master of ceremonies one moment, duetting with Pulman the next, going solo as pianist, picking up a double bass, mistakenly purchased instead of a banjo, and writer of the clever opening number.

Shared visual gags enlivened the repartee. Having sung “I know a fine way to treat a Steinway”, Pulman moved across stage in an attempt to cover up of the Yamaha trademark! Pirandello might have been pushed to create the surreal scene when the audience asked to name a favourite tune, with requests that embraced everything from Duran Duran to ‘Nellie the Elephant’, were spun by Stilgoe into a magical web, in a knockabout turn. ‘The King’s New Clothes’ from Hans Andersen, a Danny Kaye favourite from childhood, and a Dudley Moore portrait, were other winners.

Pulman promised us Rodgers with Hart and Hammerstein. It’s hard to believe that ‘Mountain Greenery’ was written in 1926, so fresh it sounded from this pair (good to hear all the verses too). The juxtaposition of Laurey and Curly’s ‘People Will Say We’re in Love’ with Julie and Billy’s ‘If I Loved You’, both couples wondering how life might turn out as a married couple, was bound together by an insistent rhythmic figure that held the long lines of these melodies together, the singing itself a thing of wonder.

In a nod to us seniors, they gave us a sublime ‘The Folks Who Live On the Hill’ (Kern/Hammerstein), the piano part echoing the arrangement that Gordon Jenkins created for Peggy Lee. ‘You’re Just in Love’, a classic duet in counterpoint from Call Me Madam. rounded off the first half.

Pulman’s ‘I Had Myself a True Love’ from St Louis Woman, by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer (not the Tory MP, she quipped), was her own special moment in the spotlight. It’s a long song, sad, at times angry, and Pulman’s take on it sent shivers down the spine of this reviewer.

As an encore they sang ‘Some Other Time’, another exquisite number from the American song catalogue, from On the Town. I’d have preferred to have ended the evening on that note, but in a bow to Vegas, we had a snatch of Frank and Sammy on record doing their stuff in Vegas. A small reservation on an enchanted evening.

Adrian Edwards