Sophie Evans and Glyn Kerslake in A Little of What You Fancy at Salisbury Playhouse. Pictures: Paul Blakemore
A Little of What You Fancy continues at The Salberg, Salisbury Playhouse until 21 January.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Glyn Kerslake has become a regular fixture at Salisbury Playhouse over the Christmas period in recent years.This year he features prominently in both festive shows in The Salberg, the theatre’s intimate studio space, both as musical director/arranger and as performer.
The first, The Night Before Christmas, an enchanting show aimed at pre-schoolers and their families, interweaving Clement C Moore’s classic poem with the Christmas Eve preparations of a Victorian family, has just finished its run.
Having charmed the tots, attention now turns to more mature members of the audience who might be less inclined to venture next door to board Aladdin’s magic carpet to pantoland.
A Little of What You Fancy tears a leaf out of Marie Lloyd’s songbook and takes us back to the Victorian variety entertainment of music hall.
Kerslake and his collaborator, Salisbury’s artistic director Gareth Machin, who also directs the piece, employ the same talented cast of four and utilise the same set as for the previous show.
Here, designer Zoe Squire’s backdrop of picture frames and twinkling starlight frame an evening of songs, poems and even a little melodrama as presented by our hosts, the Fezziwigs, as a prelude to their New Year’s Eve party.
Adrian Grove and Rebecca Trehearn in A Little of What You Fancy
It follows a year through its seasons – giving scope for fun at the seaside, Halloween shivers and a festive finale – and mixes music hall standards with light operetta, tub-thumping paeans of praise to the working man, solemn hymns and Christmas songs.
Adrian Gove is Mr Frederick Fezziwig, a jovial chap keen to involve his guests (us) in the merriment and fond of a comic tune like ‘Your Baby Has Gone Down the Plughole’ and ‘Champagne Charlie’.
His wife Belinda (Rebecca Trehearn) would like to remind us of more serious matters like the struggle for the vote, but she’s also capable of riding ‘On a Bicycle Built For Two’ and dancing the polka.
Kerslake, largely confined to the piano where he sings of lost love and lost chords, steps away from the keyboards occasionally to become a fetching bathing belle for the seaside sequence or a cheating card player for ‘The Hearse Song’.
Family maid Dora (Sophie Evans) is called into service as songbird and scene shifter.
All four are fabulous singers, their voices working well in harmony and each shining in solo numbers.
It is fun, stirring and poignant in equal measure. Ultimately, it’s as warming as mulled wine and has the cosy feel of a bygone age when entertainment was as simple as gathering around the piano for a Christmas song or two.
Lesley Bates
Readers may also be interested in:
Interview – Sophie Evans on her Christmas roles at Salisbury Playhouse
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