Tom Pepper, Margaret Ashley, Roger Alborough, Tori Hargreaves and Felicity Sparks in Andy Capp The Musical at the Finborough Theatre, London. Picture: Darren Bell
Andy Capp The Musical continues at the Finborough Theatre, London until 23 February.
Rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Reg Smythe’s Daily Mirror cartoon Andy Capp must have seemed like the most unlikely of sources for a musical. Unlike Little Orphan Annie, there is no long-running narrative; unlike Peanuts, there is no large and varied cast of characters. The strip consists mostly of the workshy, heavy drinking Andy and his battle-axe, rolling pin-wielding wife Flo, with no ‘story’ lasting more than that day’s three panels.
The resultant musical struggled in the West End in the early 1980s, with audiences staying away despite critical appreciation and an Olivier nomination. And so, the label ‘flop’ has hung around its neck ever since – now the Finborough’s revival, directed by Jake Smith, is a chance to reappraise the material.
And while the tiny Finborough stage is perhaps London’s least appropriate for a full-cast, dance-heavy musical, it is surprisingly the numbers in which the whole ensemble are precipitously capering on stage that work the most effectively.
Trevor Peacock’s book expands Andy’s world substantially into a fully-fledged community of characters, most notably his nephew Elvis Horsepole, whose impending marriage to his fiancée Raquel is portrayed as a counterpoint to the deteriorating state of Andy’s own relationship with Flo.
The stakes initially seem quite low – for much of Act I, it seems as if the musical’s big dilemma will be if Andy manages to attend the wedding as Elvis’ best man while also entering his favourite pigeon into a race. And around that plot, there is avenue for a collection of broad-brush caricatures: the socially climbing mother of the bride and her hen-pecked husband, the revealingly-dressed young woman and her brutish boyfriend, the weaselly rent collector who ends up the butt of Andy’s jokes and scams.
As a comic-inspired show, this frothiness and collection of stereotypes is perhaps understandable, although it doesn’t quite warrant a half-hearted attempt to use speech balloons and the like during a bar fight. And while the attitudes to gender roles on display are both hackneyed and predictable (men are useless, women are harridans, and domestic violence is funny if it’s inflicted by the latter on the former) such stereotyping does set the scene for one of the show’s best numbers, the ensemble ‘Points of View’.
Indeed, there are many great songs throughout (all written by Alan Price, with lyrics co-written by Price and Peacock), from the comedic ‘O Gawd Men… Beasts!’ to the lyrically romantic ‘I Could Not Have Dreamed Him’, which in the hands of Tori Hargreaves’ Raquel feels like a love ballad that should have broken out from the confines of its origins.
The broad strokes of the plot also allow for the depth of the relationship between Andy and Flo. For a couple whose rows were annotated daily in the newspaper funny pages, any dispute that powers the real meat of the musical’s plot needs to be substantial. The story elects to have Andy refuse to allow Flo to buy a new outfit for the impending wedding, despite it being her money which he drinks away every night in the pub.
The show’s biggest problem is making Andy loveable even when he is being an unreasonably sexist, misogynist, boor, and Roger Alborough tries his hardest throughout to keep a twinkle in his eye even at the height of his awfulness. But the audience’s sympathies lie fairly and squarely with Lynn Robertson Hay’s Flo, struggling with her child-like drunkard of a layabout husband and needing to find her own identity. Andy’s casual demolition of what remains of her self-esteem is perhaps the most affecting moment in a musical which is far more comfortable in the slight and the superficial.
There is much to enjoy here, from Chris Cuming’s space-defying choreography to an endearing performance from Terence Frisch as the silent man who finally finds the courage to come out from his fearsome wife’s shadow.
It is still possible to see why Andy Capp The Musical did not have the mass appeal to sustain a full West End run, but in the rather smaller space of the Finborough it has charm to spare.
Scott Matthewman
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