Lizzie Wofford and Drew Weston in Apartment 40C at the London Theatre Workshop, Fulham. Picture: Matthew Lees
Apartment 40C continues at the London Theatre Workshop, Fulham until 20 December.
Anyone who recalls the sublime 1960 black and white Billy Wilder film The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, doesn’t need reminding of how much drama, comedy and human emotion can be wrung out within just four walls.
The compact and bijou surrounds of the venue upstairs at the London Theatre Workshop provide a suitably intense space for this impressive new, three-layered musical tale to unfold. With music by Tom Lees, and book and lyrics by Ray Rackham, both artistic directors of the Workshop, this stateside drama, played out amid a set dressed with the humdrum domestic paraphernalia of everyday life, proves anything but run-of-the-mill.
It’s the initial exuberance of the female cast here which really kickstarts this production into life, notably Katie, the young, full of expectation journalism intern played with enigmatic ease by Alex Crossley. Part diva, part drama queen and a bit of a sexual tease, she soon has accidental flat-mate Eddie (Alex James Ellison) in her sights and their love-hate, knock-about blossoming relationship is charmingly created.
He may, at one point, describe her as “a tornado of useless information”, but he falls for her hook, line and sinker. When she later sings the beguiling number ‘Fairy Tales’, most of the audience does too.
If the initial few numbers deftly set the scene and pencil in each storyline’s diverse scenarios, without really being memorable, it’s only when Kate, played by recent Mountview Academy graduate Lizzie Wofford, sings ‘Apartment 40C’, that the production starts to really engage, tug at a few heart-strings and the performance bar is raised.
It’s the moment that really pulls you into the three couple’s stories and, without exception, each of the six-strong cast succeeds in carving out characters you care about and are actually interested in.
Like Edward (Peter Gerald), the personification of middle class, mid-life crisis man taking comforting swigs from a bottle and reflecting on how it all went wrong, not least his divorce from the grounded but emotionally fragile Kathryn, played with unflagging intensity by Nova Skipp, her character haunted by the death of their young son.
The breakdown of their relationship is a stark warning for the other couples – not so much Eddie and Katie, they’re just starting out in life and the biggest personal drama they’ll probably face for a while is running out of milk. More so the relationship of Kate and partner Ed, perfectly played by Aussie actor Drew Weston, which may be loving but is also volatile, vulnerable, and you suspect, papering over a fair few cracks.
To quote the ‘categories’ on the Chinese food cartons the cast eats out of at one point, there are a number of creatively ‘hot’ moments here, while others are just ‘mild,’ but ultimately any musical containing a song with lyrics that can rhyme ‘cuisine’ with ‘washing machine’ gets my vote. Plus, the desperately sad finale, ‘A Child’, sung superbly from the depths of a shattered heart by Skipp, is as fine a closing moment you’ll witness on the current Fringe scene.
Derek Smith
www.londontheatreworkshop.co.uk
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