Bonnie Langford: Fifty Years On Stage – live-streamed from Crazy Coqs

Bonnie Langford: Fifty Years On Stage – live-streamed from Crazy Coqs, London (repeated at 6.30pm and 8.30pm on 17 December 2020).

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

From the almost unbearably cute six-year-old who won TV talent show Opportunity Knocks to her multiple stage successes and TV soap fame, there hasn’t been much in a 50-year showbiz career that Bonnie Langford had not turned a dainty hand to.

But her Crazy Coqs show was a first in that lovely cabaret room across the road from the Piccadilly Theatre where in 1973 she played Baby June in Gypsy (to Angela Lansbury’s Rose), the hit musical which later went on a 14-city US tour and Broadway.

Sparkly in a black catsuit, Langford’s ‘Let Me Entertain You’ from that same show has been what she’s been doing ever since while ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ which followed was, she said, topically appropriate now theatres were blessedly on their way back after Covid.

Gypsy was not Langford’s West End debut. That had come the previous year when she was eight playing Bonnie Butler in the ill-starred musical version of Gone With The Wind, an almighty flop immortalised in Noël Coward’s catty response “Cut the second act and the child’s throat” when asked how the show might be improved.

Coward was in the press night audience and that child was poor Langford who shared a scene with a live pony called Charlie the night the beast chose to defecate on stage.

Langford does admit “the show wasn’t perfect by any means” and gamely tells the story which has gone into theatrical folklore, adding another withering Coward put-down: “You could solve two problems at once – shove the child up the horse’s arse!”

Amusing though they were, Coward’s headline-grabbing words might have destroyed many a child actor’s confidence but not this feisty little redhead who went on to work on shows like Sweet Charity, Charlie Girl, Chicago, Spamalot, Guys and Dolls, Peter Pan The Musical, Cats (she was sweet 16 when drafted in to play cat-burglar Rumpleteazer), 9 To 5, 42nd Street and, of course, Annie.

Pantos have also played a big part in her life and she is thrilled that some curtains will soon be going up on that very British institution. Langford is a great supporter of a genre which introduces youngsters to the magic of theatre and unites families.

Away from her musical life she’s done Dr Who, Dancing On Ice (on which in rehearsals she fell on the ice and banged her head) and more recently EastEnders, for which she won the British Soap Award for Best Newcomer four years ago. Some newcomer!

Saying “being a mother” was her favourite role, she introduced her own family, 20-year-old daughter Biana Jay who joined Mum onstage for a power-packed ‘For Good’ from Wicked. A chip off the old block and she sings well.

There was a spoof version of ‘Memory’ in which she good-humouredly took Wikipedia to task for some incorrect info on her CV and songwriter Eamonn O’Dwyer put a topical spin for her on King George’s comic Hamilton song ‘You’ll Be Back’ (“when we’ll be grateful we’re all in one room and not on Zoom.”) Great stuff.

And she name-checked three great British song divas of the 1960s, Dusty Springfield, the still-working-at-88 Petula Clark and Cilla Black, with a pleasing medley of ‘Step Inside Love’, ‘Downtown’ and You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’. MD Anthony England accompanied brilliantly on piano.

Nobody ever said Langford’s voice was the world’s best but so what? She’s a star, an entertainer, a grand trouper and a cabaret natural with a well-stocked cupboard of name-dropping showbiz anecdotes which, as a good storyteller, she is happy to share.

At 56 she can still high-kick with the best of them as she demonstrated in a sexy ‘All That Jazz’ finale – she’s been Roxie Hart in Chicago in the West End and on Broadway.

And there are two more chances (6.30pm and 8.30pm) to catch her 50 years On Stage show at the Crazy Coqs on 17 December. It was and will be an hour very well spent.

Jeremy Chapman