Bugsy Malone – Theatre Royal Bath and Touring

The Ensemble in Bugsy Malone at Theatre Royal Bath and Touring. Picture: Johan Persson

Bugsy Malone continues at the Theatre Royal Bath until 23 July 2022 and then tours until 29 January 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Somewhat surprisingly, despite several London revivals, this is the first ever national tour of the stage version of Alan Parker’s age-bending gangster film musical spoof Bugsy Malone. The reason may well be the logistical challenges involved in a formidably long engagement of no less than 19 number one venues, reaching deep into January 2023 and embracing the likes of Leeds Grand, Manchester Opera House and the Wales Millennium Centre.

Management from Theatre Royal Bath Productions, Birmingham Rep and Kenny Wax have done particularly well in assembling 21 young players, aged nine to 15, in three separate casts of seven, to rotate the roles of the pint-sized New York mobsters and their dolls. In total the cast, including ensemble and swings, numbers 39 (25 for each performance).

The production is totally faithful to Parker’s original idea in his 1976 film of youngsters sending up the traditional American gangster movie – a concept that swept Jodie Foster to cinema fame at the age of 13. Perhaps because of this, it does emerge as a little dated, especially when it embraces that musical theatre cliché of all clichés – recruiting the audience for the all-singing, all-dancing finale. But very much on the plus side is Bugsy Malone’s appeal to a teenage – and even younger – audience, many of whom may well be visiting a theatre for the first time.

It is the era of Prohibition in the Big Apple, and rival mob bosses Fat Sam and Dandy Dan are not taking any prisoners in their battle to control both their territory and the deadly new weapon of gang warfare – the custard pie (actually Angel Delight) shooting splurge gun. Along comes Bugsy Malone, a nice guy version of Marlon Brando’s wrong-side-of-the-tracks boxer in On the Waterfront, charged with evening-up the contest, but much more interested really in the new love of his life, Blousey Brown.

The night I caught the musical, Gabriel Payne successfully kept his eye on the main business chance, rather than his romance, as Bugsy; Albie Snelson (Fat Sam) and Desmond Cole (Dandy Dan) were as sharp as the shoulder pads in their suits as the two racketeers; and both Mia Lakha (Blousey) and Jasmine Sakyiama (Fat Sam’s showgirl ‘moll’ Tallulah) were particularly strong vocally, especially in torch mode.

Director Sean Holmes makes sure his super-young cast don’t lean towards being either too cute or too camp. Musical director Connagh Tonkinson, and his six musicians, do full justice to such songs as ’Ordinary Fool’ and ‘You Give a Little Love’ from Oscar-winning song writer Paul Williams, while choreographer Drew McOnie, himself an Olivier Award winner, guides home the highlight of the evening: ‘So You Want to Be a Boxer’.

Alan Parker is said to have wept buckets when he saw the original Lyric Theatre Hammersmith stage version of his film Bugsy Malone. Whether audiences will be quite so lachrymose over this touring version will be an interesting sideline view on how reactions in the theatre have changed.

John Houseman