Crazy For You continues at the Chichester Festival Theatre until 4 September 2022.
Star rating: five stars ★★★★★
It’s rare for a show to get a standing ovation at the interval but a full house on press night quickly fell in love with this heatwave-hot revival of the wonderfully silly Crazy For You, sensationally directed and choreographed by the legendary Susan Stroman.
This was an evening for parking your brain in the boot of the car and just sitting back in your seat and wallowing in a sea of great Gershwin songs, lavish costumes, sumptuous orchestrations and off-the-scale dance routines.
Much of the audience love was reserved for the irresistibly talented Charlie Stemp, returning triumphantly to Chichester where it all started for him with Half a Sixpence six years ago and again dancing his way into the hearts of us all.
Last time as ‘Flash, Bang, Wallop!’ Artie Kipps, here as wannabe Broadway hoofer Bobby Child in this 1992 celebration of the work of the Gershwins, composer George and lyricist Ira, his elder brother – not “his lovely wife” as one 1950s radio DJ so unforgettably called him on air.
It was quite a coup for Chichester to bring five-time Tony Award winner Stroman over to put her stamp on this bonkers jukebox musical as her first Tony was for the choreography of the Broadway original 30 years ago.
That ran for 1,622 performances and she was again on the case when it dazzled the West End for nigh on three years at the Prince Edward. So she really should have got the hang of it by now!
The story is pure corn: banker Bobby fails to land Broadway part after treading on impresario Bela Zangler’s foot in audition, is sent by bossy mother to foreclose on a rundown theatre she owns in a once-thriving town in sleepy Nevada that’s seen better days – it’s Depression era 1930 – falls for the one feisty gal among the deadbeats of Deadrock, devises cunning plan to save the old Gaiety and bring back the tourists and, after a lot of funny business with the eccentric theatre mogul who rejected him, they all live happily ever after.
Ken Ludwig’s book may be a long way from Shakespeare but it’s full of great one-liners – the one about who would be mad enough to think of opening a casino in Nevada was creasingly funny – the dialogue is punny and slick and the scene where the real Zangler (brilliant Tom Edden) and the fake one (Stemp) are so pie-eyed sitting facing each other that they think they’re seeing reflections of themselves in the saloon bar mirror is genuine theatre magic.
As for the music, well, who could ask for anything more than the best of Gershwin? Written long after both brothers had died – George tragically early from a brain tumour – co-creators Ludwig and Mike Ockrent had a catalogue of more than 400 songs to choose from, first working in half a dozen from the 1930 show Girl Crazy which saw Ethel Merman making her Broadway debut and turned co-lead Ginger Rogers into a star overnight.
From the 1926 musical Oh, Kay! came the timeless ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ and they dipped into two Fred Astaire movies, Shall We Dance for ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ and A Damsel in Distress for ‘Things Are Looking Up’ and ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’.
The first two are beautifully re-created by the sweet-voiced Carly Anderson as Bobby’s love interest Polly. Stemp’s light tenor, somewhat reminiscent of Astaire’s, takes care of the others, their romantic duet on ‘Embraceable You’ from Girl Crazy is pure nostalgia and ‘I Got Rhythm’ with Anderson and the full company at the end of Act I prompted that early ovation.
Stroman’s genius with props in turning coils of rope and pickaxes into part of the dance work in the very first Gershwin number to be sung on a Broadway stage, ‘The Real American Folk Song is a Rag’ from the 1918 show Ladies First, comes through with bells on as those Deadrock layabouts Moose (Marc Akinfolarin), Mingo (Craig Bartley) and Sam (Simon Anthony) make hay.
And the little-known ‘Naughty Baby’, from Primrose, a show Gershwin wrote in London that was a success but so English that it never got a run in America, gives Merryl Ansah as flighty Irene, Bobby’s ex from New York, Irene, her big solo moment as she makes a play for Lank (Mathew Craig), the owner of the town’s version of a hotel.
Craig and Ansah excel and there are lovely cameos from Adrian Grove and Jacqui Dubois as two bookish English travel writers who make the dusty, hour-long walk from the station intent on putting Deadrock in their next guide.
The dialogue with Lank when they request a wine list is priceless, particularly when the choice expands from two to three after Lank discovers he can make rosé by mixing the white and the red!
Many more songs to enjoy, 20 in all, and more performances deserving of a name check, not least Gay Soper as Bobby’s mother, Don Gallagher as Polly’s dad and Sadie-Jean Shirley as Zangler’s dance director and on-off squeeze Tess.
Mega props too to MD Alan Williams and the 16-strong orchestra – lucky them to have such glorious music to tuck into – to Beowulf Boritt’s sets which seamlessly take us from Broadway to the tumbledown not-so-wild West and Ken Billington’s bright, inventive lighting that makes the spectacular showgirl outfits (great costumes by William Ivey Long) shimmer and sparkle.
But this is Stemp’s show. If it’s electrifying tap, high-kicks or elegant ballroom you’re after, he is the full package, simply flawless, commanding every scene he’s in with his cheeky charm – an absolute Bobby-dazzler.
Every bit as daft as Anything Goes and just as lovable, Crazy For You is the perfect pick-me-up. Another winner for Chichester… then a West End transfer?
Jeremy Chapman
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