Flowers for Mrs Harris – Chichester Festival Theatre

Mark Meadows and Clare Burt in Flowers for Mrs Harris at Chichester Festival Theatre. Picture: Johan Persson

Flowers for Mrs Harris continues at Chichester Festival Theatre until 29 September 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Daniel Evans’ farewell production at The Crucible, Sheffield before taking over as Chichester’s artistic director was the staging of this new British musical, based on the 1958 novella by Paul Gallico.

Rachel Wagstaff (book) and Richard Taylor (music and lyrics) are responsible for an adaptation that expands the original storyline. They have created a charming whimsical musical that is both funny and poignant, telling of friendship and of bringing to fruition, impossible dreams. It is a fairy story that centres on an ordinary, middle-aged woman’s aspirations and requires an audience to suspend belief and embrace the improbable.

Set in 1947, it tells of a widowed London charlady, Ada Harris, whose life has been all hard work with no luxury. It becomes transformed when she sees a client’s Christian Dior dress. Declaring: “It’s a work of art… something not real, made to make you feel,” she sets her heart on owning one, taking on extra work to save up the money. It takes three years to do so and eventually she finds herself in Paris, stumbling naively through the world of Haute Couture.

Her eternal cheerfulness and optimism rub off on the people around her and fairy godmother-like she helps their dreams come true as she achieves her own.

The musical breaks with traditional conventions. There is an absence of choreography and the music, lyrics and words are so closely woven together that songs and speech flow into each other. This sung-through effect brings to mind Aspects of Love but here there are no big numbers. There are gentle ballads – ‘All I Ever Needed’, ‘Life Will Never Get Better Than This’ as well as an invocation for good luck ‘Rain On Me’.

Lez Brotherston’s set may be minimal but it has maximum impact with London and Paris skylines silhouetted in the background. In front, Ada’s dowdy kitchen gives way to Dior’s grand salon with a sweeping staircase, used to great effect for the parade of nine stunning dresses.

Evans has cast the show well, bringing back several of the Sheffield cast. A neat trick is to have the actors doubling up, appearing in Act I as clients that Ada chars for and then as characters in the world of Paris fashion. There are so many fine performances that it may be unfair to single out a few but it has to be.

Claire Machin brings both comedy and pathos to the role of Violet, Ada’s neighbour – the pair duet on ‘Changing Things’. There is more comedy from her as a French charlady. Louis Maskell’s shy, businesslike Dior employee is reduced to ecstatic goofiness when he is kissed by the object of his adoration, Natasha, delightfully played by Laura Pitt-Pulford.

Sharing top honours is Mark Meadows as Ada’s late husband whose ghost visits and supports her. Their number ‘All I Ever Needed’ is most touching. He contrasts this down to earth character with the gentle sophistication of a French Marquis.

But there is no unfairness in showering praise upon Clare Burt’s Ada. She is the centrepiece of the show and delivers a knockout performance. On the surface, she invests the character with an astonishing simplicity but her interpretation is multi-layered and filled with subtle nuances.

The show is a little over-stuffed and, to use a dressmaking simile, it could do with being taken in a tad. Maybe a couple of songs are superfluous.

Overall the production warms the heart, moistens the eye and lifts the spirit as this simple, generous soul follows her dream and in doing so escapes from her loneliness.

Barrie Jerram