The Goodbye Girl – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

The Goodbye Girl continues at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London until 28 February.

Star rating: 4 stars ****

This soft-centred musical version of Neil Simon’s witty Oscar-nominated film – which won a Best Actor gong for Richard Dreyfuss in 1978 – has a sweet nature, a good heart and wonderful chemistry between the leads Paul Keating and Rebecca Bainbridge.

The show tells the story of Paula, a struggling single-parent dancer reluctantly forced to share the apartment she thought was hers when her rat of a boyfriend runs off and sub-lets it to an actor friend, Eliot Garfield, from Chicago who comes to the Big Apple with dreams of making the big-time.

We see his first attempt as Richard III turn into a disaster with a batty director (Mark Turnbull, not too over-the-top) urging him to show Richard’s high-pitched feminine side – “the queen who would be king” – a performance that brings a predictable slew of brutal reviews that thankfully close the production down immediately.

The loss of the job gives Elliot more time to work on winning over Paula’s teenage daughter Lucy, whom he adores, and, through her, get the mother to soften towards him. Paula has an understandable chip on her shoulder but her attempt to lay down the law – ‘My Rules’ – meets with stiff resistance and an uneasy truce.

The improvised love song ‘Paula’ provides the pair with a charming duet as a romance takes shape and although Elliot getting a film job in Canada threatens their bliss because Paula lacks the self-confidence – she’s been let down in all previous relationships, hence she’s ‘The Goodbye Girl’ – to trust him, all’s well that ends well.

Given its immaculate pedigree – Simon’s skill with sharp New York dialogue, the wry lyrics of David Zippel (much admired recently for the just-finishing City of Angels at the Donmar) and a score by the great Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line, They’re Playing Our Song) – it should have lasted more than 188 performances on Broadway in 1993.

It fared even less well when lasting only two months in London four years later with revised lyrics by Don Black that didn’t please many and although it is a likeable enough show, the whole doesn’t quite equal the sum of its parts.

This is its first professional appearance in the UK since and although it is not Hamlisch’s most distinguished work, an average Hamlisch still beats most people’s best.

We get double helpings of the two best songs, ‘No More’ and ‘I Think I Can Play This Part’, the reprise of the latter touching the heartstrings as Elliot tells Lucy (Olivia Hallett, promising but not always audible) how much he wants to be a father to her.

Keating has an easy-to-listen-to, warm voice that never strains for effect and Bainbridge, the perennial West End understudy (Mamma Mia! and Cabaret to name but two), gets the big billing her talent deserves under Adam Lenson’s sympathetic direction of this delicate tale of people trying to live together and with themselves.

Act II turns out to be the stronger one, the first ending with the Richard III play-within-a-play that’s too long and not as funny as it thinks it is, probably more the fault of the writing than the acting.

The dancing (choreography by Claira Vaughan) needs a bit more oomph, which it will get as the run picks up speed and assurance, and it is chiefly for the performances of Keating (Olivier nominated for Tommy in 1996 and the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven five years later) and Bainbridge that it’s worth seeing.

Others in the cast are Denise Pitter, Emily Dunn, Rebecca Gilliland, Alex Green, Tim Phelps, Emma-Kayte Saunders and James Wolstenholme, while the music is in the hands of Richard Bates and his band of five.

Suzi Lombardelli’s simple set is fit for purpose and the props, chiefly mattresses on different parts of the stage to denote separate bedrooms, admirably convey how cramped most New York apartments are.

Olivia Hallett, from the Gillham School of Performing Arts in Welling, is sharing the role of young Lucy with Shannon Beach, who is making her professional debut in what is a demanding part. The experience of working alongside such established performers as Keating and Bainbridge will be invaluable to both.

Jeremy Chapman

www.upstairsatthegatehouse.com