Guildford School of Acting – Betty Blue Eyes

Betty Blue Eyes is performed by students from the Guildford School of Acting at the Ivy Theatre, Guildford.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Not everyone knows but Kylie Minogue once played a pig, not any old pig but Betty Blue Eyes, the adorable porcine heroine of the George Stiles and Anthony Drewe musical.

Kylie provided the voice for the animatronic Betty when the show (from a book by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman) launched in the West End in 2011. It was one of the mysteries of the year why this wonderfully comic show lasted only six months in spite of generally positive reviews.

Betty, based on the 1984 movie A Private Function which Alan Bennett scripted, has yet to return to London but came back for a short 2014 tour starting in Colchester.

Here, in Guildford, was the first actor-muso version directed by tutor Nicholas Scrivens and played by members of GSA’s BA Actor Musician programme.

Last year when GSA’s actor-musos did Daisy Pulls It Off, that show transferred to the Charing Cross Theatre to give those young careers an invaluable taste of performing in the West End.

Set in 1947, Betty Blue Eyes tells of a northern town illegally fattening up a pig at a time of austerity and food rationing to be consumed by the self-seeking local dignitaries at a private function to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Everybody else had to settle for Spam.

For all the students’ wholehearted efforts and slick production values, Betty (frequently short for Elizabeth) didn’t really take off for me. It was only the first night so it may have gathered speed and fluency as the four-night run continued.

At nigh on 80 minutes, the Act I needed a few nips and tucks as it felt too long and although Act II was sharper (and shorter!) Betty only moved me the once. That was when Ben Barrow as Gilbert Chilvers, whose visiting chiropractic business included a full service in more ways than one, launched into ‘The Kind of Man I Am’, the singing highlight of my evening and, from the sustained applause, I was not the only one.

There were plenty of good Stiles and Drewe songs to enjoy and if I single out ‘Nobody’, sung principally by Jessica Brydges as Chilvers’ ambitious wife Joyce (Sarah Lancashire in 2011) in a fine ensemble piece, it is because it has long been a personal favourite.

‘A Place in the Parade’, a duet between Barrow and Brydges, also stood out, as did Brydges’ solo ‘Kill The Pig’. But it was the catchy ‘Magic Fingers’ and the title song that the full-house audience was humming on the way home.

Betty herself was a star though Hayden Fletcher as the soppy accountant Henry Allardyce had a far-from-normal obsession with her, putting her in the marital bed in place of his long-suffering missus!

Prowling meat inspector Wormold was a strong performance by Tom Vercnocke and others in the cast were Ruth Brotherton, Olivia Graham, David Haller, Lucy Ireland, Amy Jackson-Ives, Sam Kelly, Edward Lappage, Shona Maule, Emily Mills, Emily Newsome and Jessica Sharratt.

The band, under musical director Paul Herbert, consisted of Jamie Stephenson Glynn, Edward Watchman, Alex Mallalieu, Rebecca Stagg, Eronwy Selwyn, Emily Redlaff, Ben Pullman, Benji Lord, Lee O’Reilly, Harley Johnston and Dave Storer.

Heather Douglas’ choreography had plenty of life and pace and Beth Godby produced a set that fitted nicely with the period. How well I remember 1947 – it was still bread and butter OR bread and jam, never the two together!

Jeremy Chapman