Angie Darcy in Janis Joplin: Full Tilt at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Picture: Roy Tan
Janis Joplin: Full Tilt continues at Theatre Royal Stratford East, London until 5 March.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Old-fashioned 1970s traffic light-style disco lights flash dazzlingly. The upstage four-piece band strikes up and Angie Darcy bursts into the spotlight first speaking – her Texan accent faultless – and then raising Stratford East’s ornate roof with her extraordinarily powerful singing. Suddenly it is as if Janis Joplin, solidly built and clad in her trademark flares, fringes, feathers and beads, really were in the room – loud, strident, offensive, refreshing and sad.
Writer Peter Arnott tells the story of Joplin’s short life mostly as a first person narrative delivered as a monologue in sections between songs. We are meant to imagine that she’s sitting in her dressing room recalling her childhood, for example. As the story moves forward in time there are reflections on making money – and the effect it has – and thoughts about sex. It makes for a well-paced show because passionate and loud performance scenes are interspersed with quiet, reflective ones. We also see her happily making music with the band on a train and devising a number with them. Later, we see Joplin pitifully trying to seduce the receptionist in a hotel. It’s a well-rounded theatrical portrait.
Darcy is a tremendously energetic and naturalistic actor. There’s often a catch in her voice and a trembling in her face. She conveys a moving, truthful sense of Joplin’s brittle vulnerability as she recounts her pained and troubled life. This is the inner Joplin. The outer Joplin, which the public sees, has Attitude in spades, and takes perverse pleasure in shocking and upsetting people, although she usually regrets it afterwards. There is also, of course, an increasingly over-reliance on alcohol and drug use which eventually leads to her death at only 27.
Harry Ward is a talented actor-musician, playing terrific guitar on beautiful, evocative high-speed melodies, for example. There is also a powerful scene in which he visits Joplin in her dressing room and you sense that the character he is playing is one of her few real friends. Ward also has a poignantly delivered monologue, reflecting on Joplin after her death.
It isn’t always easy to carry off a biographical musical theatre show. Last year’s Dusty, for example, floundered. Director Cora Bissett’s production, however, packs a pretty powerful punch. Judging from audience reactions on press night, it brings Joplin briefly back to life for committed fans as well as introducing a new generation to this tragic icon.
Susan Elkin
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