Anna-Jane Casey, Ria Jones and Sarah-Louise Young in Jerry’s Girls at St James Studio, London. Pictures: Roy Tan
Jerry’s Girls continues at St James Studio, London until 15 March.
Star rating: 4 stars ★ ★ ★ ★
It is only when you hear 28 of his show songs paraded one after the other in a sparkling revue staged so winningly by a hectically-involved cast of five under Kate Golledge’s imaginative direction that you realise the full extent of Broadway legend Jerry Herman’s craft as musician and lyricist.
This joyous revival of Jerry’s Girls, 30 years after being upgraded to full Broadway razzmatazz from small-time revue to cash in on the unexpected success of Herman’s first hit in 17 years, La Cage Aux Folles, then in the middle of its four-year run, uses every inch of the limited St James Studio space in what is a riot of activity from start to finish.
We’ve got Anna-Jane Casey jumping on the piano, wicked impersonations of Jeanette MacDonald, Carol Channing and Ethel Merman, the recorded voices of Herman and Angela Lansbury, and even the two-piece ‘band’ of pianist Edward Court and reeds charmer Sophie Byrne joining in during the elaborate ‘Tap Your Troubles Away’ routine.
Byrne is one of those sickeningly gifted quadruple-threat talents who makes mere mortals feel even more useless than they are, but tap-dancing while playing the saxophone may even have been a new one for her.
Court, only 21 and a product of the exciting Performance Preparation Academy at Guildford, not only plays beautifully, he sings us into proceedings with ‘Showtime‘ from Parade in fine voice and proves a dab hand at tap as well, although at 6ft 6in he dwarfs the small St James stage.
Court and Byrne don’t get star billing but are much more than a footnote to extolling those musical theatre ‘heavyweights’ Casey and Ria Jones who team up with cabaret funny girl Sarah-Louise Young to sing, act, read from Herman’s biography Showtune and josh with the audience in this non-stop trawl through Herman’s finest work.
Heavily featured, of course, are Hello, Dolly! (1964), Mame (1966) and La Cage (1983) but we also get the pick of lesser-known work like Milk and Honey (1961), Dear World (1969), Mack and Mabel (1974), A Day In Hollywood (1980), for which he wrote additional songs, and his 1960 revue Parade.
The one song especially written for the revue is ‘Take It All Off’, wittily started by Young in her little-girl stripper voice and lugubriously completed by the more matronly Jones who claims audiences pay her “to put it all back on again!”
Attempting to hold her own against the experience and versatility of the other two results in Young, the junior member of the three ‘Girls’ in every sense, trying a bit too hard on occasions. Sometimes less is more and by the end of the two-week run she will be a little less frenetic.
Judging from the stand-up applause, La Cage‘s gay anthem ‘I Am What I Am’ is predictably the evening’s big moment but Jones sings it with such full-throated simplicity that its appeal is broadened to embrace all lonely, misunderstood people, along with the plea that everyone is entitled to love and be loved in whatever way they can.
Saved to the end, the La Cage stuff, with perhaps Herman’s most beautiful creation ‘Song On the Sand’, hauntingtly performed by Casey with some lovely clarinet support, and that ideal finale ‘The Best of Times’ brings down the curtain on a high-octane evening that goes by seemingly in the blink of an eye.
If there’s an empty seat in the next fortnight, it will be little short of criminal.
Jeremy Chapman
Pictures: Roy Tan
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