Rachel Tucker and Lewis Cornay in John & Jen at Southwark Playhouse, London. Picture: Danny Kaan
John & Jen continues at the Southwark Playhouse, London until 21 August 2021.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Composer Andrew Lippa is now better known for full-scale musicals from The Wild Party and Big Fish to The Addams Family, but the small chamber musical John & Jen, revived in a new production at the Southwark Playhouse, provides a more intimate and personal setting that highlights how Lippa’s work excels in mixing comedy and tragedy.
Rachel Tucker and Lewis Cornay play siblings Jen and John, the former acting as a surrogate mother to a brother six years her junior, trying to shield him from their father’s abusive behaviour. Throughout Act I, as John grows from five years old to a young adult, Cornay clearly relishes the opportunity to portray multiple stages of childhood. It’s an enthusiasm that pays off in bucketloads, as the actor winningly shows a character growing in stature and self-assuredness throughout Act I.
Beside him, Tucker has the harder job of playing the older sister. The book (by Lippa and lyricist Tom Greenwald) requires Jen to act as a surrogate mother to her brother, meaning that the character rarely gets the opportunity to portray the same sense of childhood afforded to the younger sibling. A rare exception is the number ‘Dear God’, as Tucker’s Jen implores her little brother not to show her up while attending her netball game.
Director Guy Retallack has updated the story from its original 1960s setting, allowing John to sign up for the post-9/11 Iraq War rather than for Vietnam. For the most part this modernisation works, although it completely changes the reasons Jen’s dope-smoking college student chooses to leave for Canada with her boyfriend.
In the original, it was so that he could avoid the draft, which might have forced him to sign up; here, it becomes a weaker protest at a nation fighting a war over oil. Nevertheless, Retallack and Tucker are able to dive deeper, and suggest that Jen’s relationship with her father – and recognition of the abuse which John persists in denying – is the real underlying cause.
Act II presents a new dynamic, with Jen on her own after splitting from her partner and still grieving the brother who never came back from war. As she brings up her young son (also called John, also played by Cornay) it is clear that she is projecting expectations onto him that he could never meet.
Once more Cornay effortlessly portrays a young man at various stages of life, also highlighting the differences between this boy and his namesake uncle with aplomb.
Now playing a true adult rather than a girl masquerading as one, Tucker really comes into her own in Act II, whether playing the Sports Mom From Hell in ‘Little League’, or in the fast-paced character changes with Cornay in ‘Talk Show’, as the pair interrogate each other about their dysfunctional relationship in the manner of a TV confessional. After an Act I where her character struggles to gel thanks to Lippa and Greenwald’s book, it is a relief to see the Jen of Act II give a musical theatre actress some real meat.
Tucker’s crowning moment comes with her final solo, as at the graveside of her dead brother she comes to terms with her unresolved grief and the pressure it has placed on the relationship with her son. Other actors can belt as well as Tucker, other actors are as good at wringing every last drop of emotion – but few can do so at the same time quite as reliably as she can.
Indeed, both Tucker and Cornay wring every last drop of meaning and emotion out of every note of Lippa’s melodies, performed meticulously well by a four-piece band led by musical director Chris Ma.
The result is a musical which elevates itself away from its inherent flaws to become an emotionally intense two hours. It provides a rare chance to see West End and Broadway leading lady Rachel Tucker in an intimate setting, but also showcases Lewis Cornay as a young lead who is every bit her equal.
Scott Matthewman
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